Washoe Valley 2007
The best ride stories are the ones where everything goes horribly
wrong right from the start. Unfortunately for you, this
isn't one of those stories. Nothing really went wrong until the very last
half-mile, and even that wasn't that bad (the effects just lingered
longer than I anticipated).
(Click on photos to see larger
image)
Friday
Going to rides once the weather warms up is much easier,
preparation-wise. The prospect of trying to figure out how to wash a
pone when it's cold is never a good one - either the pone will hate you,
or it'll shiver pathetically for an hour and you'll worry about
putting it in the trailer wet, or you'll try and wash it on Thursday,
knowing it'll do its best to roll in as much mud as possible.
Warm weather: much better. Load up the horse feed, hay, and water during
the previous week, so come Friday morning all that's left to deal with
is Lucy clothes, people food, and pone washing - which gets done last,
so that said pone gets maximum amount of time to eat and digest his
breakfast in peace. I've even got it down to the stage where I figured
out to wash the pone, hang him on the trailer to dry while I run in and
shower off all the transferred-crud so the pair of us are
both clean and fluffy ready for the journey.
I know that this preparation will take hardly any time at all and
that I'll be ready to go by 10 am... which I why I'm never ready to go
before noon, bundling myself into the truck, stuffing breakfast in my
mouth while negotiating my driveway.
Washoe
Lake is about two and half hours away - an easy drive up I-80 over
Donner Summit (at least, "easy" so long as there's no snow
forecast). It's about 30 minutes south of Reno, nestled at ~5000' at the
foot of the steep east side of the Sierra in the shadow of 9600' Slide
Mountain. It's an excellent spot for a
ride - snow-capped mountains to the west with the lake below; sage-brush
stippled desert mountains to the east.
Ridecamp
was at the equestrian area of Washoe Lake State Park - this is a series
of loop dirt roads that you have to parallel
park along, so the effect is of tunnels of horse rigs. Not a tremendous
amount of space, but we all fitted in. Roo and I managed to grab a nice
spot not too far away from the vet area, but far enough away from the
start that I wouldn't have to play "tack-up the moving target"
in the morning.
Vetting
was supposed to start at ~3 pm, but the vets were evidently held up, so
a long line started to develop. I suspect most of these people were just
using it as an excuse to graze their horses on the grassy strip next to
the vet area, but in any case, Jamie Kerr who was riding volunteered to
step in and start vetting people in the interim.
Roo
vetted with a B on gut sounds, but was otherwise looking good.
Interestingly he stayed at B on gut sounds all weekend, so whether this
is "just him" I don't know. Either way, I was very careful the
entire weekend to make sure he was properly fuelled and by then end
began to feel rather like a chef producing dish after dish to tempt
Sir's palate only to have him turn his nose up because it wasn't
"special enough".
EZ Boots - When my farrier came on Tuesday, the
first thing he said when I told him which ride I was going to was
"Do you want pads?" <gulp>.
I'm not a fan of pads - I've never used them on a horse I've been
competing on - it seems that when I see shoes that have fallen off,
most of the time they have pads attached to them, so I opted instead to
go with EZ boots over shoes. Despite being toed-in, Roo travels pretty
cleanly and although he doesn't always wear EZ boots, I've trained with
them some and knew they worked OK for him. Trouble was, on Friday when I
came to put them on him, I realised that he'd practically gone through
the toes on the pair I'd intended to use for the next 100 miles. Hmm. A
quick trip to the omnipresent Henry at Griffin's Tack produced two brand
new size 0 boots (luckily Roo doesn't wear 1s, since he didn't have any
of those) which I immediately set about butchering - cutting the backs out
of the boots, and the heel-straps down by at least half. Doing this with
a pair of kitchen scissors worked OK, but I wasn't
able to smoosh the teeth on the sides with my pliers, so left them
sticking out. My Phillips screwdriver that lives in my trailer was
MIA, so I couldn't tighten the screws which worried me a little until
later that night
when I talked to Patrick on the phone and he reminded me that the
Leatherman I always carry in my saddle had a Phillips
screwdriver on it, so I was able to squat next to Roo in the dark with
my LED headlight, and get them all nice and tight.
Saturday - Getting Ready
The ride started at 6:30, so I dragged myself out of bed at 5:15. I
am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination and usually
sleep like a dead person, so I try to ask someone camped next to me to
make sure I'm awake the following morning. My cell phone has an alarm
clock on it, but luckily I seem to have developed a "wake up once an
hour" tendency at rides, which means I'm conscious by the time it
goes off with it's cheery morning fanfare.
