Death Valley Encounter 2007

• On the Way Down

• Pre-Day

• Day 1

• Day 2

• Day 3

• Day 4

• On the Way Home

(click on thumbnail photos to see full size pictures).

(click on aerial photo to launch Google Earth track of Day 3.
You'll need Google Earth already installed on your computer)

My legs were so sore during the night that several times I woke up needing to stuff soft cloth between my knees to try to pad the poor bruised flesh and I felt rather like a hibernating animal in a burrow, buried deep under all my bed covers, with my hot water bottle. Note to the uninitiated - never go to Death Valley without a hot water bottle. Your life will be enhanced beyond belief by this small, but crucial item. (Hot water bottles are to be found in the medical section of WalMart, under "douches" (euwww).)

The morning of Day 3 was the coldest yet: 22°F (-5°C) (but then again, thinking back to waking up to torrential rain in this same camp in 2004 when Zini and I came down to swim the ride, I knew things could be a lot worse). 

The morning dawned bright and crisp - which meant another day of runny noses and streaming eyes. :)

After the pain of Day 2, Judy wisely decided to sit out Day 3 - she wasn't sure her body could take another day of abuse without her resorting to hopelessly inelegant riding and she didn't think Star would appreciate that. 

So Nick, Brenda and I set out without her that morning - trotting south towards Trona. 

Roo was once again full of beans, wanting to rush off in the bright cold air. And once again I tried putting him in the front (= Roo goes very fast), putting him in the back (= Roo continues to try to go very fast), finally resorting to riding down the center line of the dirt track with his nose inserted between Special and Don's tails which meant he wasn't standing on them, but was at least vaguely controllable. And once again, I wondered where my easy-to-rate pone had gone... this constant go-go-go - whilst very encouraging from a lack of fatigue standpoint - was starting to get old.

The first part of the trail was a 12 mile loop into the foothills to the west of camp - twisting through the rocks and brush, into sand washes, over rock piles. This trail is really fun, but quite hard work since you can't really get much of a rhythm going from having to stop and start so irregularly. I managed to get some videoing done in between battling to keep Roo off Special's butt and discouraging him from trying to run through deep sand/rocks. It's a little wobbly, but gives you an idea of the terrain:

Video

After the 12 mile loop, we had a brief 30 minute hold at camp. For the third day running, I hadn't managed to eat a breakfast before starting the ride, instead relying on a banana-oat muffin bar which doesn't really do the job. So taking advantage of a visit back to the trailer I scarfed down as much as I could squash in - a chocolate muffin, a yoghurt, some turkey slices, some cheese, a bottle of Ensure, some dried mango, etc....It turned out to be the best thing I'd done all week - by the time we left on the next leg, I felt absolutely great - almost euphoric.

It seems the break did Roo good too -  for the first time in three days, I finally got my pone back - trotting the whole road out of Valley Wells towards the Slate Range with the reins dropped on his neck, not needing to rate him. Yay!

(I've noticed this tendency in the past - if the horse is filled with a little too much enthusiasm, a break at around 12 miles seems to bring them back down to earth and they settle right down afterwards).

This next section was the part that Dave Nicholson was concerned about - he wasn't sure how much water they'd manage to get out there for us, so we were warned to ride accordingly. As it turned out, there was plenty - even if it did have 3/4"-thick ice frisbees next to it. I worried that the horses wouldn't drink well because the water was so cold, but we gave them a bit more time so they could sip at it since they weren't submarining into it. They didn't seem to have any problems. 

The next five miles or so would be downhill, much of it on slithery rocky footing, so we all got off to hand-walk.

I walked with Becky for a while but eventually 
she dropped back to wait for Sue, and Roo 
and I found ourselves on our own.

The route we were following was the same one used by a group in 1850 who had to abandon their wagons in Death Valley and continue on foot over into Panamint Valley, before escaping over the Slate Range via Fish Canyon.

...and so we trudged. After a bit, the bottoms of my feet started to hurt from rolling over rocks and I considered how the horses must feel. 

The trail seemed to be heading south, which was a little concerning what with Ballarat being to the north, and it started to get warm... Wait? warm?? I took off my wind-breaker and tied it around my waist and pushed up the sleeves of my fleecy top (only three layers this day!).

