2012 NASTR 75

Due to Kody’s continuing troubles after his injury at the Nevada Derby, Hoss and I were on our own for this ride. We set out on Friday for the Sunday ride. I expected to take the better part of two days to get to ride camp, thinking we’d get there about mid-day on Saturday. My plan was to overnight in Bishop at the fairgrounds. Unfortunately, as we arrived in Bishop in the evening on Friday I realized this was not going to happen. I’d completely forgotten Memorial Day Weekend is when Mule Days happens in Bishop. So the fairgrounds were occupied and we were forced to continue on our way. I didn’t have a clear idea where we’d find to pull off. From driving through on our way to Derby, I knew our choices were limited at best. In the end we spent the night in a highway rest stop. Hoss chose to stay in the trailer after we walked around for a bit. I put his blanket on, as it was snowing lightly and rather cold before letting him back in the trailer. I spent six or so hours sleeping in the back seat of my truck, before my hip was screaming at me and it was time to go. I checked on Hoss, gave him water and his breakfast beet pulp mush, and we were on our way.

It took far less time to get to ride camp from there than I had anticipated. I even stopped for a sit down breakfast. Still we arrived in camp at just after 9am. There was not another soul in camp. Not even ride management was there. After scoping the place out, I decided on a decent spot to set up camp in and got set up. While I was getting situated, ride management did arrive and I spoke with them briefly. My plan was to get my tent set up and lay down for a while. There was a storm moving through the area, so I knew I was going to get rained on. It did rain quite significantly later in the day. I ate my dinner in my truck while hail pelted the windshield. Fortunately the rain was largely gone by the time the ride meeting was held, and Sunday dawned cold but clear.

The ride started at a truly inhuman 5am. For me this meant crawling out of my sleeping bag at 3am to get Hoss fed. He was truly an eager eater. He wanted his beet pulp right now, thank you very much, and chowed down with a will. I got back in my tent, dressed and laid down for another hour or so before saddling in the dark. I had gotten my pack loaded and my vet check bag set up. This ride had one place where all vet checks would be held, which was quite nice. I only needed one crew bag for the entire day, with two bran mashes and two flakes of hay and my second set of water bottles.

Once saddled up I rode Hoss over and we checked in for the start. Hoss was quite excited and really wanted to go. I had difficulty holding him back with just the hackamore. We had quite the battle for the first several miles of the ride as other horses passed him and he tried to bolt after them. My new rule has been, if he can’t walk with control, he can’t move up to the trot. So we walked. Or, at least, I told him he needed to walk and he did an awful lot of doing everything in his power to go faster.

In the midst of having this little discussion with Hoss, I realized my GPS had shut off. I turned it back on only to have it shut down again. The third time I turned it back on I kept it in my hand long enough to realize its batteries were dead. Not long after that, I realized the batteries in my camera were dead as well. My phone had a low battery, so I had shut it down. So I was without my tech devices other than Hoss’s heart rate monitor for the duration of this ride.

The one and only picture I was able to take

After some time we finally managed to get into a “pocket” by ourselves and I was able to get a walk and then a decent controlled trot out of Hoss. We caught up with another horse and rider and passed them, but only for a short time. They caught back up to us and we rode together for some time. The other horse led quite a bit, as he was a good deal faster than Hoss.

We rode up into higher elevations, and I realized what I had thought were water droplets clinging to the ends of the pine needles were in fact frozen. It was beautiful and cold. I ended up getting my gloves out for a while to keep my hands warm. We were not up in those elevations long, but it stayed chilly for a good deal of the first loop. The first loop was 26 miles, an interval Hoss seems to think it pretty good. He doesn’t seem to feel the need to stop every 12.5 miles like some rides have us doing.

Because the GPS was down, I had to guess based on our typical speed when it was time to give Hoss his first dose of electrolytes. I got off at about 7:30, figuring this was about as near as I was going to get to knowing we were about halfway to the vet check, and gave Hoss his electrolytes.

We got into the vet check right around 10am, going a little faster than I’d expected to go. The first hold was 40 minutes. After Hoss had recovered and our hold time started I got my crew bag and set up an area for us to hang out in. I gave Hoss his electrolyte-laced bran mash. He was having a particularly contrary day and did not eat it. He was only interested in his hay. Having only brought along two syringe doses of electrolytes and depending on three mashes to give him his other doses at vet checks, I had little choice but to hope he’d be okay despite not getting his usual doses.

After our hold we headed out on the second, 25 mile loop. The temperature never got particularly hot, in fact I spent much of the day trying to find the right combination of t-shirt, sweatshirt and jacket in order to be comfortable. This did, however, enable Hoss to do okay without his regular electrolyte dosing.

