Big Bear 55

With so much having gone wrong in the previous weeks, I chose to believe my ride would go just great. Wishful thinking, I know. It should've been a warning!

Thursday afternoon, the power in much of San Diego County went out. I was on the phone with my mechanic at the time, arranging to pick up my truck. He was telling me that, after changing the air filter, the truck started making a strange noise. The head mechanic said "It sounds like it swallowed a moose!" to which his brother, who runs the administrative side of the business, responded, "No, it was a dog!" A little gallows humor for the day.

I headed down with my husband to pick up my truck. I'm really glad I've developed such a good relationship with my mechanics. Obviously I wouldn't be able to pay them electronically, and I was out of checks. They let me have my truck, knowing I'd be back to pay for it the next week.

Traffic was okay until we got to the more heavily traveled areas. Most of the traffic lights are on battery backup and operated normally, but a few were just flashing red. This is not a good thing when you're talking about two lanes of straight travel and two lanes of left turn in three directions. And people are very impatient when they come into these situations. I saw a lot of people jumping ahead instead of waiting their turns. That's life, I suppose.

Once we got the truck, my husband stopped on the way home at the Target, which had the good sense to put in back up power to operate all essential electronics, including the computers and credit card machines. So he was able to purchase a few things we still needed and make sure there would be enough water at home while we were gone. It was kind of funny, though. He saw one guy who had eight cases of water and had half filled a shopping cart with candles. That guy'll be okay for a while on water and candles….

We had a pleasant dinner under the stars, cooked on the grill. By the time we went to bed, it was still rather hot. We had opened the windows, but there wasn't a breeze to move air into the house. It was an unpleasant night until I was awakened by the fan coming to life at about midnight. I got up, closed windows and turned on the AC. The rest of the night was better.

I was up extra early to feed Hoss and take a shower. We were able to get on the road reasonably early to get our last-minute purchases made and heading on up to Big Bear.

Once we arrived at base camp, we found a nice campsite on the opposite side of the campground from the corrals. It quickly became clear Hoss would have to stay in a corral rather than at the campsite. I later found out he wasn't supposed to be on that side of the campground anyway. So I walked him over and stuck him in a likely corral. I returned with a bucket and his hay net. I'd left the bottom two chains that closed the corral open so I could duck in and out easily while getting everything set up. While I was filling Hoss's water bucket, I heard him fart and turned around to find he'd ducked out of the corral under the top chain! Not being the most adventurous type, he stood there and waited for me to come get him and put him back.

Shortly after that, I realized the young lady we had ridden with at several rides was there with her horse. Hoss and her horse get along famously, so I moved Hoss into the corral next to him. We wouldn't be able to ride together, however, as they were doing the 100.

At just about 330am, I started hearing the patter of rain on the tent. As I lay there, thinking I needed to feed Hoss in about half an hour, the rain got steadily worse. Just before 400am, it died down and I got up and took Hoss his breakfast. I went back to the tent and lay back down. The rain proceeded to get worse. Much worse. It didn't take long to realize the tent was leaking. The rain fly had been overwhelmed and water started dripping on us. My sweatshirt got a little wet. My rain coat stayed dry, seeing as how I'd left it in the laundry room at home.

By 530am the rain had pretty much stopped, but the ride manager pushed back the 600am start half an hour to reroute the ride. At 630am, 8 riders started the 55. Several riders scratched because of the rain. They sure missed out, in my opinion.

Through the meadow

The reroute of the ride had us ride about a mile and a half through a meadow, then turn around and head back toward camp, staying on the trail to the left of where we had entered the trail. That was a thrill. It was sort of like doing a gymkhana event, heading the horse back toward the gate even though there's more to be done in the pattern. Hoss was an absolute handful. Once we turned around, it was everything I could do to keep him from bolting. He even ran through the river crossing that was up to his knees!

Once we got back to where we'd turned on to the trail and headed straight on instead of going back to camp, Hoss settled back down and was more manageable. As a group, the eight of us largely stayed together for the first loop. There was some spreading out, but mostly we hung out together. We hit a jeep road and headed on up that, then down the other side back to the Pacific Crest Trail. Most of the jeep trail was adequate for trotting on. I let Hoss maintain a good clip with the other horses around us.

When we got to the PCT, even though we weren't out front, I was the one who noticed the turn off and ended up in the lead. This worked out fine for a while, but when the trail opened out and was faster, Hoss had already topped out on the speed he'll consistently go without another horse in front of him. We pulled off and let a bunch of the other riders ahead of us. They pretty quickly left us in their dust.

Looking out from the "hairpin" on the jeep road

We came back to the road and trotted on down the hill toward camp. At one point we met the leaders coming back the other way, thinking they had missed the turn. As a result, we all pretty much came into camp together.