Finally the volcanic rocks began to peter out and I started to think about getting back on. Apparently I hadn't thought this plan through very thoroughly, however, as now there were no rocks to use as mounting blocks. Hmm. I tried an ineffective mount from a 6" high mound of sand and the saddle started to turn... this wasn't going to work. This is the trouble with riding with a loose girth. The saddle stays put while you're sitting in it, but not enough to stop the thing rolling when you try to drag yourself on. 

Becky and Sue caught up with me in time to heckle my pathetic mounting antics, and finally to my relief I found a steep-sided wash that I was able to put Roo in and scramble on. Roo wasn't too keen since I had to turn him off the trail to get to the wash and as far as he was concerned, he'd only just rejoined his bestest friends in the whole world (Marc and Rocky) and didn't want to part from them again at the risk of obvious peril.
 

At the bottom of the valley we turned north <phew> alongside the dry lake and started towards Ballarat. Roo was filled with renewed enthusiasm by his new buddies and immediately began to rush-rush-rush. Oh gah, not again. He got stuffed back behind the others which proved even harder than when we'd been with Nick and Brenda. Becky and Sue didn't get all those miles going fast and they set a very sedate trotting pace which meant that Roo was constantly coming up much too close behind them. We rode with them for half a mile or so before they stopped for a bathroom break and I took my leave and continued on alone.

Of course, as soon as Roo realised they weren't coming with us, he immediately slowed down and started to weave back and forth on the trail, spook at innocent rocks and bushlets, and generally deteriorate into a horse that felt drunk <grrr>. I admit he got a couple of spanks before we came to a vague "forwards" agreement.

Our progress continued to be a little uneven - at one point he spotted a tiny white car in the distance travelling parallel to us on the far side of the valley and was convinced it was another horse. For a while trying to keep him on the track became even more difficult as he kept veering off the side, hoping that I wouldn't notice his attempts to join his new friend. He even whinnied at the car a few times and must have been disappointed by the lack of response. Poor lonely Roo.

I kept assuring him that if he kept up a steady pace, eventually we'd catch up with Special and Don. He didn't seem terribly convinced but settled down after a while and we trotted and trotted and trotted - for once at a sensible pace - not too fast, not too slow. There was a water stop about a third of the way along the dry lake but I didn't let him linger too long for fear of Becky and Sue catching us up and having to go through the separation thing again.

This part of the trail was almost completely flat, with only slight curves winding around the uneven edges of the dry lake. The footing was sandy - not deep, but not firm either - and it made me uneasy as I couldn't tell how hard Roo was having to work. Every so often, we'd slow to a walk for a few minutes to rest his legs. Under these circumstances I find it difficult to judge how things are going. You go a bit numb from the repetitiveness of it and tend to go into a trance-like state. After a while I did realise that I was starting to feel a little bleached from trotting-trotting-trotting, so munched my way through a bag of Cliff-Shot Bloks. These are like cubes of jello with a similar effect to Gu or Cliff-Shots which usually cheer me up. The trick is to start eating them before you get to the "Why am I doing this?" stage and I hadn't quite timed it right. 

It took about two and half hours - ~13 miles - of trotting from the time we started alongside the dry lake to when we finally got to the place where we crossed over to Ballarat. By then, Roo had noticed the circling antenna on top of the radar station to the west and became convinced that maybe that was another horse - more weaving and whinnying. Unfortunately for him, his eyesight wasn't good enough to notice two tiny dots up ahead which I was pretty sure were Special and Don. I watched them turn across the lake and made a note of the time so that when we reached that same point I could tell we were only 10 minutes behind them. Not too bad.

Roo wondering what the heck we're doing as 
he gawps across the dry lake towards Ballarat.

The road across the dry lake - Ballarat is at 
the foot of the mountains on the other side.

I checked his splint boots and discovered that his right front fetlock had a dime-sized rub on it <grrr> How stupid was I? These boots were the same design as the ones I'd used on Zini two years earlier and she too had rubbed in the same place with them (and her leg swelled up like an elephant and she was lame for three days). So what was I thinking when I bought the same kind?? Nothing, apparently. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He was ouchy on it, so I slathered Desitin on and filled the boot with talcum powder and put it back on - but to no avail. When we trotted for the vet, Kristen, she looked a little skeptical. I explained about the rub and she whipped off the boot and had us trot again - much better. 