Having learned my lesson at previous rides, the first thing I did was
put on Roo's splint boots. He doesn't interfere, but wearing EZ boots
they are good insurance against him whacking himself and getting pulled
for some minor, avoidable lameness. Attaching these to his legs once the early birds start
going past warming up their horses can be result in a lot of bad language, so I'm sure to put
them on before I do anything else.
As it turns out, stumbling out into the
early morning light, I was just congratulating myself that I'd gotten up at
the same time as top-ten rider Chuck Mather who was parked opposite -
until he went around the back of his trailer and produced a fully-tacked
up and ready-to-go George. So much for that. Chuck and George disappeared into the
sagebrush to limber up, leaving a rather
worried Roo to peer after them, wondering where they were going and why.
The previous afternoon, I'd spotted Peggy Eaton vetting her Dakota
(Peggy got a bit carried away putting LSD base on Dakota in 2005 and won the LD
national distance championship with him) and asked if she wanted to ride with
us. She was also planning on doing both days, so it seemed like a good
combination. They were due to start taking numbers at about 6:20, which
is when Peggy and Dakota appeared at my trailer - and I was actually
more or less ready. Hopped on, using the handy mounting-block rock (I
told you I got a good parking spot) and off we went.
Except at this point I realised that I hadn't got my pad on straight
- the gullet of the pad wasn't lining up with the gullet of the saddle,
causing the whole thing to be squiff and no amount of wriggling and
twisting in the saddle would fix it. Uh oh. I managed to jump off in the
warm-up area, loosen his cinch, re-settle the pad, get his cinch back
tight again and scramble back on from a handy post - all just seconds
before the ride started. Awk.
Loop 1
Roo
isn't a bad horse to start rides on, but he can be a little too filled
with happy feet, which was the case this morning. He alternated between
little rears and bucks while I clutched my hunk of mane as we followed
the controlled start up a nice sturdy hill thoughtfully placed at the
beginning of the ride.
At about two miles in, we slithered down a steep hill, passing
Gretchen Montgomery on foot towing Raffiq, and her friend Margaret Wood who was
doing her first 50 with Spice. True to tradition, Spice tried to kick
Roo when we scrunched up a little too close (Spice tried this when I was
riding Zini with her during Gold
Country in 2005, so it's obviously traditional). More about Gretchen
and Spice on Sunday.
Everything seemed to be going swimmingly until I happened to notice
one of Dakota's Bosana boots go spiralling off his foot. Although Peggy said she'd never had a problem with them coming
off before, apparently because he was a bit long there wasn't enough shoe poking out the back of
his foot to hook the boot onto. We pulled over into the brush and Dakota
stood obligingly while Peggy wrestled the boot back on again as what
seemed to be the entire 101-pack passed us.
Off
we went again and managed another mile at a speedy trot before I glanced
down and saw the stupid boot was missing again <grrr>. We turned
and went back and were pleased to meet Dave Rabe coming along with the
errant boot. At this point, Peggy decided to abandon the boot idea,
since it was clear they weren't going to stay, so she pulled the other
one off and tied them to her saddle, and off we went again, opting to go
slowly over any rocks (easier said, than done).
At about eight miles, we came across a water trough with a big long
line of horses around it. I was wearing far too many clothes (sun-shirt,
sweatshirt, fleece vest) and beginning to bake so was pleased to see Joe
Larkin and Gene Myers playing crew, so we could off-load our extra junk
on them. Roo shoved his way to the water and drank deeply - which, to my
delight, he'd
continue to do for the rest of the weekend.
 Two
miles further on, we found a pond (Roo drank); then less than a mile,
another cattle trough (alarming because of the gushing water, but worth
drinking); then less than another mile, another pond (more drinking). He
peed three times on this loop, and then again as soon as we got back to
the trailer, so I would guess he was well hydrated. We clambered through
a narrow rocky canyon (not so much a trail, as a creek bed) before
finally getting to a water/hay stop up at the top of the grade at the
Old Reservoir. Thinking on Roo's "B" for gut sounds, we
stopped for nearly 15 minutes, letting them eat hay, as well as the
baggy of LMF that I'd brought along on the saddle.
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Roo suffering from an
"I'm not bay" moment |
The
second half of this loop was interesting - we rode along a dirt road,
high above the lake until we came upon the three infamous "SOBs".
I'd heard about these through descriptions of Virginia City 100 (which
shares this section of trail) - do you get off and risk slipping over
and sliding down on your back, still holding tight to the reins and
hope the horse doesn't fall on you? or do you stay on top and rely on
the fact that your horse has four legs? We went for the four-legged
option and pretty soon Roo figured out that switch-backing back and
forth across the road was the best bet. Smart pony. He wasn't terribly
keen trudging up the other side, but did it with the good humour he
displayed throughout the entire weekend.