On the second loop we were caught up by four other riders, with whom we more or less ended up riding the rest of the loop. When they caught up to us, we were moving along near a ranch. Hoss was slowing down as they caught up. Once they passed us, he picked up the pace.

It wasn’t long after they had passed us that the group of us realized we hadn’t seen a trail marker in while. It didn’t take long after that to realize we had missed a turn. Fortunately Dave Rabe was in the group and he was able to get us back on trail.

About halfway through the loop we came to a water trough with a special treat for the riders in it. Beer. At that point in the day it was warm enough for a beer to sound just about right. Unfortunately there was only one left, and Dave split it with me, kind man that he is. I gave Hoss another dose of electrolytes and we headed on our way.

We came to another trough with yet more beer in it. There was enough for those of us who wanted them and still leave some for the last rider, who was about ten minutes behind us. Dave and I even got two a piece. We loitered at the trough until some riders started feeling a bit cranky about it and went on our way.

As we approached the vet check we could hear the crack of gunfire. Campers were target shooting near the vet check. I’m a little less annoyed about my neighbor’s habitual shooting of ground squirrels. Hoss’s reaction to the gun fire was mostly to pretty much think, “oh, that freak-o neighbor guy is out here, too,” and keep doing whatever it was he was doing. Many of the other horses flinched at each shot.

The second hold was one hour. It was about 2:30pm. I gave Hoss the uneaten bran mash from the first vet check and left him in search of lunch for myself. This time Hoss ate the mash. I had a hamburger and some chips and found a bucket to upturn and sit on while I waited for our hold. Hoss ate well over the course of the hold, and even took a nap for about ten minutes or so. When our hold time was up, I got us out of there close to on time. I wanted to get done and not spend more time in the check than necessary.

The other riders I was with had better recoveries and should have left the check at least a few minutes ahead of Hoss and me. Instead they dawdled in the vet check. I really wanted to get the third, 10 mile loop done in two hours or less, and be back for the third check by 6pm. So we set out and once I felt Hoss was warmed back up adequately, I pushed him into a trot. Without other, faster horses to pull him along it was a bit more of a challenge to keep him moving. I know that he’s got it in him. He just wants to be motivated by something other than, y’know, me. He did maintain a reasonable speed over most of the ten miles and we were back at the vet check in less than two hours and well before 6pm. The other four riders came in some ten minutes later.

The third hold was twenty minutes. Once Hoss was recovered I got him to our spot and gave him another bran mash, which he ate reasonably well. He spent more of this hold resting than eating, but having been there only two hours earlier it didn’t really surprise me. I got our gear packed up and moved to where it would be hauled back to camp and got us back on the trail on time, again ten minutes ahead of Dave Rabe and crew.

The final leg was 14 miles back to camp. I figured we should be able to get that done in something around three hours. The challenge being keeping him moving without the motivation of the company of other horses.

At this point Hoss had spent just enough time with other horses to think he should be allowed to wait for others to catch up to him. We were by now far enough ahead of the riders behind us and far enough behind the riders ahead of us to be in something of a “pocket.” If he maintained a decent speed, he would neither catch up to nor be caught up by other horses. Of course he wasn’t keen on this notion. He told me I don’t know how many times he was just dying and couldn’t possibly go on another trot step. But I could feel him and he was bluffing me. He just wanted to be caught up to. I pushed him an awful lot. I was able to keep him going if at a somewhat lower speed than I’d like him to be doing until the (now three) horses behind us got close enough for him to hear them.

Hoss does a rather peculiar thing. With the exception of the beginning of a ride, when the very idea of being passed by another horse is a terrible affront, he will slow down when there are horses behind him. Once they pass him, he’ll cheerfully speed up once again. While other horses are behind us, though, I’m pedaling like a maniac just to keep him trotting at all. Now that the horses we’d spent some time with had caught back up, he was slowing down determinedly. Once they caught up I was forced to pull him off and let them pass.  Once he was behind them, it was like riding the same horse I’d started the morning with.

The only drawback to being behind this group again was they were not keeping up a consistent trot speed. I would have much preferred to consistently trot all the way back. Instead, partly because they were rather taking up the entire trail and partly because there’d be little point in passing them anyway, we had to go at their chosen speed. And they were faster when they trotted, resulting in Hoss falling further and further behind and getting more and more annoyed by it. By the time we got back to camp, I had to get off to keep him from charging after them.

We finished the ride in a respectable 14 hours and 21 minutes. For reasons I cannot begin to explain the results show us finishing in 15 hours 21 minutes, but I know we were in at 9:20pm and there were 2 hours of hold time, so somebody got the math wrong. Not that it makes any difference.