A Nice Long Ride!

We got a bit of a change for this ride. It was the same day as my regular physical therapy appointment, so I loaded Hoss in the trailer and took him with me. After my appointment, we went up to the mountains for a real ride.

I've been feeling a little nervous about the next ride coming up. Having had such a long period out of the saddle, I've been more than a little concerned that I won't be fit enough when it comes around to do it without being crippled the next day. I really need to get in some long rides to re-establish those "butt calluses" that I've lost over the past eight weeks. Every time I've ridden up to now, I've been much sorer than I would expect to be.

It was time to get some real mileage in. I packed plenty of water and Gatorade, knowing it was supposed to be a particularly warm day. We arrived at the parking area a little after 11. I got Hoss saddled up and we hit the trail about 11:45.

Hoss was feeling good. He seemed to be happy to be getting a little different view. Once again, I was planning to try to re-create the second and third loops of the Descanso ride. I even sat down with the map and tried to plan it out. I think I got closer this time, but I still managed to get it wrong.

I was planning this to be a primarily walking trail ride. First long one back after a lay off should be, and it fits in with our general conditioning routine. In a couple of places, I let Hoss trot, and once or twice I made him trot when he was looking around for something to spook about.

For the first four or five miles, I'm confident I covered the right trail. After that, it sort of fell apart. The fire road we ended up on I'm pretty sure was not on the Descanso ride. It was rocky but otherwise mostly okay. Hoss handled it quite well.

We headed around to the horse camps, which was not quite where I expected to end up. We rode on past the camps, and on down to another trail that I knew would take us back where we had parked. Unfortunately, we found that trail was closed. So we back tracked to the horse camp.

We stopped at the horse camp for a rest. I ate a couple of snacks and let Hoss graze on the grass in the camp area. We rested for about ten minutes, then headed back on out.

We got to another familiar fire road, and headed on down it. Not wanting to end up back tracking on the same trail, I took another trail off the fire road. It started out well enough. Then we ended up at a fork I didn't remember, and I headed us up a trail I'd not ridden before, but I knew where it came out.

This turned out to be less of a trail than stream and rocks. The only reason I knew it was meant to be trail was the sections of fallen trees that had been removed from it. I have a sneaking suspicion it was supposed to be closed, but the signage was missing. Hoss made his way up the trail cautiously and quite well. He wanted to stop in a couple of places, but it turned out he had seen something yummy, not that he couldn't figure out what to do next. In more than one place, I had to hug his neck and put my head down while he climbed up under over grown plants. Mostly they were low enough for him to get under, but not me.

When we got to the end of this trail, I found we had ended up in a rather untenable situation. The trail I had intended to use was closed. The only other trail out of there is closed to horses. Well, crap. Now what?

There is a camp ground across the highway at this point. I reasoned that the camp ground must have trails heading out of it. We crossed the road, and walked around the camp until I found a trail head. Whew. We were back on track.

The trail from the camp to meet up with the trail I was headed to has a lot of trees down on it. We had to negotiate around one, and I lost the trail. I had to back track to the down tree to find the trail. Again, in some places the trail was only obvious because of the cleared sections of the fallen trees.

Once we made it to the main trail, we were beset with more problems. The ceonthus has so heavily overgrown the trail in many places that I was literally hugging Hoss's neck. He had to drop his head low enough to see where the trail was. I was very glad I had gotten him that riding fly mask. It really protected his face and I think it made it easier for him to negotiate by letting him keep his eyes open more. I, on the other hand, was neck-hugging with my eyes closed and helmet pointed at the overhanging branches. I got really scraped up, too.

We finally made our way to a place to re-cross the highway and a trail that would take us back to the trailer. Once we were on this trail, it was smooth sailing. The only challenge was a water crossing where the trail was unclear. It took me a moment to decide which way we were supposed to go, and luckily guessed right the first time.

Despite all the challenges, it was a truly beautiful ride. I took quite a few pictures at various points. The flowers growing in the meadows add a splash of color that is very pleasing to the eye.

In the end, we rode 21.5 miles, averaging about 3.3 mph. It took us about 7 hours. I was sunburned, scraped up, and covered in ticks (EEEK!), but what a great day! I had a head cold as well. In the morning, I had dithered a bit about going. I decided to go, figuring I could either be miserable at home or miserable on my horse. If I had to be sick, I might as well have a distraction.

When we got home, I checked Hoss over, but was unable to find any ticks on him (since then, I've been plucking the little boogers off of him; fortunately only one so far has actually been attached). Then I went in the house and showered in the hopes that any ticks I hadn't already disposed of would find their way down the drain!