Coso Junction Warmup Day One 12-10-2011

We had arrived in base camp after dark on Friday night, so I was stuck setting up camp by lamplight. Since it was dark, Hoss was not vetted in until morning.

The ride did not start until 7am. This was nice, as it meant I didn't need to get up until 5am to feed. But it was cold! In the morning I gave Hoss his hay, and went to mix up his beet pulp mass to find it partially frozen! I put the tea kettle on and boiled up some water. I used some of it to make myself some hot chocolate, and the rest to warm up Hoss's breakfast.

When I had arrived at camp, I had purchased from Griffin's Tack a new pair of brushing boots to replace the pair I'd lost one of. I started fiddling with Hoss's boots, getting the Gloves on his fronts and the Renegades on his hinds. I needed a vet bag, so I got down one of the hay bags I had stuck a flake of alfalfa in and grabbed a pan to put in with it. And there, between the pan I picked up and the pan it was resting in, was the missing brushing boot. Well, I guess now I have two pair.

I saddled up, got the HRM working, the GPS reset, and headed out to see the vet just before the start. Hoss was cleared easily to start the ride. We rode around a bit waiting for the official start call, and we were approached by a young lady on a grey Arab mare. She asked if she could ride with us. I warned her we're pretty slow, but that was what she'd really been looking for, so it worked out perfectly.

Early in the day on the trail

We headed out on the trail and Hoss was behaving himself quite nicely until a pair of horses passed us. Any other time, he can be passed without incident. During the start of a ride, however, it just makes him crazy. My policy is I get to set the pace, and I don't really care what he thinks we should be doing. We hadn't warmed up long enough yet, I felt, so we needed to continue to walk. Hoss objected to this decision, as some other horse had had the temerity to pass him, so what I had going on was a pretty good jig. I rode him hard to get a few good walk steps out of him, then we started trotting.

We kept up a good pace through some pretty country. I was able to keep Hoss up to a consistent 7mph over most of the terrain. In the early part of the ride we were riding into the sun and I couldn't see the terrain. I had to trust Hoss to tell me when we needed to slow down. Mostly he was good about it. He only slowed down when we were going through rocks, then picked up the pace when the terrain was good.

Our riding partners ahead of us on the trail

It was a beautiful place to ride and pretty flat. The young lady I was riding with wanted to go slow. It was her horse's first multi-day ride and she was worried the horse was not as fit as she would like her to be. My observation was the mare looked pretty darn good and she was underestimating her horse.

We reached the vet check right around 11:30. Hoss's heart rate came right down. In fact, he was "San Diego recovered" within minutes of coming in. I found his vet bag and made him his bran mash and put his hay out. He had his hay, bran mash, and a bucket of water all lined up so he didn't need to take a single step to get to anything he wanted.

The young lady I was riding with had her mother there as crew. I was given a nice banana, peanut butter and honey sandwich (the alternative was Cup 'o Soup from ride management), and ate one of the granola bars I'd put in my pack. I switched out my water bottles for the two full ones I'd sent to the vet check with Hoss's vet bag. We hit the trail again.

Going through some very nice, arena-like trail, we got going at a particularly good pace. I snuck a glance at my GPS and found we were hitting 8mph! It even felt like a nice, smooth gait! Hoss has truly come a long way, though he has a long way to go.

Coming off our fast section

We slowed down for the hill and made our way around to the last section. This involved riding up one power line road and back down another. Boring and flat. Toward the end of a ride, it's a little disheartening as well. Since it was flat, though, we kept the horses going at about 7mph. It was clear we would be finishing in the dark, though. I was very glad I had a head lamp with me. I had told my riding partner I used it in the dark because I am very nearly night blind, and Hoss seems to prefer it when I use it in the dark. She was okay with this.

The moon rising as we headed toward the finish

Once we turned back down the second power line road, the horses sensed they were on the way back and were able to keep a good pace up. We did end up walking quite a bit of the last part. My riding partner wanted to be sure she had enough horse for day two. Since I had my head lamp, I didn't really care.
We hopped off our horses just outside ride camp and led them in. I was walking pretty slowly, so rather than leading, it was more like I was being pulled by Hoss toward the vet. He knew where the vets were, and once he saw them, he could go eat!

I had removed my HRM watch and hung it on Hoss's tack so I could see what it was reading. He was well down below 60 by the time we got to the vet. He trotted out cleanly and we were passed to do day two.