(at this point, I ask myself what is the point of using splint boots as insurance against the horse whacking himself if they rub his legs and cause sores? Time to rethink this strategy - or get new splint boots).

The two dots had indeed been Nick and Brenda and they kindly agreed to wait an extra ten minutes so Roo and I would leave with them. 

This last section was a fairly hard-packed road that gradually sloped downhill for seven miles all the way to Indian Ranch and we didn't hang around on it except for stopping to take some photos of the sun setting spectacularly against the Panamint Range.

Me and Roo nearing the end of Day 3

In retrospect - hindsight being everything - in the long run it might have been better if Roo and I had dawdled more and missed Brenda and Nick because the pace we set along the road to Indian Ranch was probably faster than Roo should have been going. He was comfortably able to keep up and was trotting along quite cheerfully, nice and settled and not pulling, but there were times when we were going over 10 mph, which was wrong for him at this stage of the game. Fun, yes; good, no.  :-(

But we were both glad for the company. As we neared Indian Ranch, Nick told us to look out for the wild burros. Brenda pointed out the little burro tracks across the desert and we scrutinized what appeared to be grain on the road before realising it was actually washed-out burro poop full of seed pods (mesquite?).  And then we spotted them - a small multi-coloured herd up on the ridge watching us go past. Fun! Near the herd was a lake with water in it which cast strange reflections in the dimming light. 

Nick and Don trotting into the sunset... sorta...

And as we were approaching the end of the trail for the day, there was a trailer parked by the side of the dirt road with two horses in a corral. Our horses looked at them a little leerily but we passed without incident. An earlier rider wasn't so lucky: her horse spooked violently and she came off hard, necessitating a trip to the hospital with a suspected broken leg. Luckily she was just badly banged up, but it's another illustration of why you have to be careful to not let your guard down until you are done. 

(at this point I was going to direct you to a link to last spring's two-day Washoe Valley ride where Roo dumped me at 99.5 miles, spooking at a telephone pole lurking in the undergrowth and giving me a concussion. But apparently I never wrote that story up... oops)

Finally we arrived at Indian Ranch right as it was getting dark. The horses dived into the water thirstily and we were able to vet through right away. Don and Special passed without incident, but Kristen was a little concerned about Roo's back end which was looking a little funky (Steve told me later that he was short-striding on the right rear). She told me to bring him back in the morning for a recheck. Urk. I was a little shocked as he'd felt pretty good coming in, even though I knew we'd been going faster than we should have (per the GPS, we did that last 7.8 mile stretch in just over an hour, including the photo-shoot stop... hmmm).

Steve had once again done a fine job of moving my rig for me (thanks Steve!), and Roo was nicely positioned where he could see all the other horses. Once I'd gotten him settled - blanketed, poulticed (carefully to avoid his fetlock rub), wrapped, and fed, I went to find Kristen to ask her more about what she'd seen. I wanted to know if it was an indication that I should just forget about riding the next day? She said that we would check him carefully in the morning and if he tracking up nicely and not showing any signs of problems, then he should be OK to start.

Hmm. Again, hindsight being everything, I should have just called it good - Roo had done great three days in a row and didn't need to be doing another day. But I think I figured "well, he's just a little tired from all that continuous flat trotting and we'll see how he is in the morning". Perhaps if this hadn't been my first "real" trip to DVE and I hadn't had my eye on that elusive "Four-Days-in-a-Row" concept, I would have been happy to stop there. But we'd had such fun during this day, and he had felt good coming in, eager and happy, and finally seemed to be settling down. In some ways, it seemed like we were just starting to "get it"...  Second-guessing yourself is hard. <sigh>

Funnily enough, as we were busy with our wrapping duties that evening, Judy discovered a lump on Don's front leg - possibly a new splint? He wasn't sore on it, but Nick decided to sit the last day out just in case it was something brewing. An easy choice for Nick since it was his and Judy's 12th visit to DVE. :)  So Don finished up riding three days.

We prepared crewbags for the next day and collapsed into bed. My lower legs had come out in a lovely rash - perhaps from friction, perhaps from wearing the same riding tights two days in a row (I only had limited warm tights with me and had decided I'd rather be warm than clean). Either way, they were driving me mad with intense itching and I slathered cortisone cream on, hoping to calm them down, to no avail.

On to Day 4