Because we weren't sure exactly how far out we were, Hoss and I ended up trotting all the way to camp. This is not something I would typically do. He needs more time than most endurance horses to recover in the first place, so I don't like coming in to vet checks "hot." In addition, he was giving every indication he needed to pee, but was making no effort to relieve himself. It took him a good ten minutes to come down, leaving him now ten minutes behind everyone else in terms of when we'd get to leave to head back out on trail.

My husband mixed up a nice sloppy bran mash for Hoss. Hoss was so excited about this idea he nudged my husband in the back while the mash was being mixed in impatience. My husband has a good sense of humor and did not take this behavior personally.

Thinking we hadn't gone very far (13.6 miles), it wasn't very hot, and Hoss seemed his normal, chipper self, I didn't have my husband put electrolytes in Hoss's bran mash. This would turn out to be a mistake. It was a very humid day, so even though it didn't feel very hot (although I will admit I took off my sweatshirt and was walking around in my tank top at the vet check), it was affecting Hoss badly. I had hoped the electrolytes the night before/electrolytes the morning of routine would resolve the riding in humidity issue. The lesson here was, if it's humid, give Hoss electrolytes at every stop. Just do it.

We headed back out on the trail about ten minutes behind the rest of the pack. Hoss was not thrilled about it. He did not want to be out there alone! I got him trotting, but I couldn't get him to maintain a trot faster than 5mph. We were headed back up the jeep road, and going uphill, Hoss's biggest problem. Usually we can make time on flatter parts of the trail or slight downhills, but this ride was very up and down with little flat. So I was getting a lot of fight about trotting up the hill.

View from the overlook

Looking back from the switchbacks

At the overlook – gorgeous view from a cliff drop-off – we turned left onto the PCT again. This is very narrow, single track trail, and after stopping at the photographer for water, we headed up the switch backs. Much of this trail was too rocky to trot, and Hoss just wanted to turn around, so even where it was trottable, I had a hard time getting him to move out. This was where I'd started to suspect electrolyting him would have been a good thing. I think he would have taken a bigger drink and felt better sooner if I had.

We got to a point where the trail crossed a driveway. In the driveway were puddles. Hoss chose this moment to pee and drink water out of the nasty puddle. Then we continued on our way up the single track.

Yup, they meant you will SEE BEARS!

Now, at this point in the trail description, it said, "Watch for BEARS." I was thinking, okay, there are bears in them thar woods. Kind of a scary thought, but I figured our odds of actually encountering bears was pretty low. That was not, however, what was meant. When the description said "bear sanctuary," it wasn't taking about bears living in the woods. It was talking about bears living in a sanctuary in chain link cages! I was so surprised, we came to a halt. Hoss showed quite a lot of curiosity, and I decided we needed to move on before he thought to wander over and try to make friends with a bear. On our way by the sanctuary, I saw there was also a tiger living there!

Between the sanctuary and Onyx Summit, we started encountering the other riders coming back down. This did not help Hoss's attitude a bit. He had just wanted to turn around the entire time to begin with, and now all the other horses were going back. He was really unhappy about the situation, but I was able to cajole him into continuing on his way.

From the top of the swtichbacks going back down

At Onyx Summit there was water and food for Hoss. This made him a happy camper. He took a good long drink and I let him eat for about five minutes before getting him back on the trail. Of course, now he wanted to stay. There's food, so why should he leave? Once we got moving, though, he picked it up, although not nearly as much as we needed to.

This guy thought we looked mighty, er, good

On our way back down, just out of sight of the bear sanctuary, we heard that tiger "chuffing." Hoss planted his feet and absolutely refused the move. Honestly if I hadn't known for a fact that the critter making that noise was "behind bars" I would've turned Hoss on his heels and we would've run as fast as we could go! I got off and led Hoss on past. That tiger, upon seeing us, jumped off his house and stared at us as if we looked mighty tasty. Really glad he was behind bars!

It took us four and a half hours to cover the twenty miles up to Onyx Summit and back. We got into camp for our hour hold about 2:15, and his heart rate wouldn't come down. I ended up stripping his saddle and putting a lot of water on him. It took him close to half an hour to come down, but he seemed perfectly content the entire time. When I took him to the vet, he was his usual chipper self again and trotted out clean.

Unfortunately, after putting Hoss in his corral to eat and drink, I ate lunch, and was immediately beset with gut pains. It quickly became clear I wasn't going to be getting back on my horse. I went to the vets and pulled.

We made the drive home, as I needed to be at church at 7:30am on Sunday morning. Sunday was not my best day. I couldn't eat most of the day. Since then things have improved somewhat. It's still pretty consistently painful, but it's not crippling.

I've been having this problem off and on for years, but in the past six weeks or so, since I've really put an effort into working out regularly, it's gotten steadily worse. I've since seen my doctor and gotten the ball rolling on figuring the whole thing out. My doctor thinks it's my gall bladder and that I'll probably end up having to have it remove. Not real thrilled about that notion as it will mean three surgeries in four years, but I suppose if it solves the problem it'll be worth it.