Pre-riding the Tevis finish

We had a nice ride this weekend, going from the Overlook (finish) of Tevis down to the Poverty Bar  river crossing and back.  It was a 24 mile round trip day and took us around five hours.  We spent a lot of time down at the river cooling ourselves, and the horses.  It was fun for me getting to see this section of trail in the daylight.

The blue line that is going straight across the GPS tracks image near the bottom – is pointing directly to my house, across the Sierras in Nevada from the Tevis finish line!  Now I know it’s a straight shot as the bird flies but a little more difficult if you do it by horseback!

I have completed the Tevis twice and till now have only been through most of that part in the dark.  I had a friend go with me and ride Bo.  I rode Chief.   This way both horses are ready to go and I will have the option of one or the other depending upon which one I think looks the best as the ride gets closer on July 24th.

We had a lot of fun on the ride.  The horses got one heck of a workout.  It was 98 degrees when we got back to the trailer, and also a lot more humid than we are used to.  It has been years since I have ridden in those conditions.  I felt great afterwards and the horses also seemed to fair well.  They immediately pulsed down to well below pulse criteria with their tack on, and were trotted out and looked good.

While trotting on a narrow single track section with drop offs I spotted what looked like a large black dog running down the trail ahead of us.  We’d already seen several hikers out, some with dogs so I thought the dog was running back to it’s owner.  So I kept trotting.  Chief’s ears perked up but he kept going forward.  We were gaining on it, and suddenly I realized — holy cow, that’s not a dog – that is a BEAR!!  The bear turned and climb up into the trees and stood there watching us.  I tried to get some photos but they didn’t turn out very well.  The bear looked like a dark mahogany reddish bay-almost black color.

Riding across No Hands Bridge!

Then in another spot a squirrel ran towards us and jumped up in Chief’s face before running off of the trail!  That was weird – maybe a female protecting her babies?  I was fortunate in both wildlife encounters that the horses were fine and didn’t panic or spook.  They both handled everything on the trail quite well including all of the other trail users.  We saw several other horseback riders and endurance riders too.

The trail was in good shape and didn’t scare us anywhere.  There are a few spots where you need to duck for branches…and watch out for the poison oak.

The river crossing was down and we’d heard from others that riders have been crossing it.  It’s best to cross it before noon, when it is at it’s lowest.

Enjoy the photos.  I may upload them to Picasa and Google Earth so people can see where they were taken on the map.  I was happy to get the tracks on my GPS.  You never know when that may come in useful!