East Mohave Scenic
February 4-6, 2005
Sunrise Ranch Rides

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For someone who rode as many miles as I did last year, waiting for East Mojave was rather difficult. Can you spell RELIEF from being addicted and not being able to ride? Yes. That would be EAST MOJAVE!

It was a long, long drive from my place ... 11 hours. Should have been 9 hours, but I ran over something half-way down and slit a rear dually tire. I knew I ran over something, but my truck gave me no indication that I was one tire short so I kept on going. It wasn't until I pulled into a gas station and looked in my rear view mirror to see a slightly flat outter tire. Hmmm ... checks out OK. Must be my imagination. I didn't go around kicking all my tires. Bad driver. Later I called my husband and he informed me that sometimes an outter tire will look slightly flat when the inside one is bad. Another stop down the road and gee, my truck driver husband was right. Whuduyaknow? By that time, the closest place I could find was Barstow. $246 and some change later, I had a new tire. The horses weren't so happy with the downtown cement parking lot break, but hey, what are you gonna do?

We arrived in a sandstorm. However, it was a man-made sandstorm. The Duck and his entourage has made us all a parking lot in the middle of the desert by pulling out sage and making some roads so the wind naturally, was taking all that loose dirt and blowing it everywhere. By the next day it had all blown away and the regular, naturally-compacted landscape gave us no further problems. But it was durned ugly for awhile. I did manage to get myself stuck while trying to find a parking place. Fortunately, I was smart enough not to try to hard to get out until I'd found a place to tie up my horses and dug myself out. Witty Karen Chaton said "So why don't you just use 4WD?" knowing full well, I'm sure, that I don't have 4WD. Very funny, Karen.

Friday dawned bright and clear and cold and I got a chuckle out of The Duck as I yelled "WOOHOO!" riding by him. SO great to be out on the trail again. Yeah! I rode out of camp with Les Carr and Tulip that day. Tulip was feeling every bit as good as Tank was and we had a few exciting moments right off the bat when our group rode past an ancient corral full of running horses owned by Al and Nanette Young, our hosts for the weekend. Ok, enough excitement, let's not get dumped a quarter mile from camp, people.

Les and I spent the day talking about his childhood, Broadway, college, marriage and years up to and including how he got involved in endurance. I must say, the man has had quite an interesting life. It was quite chilly in the morning, mostly because of the wind. We wound our way up the mountain to Rim of the World Trail. The view was great. We could see forever. Lunch was at the Bus and Buzzard Cafe, if I remember the name correctly. Loosely translated, an old abandoned bus, trailer and cabin plus a few piles of the usual left-over mine junk. Lavonne put on the usual feast fit for kings. Boy, do I love those tuna fish sandwiches!

The afternoon warmed up without the wind and we were all soon riding in T-shirts. T-shirts in February. You gotta love it!

Les and I were riding pretty slow as were Karen Chaton, Nina Bray and Dave Rabe, who was riding Karen's new boy, Zenos, on his first 50. Zenos did so good it was hard to believe it was his first time on a ride. He acted like an old pro. We all finished together somewhere close to dark-thirty.

Day Two was the 55. I'd brought along James Dean, intending on riding him on Day Two. But I decided I didn't really want to be on him that long and in the dark. He has not had the amount of conditioning that I felt he needed to go fast enough to finish before dark and just really wanted to take it easy on him. So we sat out that day with the intention of just doing a nice 15-20 miles pleasure ride through the desert. It wasn't until everyone had left that I took Tank's blanket off and discovered he had a very sore back. The first in all the miles I've ridden him. I was totally perplexed. But after thinking it over all day, it dawned on me that it was because my stirrup was a half hole wrong. My husband had ridden my saddle since the last endurance ride and I didn't put it back right. Centered riding obviously really DOES mean something!

So, that meant James would have to go out on the third day. That alone was enough to make me loose sleep as I knew we'd be going up a canyon that earlier I knew had been described as the "insert-your-own-words-here" trail because of its difficulty. Visions of me laying by the side of the trail in the middle of nowhere came to mind. Those that have read my stories before, know that James can be somewhat unpredictable and in my opinion still a very green boy. However, I have to keep reminding myself that when the chips have been down (which seems to be every ride I've taken him on except one, and he was a total idiot on that one) James comes through. The brain that normally spills out on a conditioning ride, seems to get sucked back in and turned on when it really matters.

James and I started Day Three alone. I took it one step at a time. First: Survive the first couple of miles without getting boinged off. Second, make it up the 6-mile-long incline to the top of the powerline road with a horse that could continue on. Boy, was that a long climb! Third: Survive through the death-defying Buzzard's Pass Canyon. Ok, so, it really wasn't death defying, but I'm still new at this technical trail stuff. One look at the first obstacle and I'm thinking to myself, "Well, it's only 8-9 miles back to camp from here if I can't get James to cooperate." We'd been briefed at the ride meeting that there were a couple of very short stretches of trail that would require a dependable horse. If you were unsure of that, you'd best get off and lead. Uh-huh. Karen's comment, "If you don't try to ride them over that kind of trail, how are they gonna learn?" Uh-huh.

So, here I am, trying to be brave, standing in front of a rock ledge too high to walk up, urging James to jump up on it. No go. So I swallow really hard, wistfully look back down the trail the way I've come, get off, unhook his reins and boldly climb up on the ledge, quickly get to my feet, not looking back and march forward, hoping he'd follow me. Much to my amazement, he did! This from the horse that I've badgered and bullied and coerced and begged to follow me in much less weirder places. Imagine my feeling of elation.

The next obstacle was a V-shaped slit in the canyon wall with a round boulder at the base with no way around. You either jumped it or you didn't. Again, I swallowed hard, climbed over and kept walking. The sound of metal caged stirrups scraping on rocks was not pleasant, but since I wasn't looking back I have no idea exactly what transpired. All I know is when I did look back, everything seemed intact and James was standing right behind me. Whew!

That was the worst of that. Up and down a couple more lesser ledges we went and then I got on again. The next piece of technical trail we came to was on a narrow little trail, The Duck said was probably a hundred years old, that someone had worked really hard on. This time I stayed on and James navigated it like a pro. And if we did slip off, it was only a story down. No biggie :)

After that, the next bunch of boulder hopping was a piece of cake and I rode James proudly through the whole lot of 'em. Even now it brings tears to my eyes because I know where this horse has been mentally. He has grown SO much from the horse that was afraid of any kind of stick and has dumped me several times. He dumped my daughter once hard enough to give her a concussion and a broken tail bone and land her in emergency, hardly able to put one word in front of the other. Working through all those issues and his learning to trust have been a really, really big thing. I'm so very proud of him.

After that, the rest of the day was downhill and quite a relaxing ride through the desert. We rode very, very slow. So slow, that Karen and Nina, who had been pulling ribbons, caught up with us right before lunch. Can you say, "Pretty in Pink?" Nina was all dressed in pink and most of the ribbons were pink. Quite the picture. Wish I'd gotten one! We spent the rest of the day together, coming in way after dark. I'm discovering that James is going to make an excellent endurance horse and that he has a lot of natural ability. You may see James and I cantering down the trail a lot more this year.

Next ride, New Cuyama Oaks.

:) Jackie, Tank and James Dean