The rest of the loop was a trot-shuffle-trot down a rocky dirt road
back to the valley floor. At one exciting moment, Dakota spooked a
rattlesnake that was trying to get out of the way, which woke us
up.
There was an hour hold for lunch at the end of this first loop, and I
took Roo back to his trailer to take his clothes off and let him munch a
little before going back to the vet. The vetting was uneventful and we
retired back to our trailer again to finish eating. Roo did much better
than I - I didn't really feel like eating much, but forced down an
Ensure, some bits of cheese and ham.
Saturday - Loop 2
For
some reason I thought Loop 2 was going to be easier. It certainly
started out promisingly enough with a brisk trot across the flat
sagebrush to the north of camp. We slowed for some "deep sand"
before pausing at the water trough (come on, we'd come a couple of miles
by then - it was definitely time to drink again). As we crossed the
road, we met some of the top ten riders coming back in having already
finished this next 20 mile loop.
The rest of this loop took us into sand-dune
city - up and down we went in the sand - sometimes it was like riding in
marshmallow - the horses were sinking past their fetlocks. We didn't
have much choice but to go really slowly. At one point we came to a very
steep short section where the trail sort of went straight up through the
bushes. Roo got about a third of the way up and stopped to puff. Then he
went another 10', and stopped to puff again, another 10' and stopped -
only this time he didn't go again. I got off and tailed him up the rest
of the way (still stopping every 20' or so - thank goodness - by then I
was puffing as badly as he'd been). At the top we stopped for a few
minutes to catch our breath. A hill horse he isn't... in fact, he's
disturbingly close to my own mindset when it comes to overexerting
himself ("Gah, why should we make such an effort to get up
*this*??").
Half-way around the loop, having seen no-one for hours, we came upon
the water stop and I nestled down in the hay pile at Roo's head to ease
my back, while he enjoyed refuelling himself.
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The
water/hay stop
Roo is definitely a horse who
doesn't do well when he's hungry - he gets more and more morose
and sad the hungrier he gets. As soon as you refuel him, off he
goes again, all cheerful. |
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Which is
exactly what happened after this stop. We had to take our time
over some sections, due to Dakota's un-booted feet, but both
horses knew we'd turned for home and picked the pace up.
Jennifer and Bing Voight, with
Denise Wood
and the wondrous Frolick behind us.
The second half of this loop started out as
rough road but quickly degenerated into another narrow, rocky
canyon. You don't make good time on those canyons, but
they are fun to ride down and give you a chance to look at the
plants around you, up close. The narrow canyon spat us out onto a
smooth dirt road which we followed down to a spring trickling
along the side of the trail. By the time the trail levelled out,
the trickle had turned into a small creek-let and the horses were
able to slurp happily.
Another
few hundred yards and the creek got wider still and gave another
drinking opportunity.
Roo thought this was all very fine. |
|
 |
For the first half of this loop I worried about him as he didn't seem
to be doing so well. Shortly after the creek we were travelling along
the ridge with a nice cooling breeze to help us along and Roo took off
on his "big trot" (which we don't see very often), followed by
an unasked for bout of cantering. He felt really good and I decided then
that, unless anything untoward happened, we were definitely doing Day 2.
Saturday - Loop 3
|
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Roo did
a very uninspired trot-out for the vet, not willing to waste
energy, but was a bit more sprightly on his way back and started
off with a little hop.
We had a 15 minute hold at the end of Loop
2, so we opted to stay in the vetting area so the horses wouldn't
get the impression they were done. This
seemed to pay off as they were both reasonably content to leave
camp again.
The last loop for this day was through the
sand dunes and along the shores of the "ocean" (Washoe
Lake).
Roo's never been to the ocean before, so
this was quite interesting for him. He was tentative, but
interested - and couldn't resist the fact that there was grass
closer to the crashing waves (there was a continuous Nevada wind
blowing off the lake, so the waves were quite impressive) so I got
him within a few feet of the shore.
Finally he just stopped and stared at the water, mesmerized.
Once again, we didn't exactly make record time on this loop -
the sand was deep and the waves large, but we got the job done and
came in to finish right around 5:15 pm. Roo was bright-eyed and
looked really good, which was what I wanted - for us to start Day
2 with money in the bank. |
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Dave Cootware had brought along a horse scale for us to play
with,
so I got to weigh Roo several times:
- Friday evening: 860 lbs
- Saturday: 820 lbs (right after the ride)
- Saturday: 838 lbs (after eating/drinking
for a couple of hours/wearing his blankie)
- Sunday: 830 lbs (right after the ride)
(Peggy weighed Dakota on Saturday after the ride and he was
1022 lbs!)
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Sunday - Loop 1
Text still to come
Sunday - Loop 2
Text still to come
Sunday - Loop 3
Text still to come
Afterwards
Text still to come
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