The Desert Gold Pioneer Ride
Thanksgiving weekend
One of my favorite things in this sport is to go do a ride I
have not yet attended. I still have
a few more to do to reach my goal of doing every ride in the country once,
(yeah, right!), but I’ll have to keep working on my own giant region first. Last year was the first time for the
Desert Gold Pioneer ride at
The Desert Gold ride was created last year by Scott Sansom as a benefit, with the proceeds going towards helping
send Michelle Roush to the World Championship ride in
Day one had been very, very wet for those souls who
rode. It really did not break my
heart that I missed it, remembering the wonderful conditions at
We returned to camp just before dark and headed to the ride
meeting, which Scott said was going to be at 5:15 or so, or when dark. After a very lengthy delay, I got hungry
and went to make dinner while Judy stayed in the crowd and waited for the
meeting to begin. The ride would
start at 6:30, and the weather would be good! One good piece of advice from Scott-
don’t wander off the trails. This place used to be a military base,
and there could be unexploded ordinance buried out there. Hmmm. I will absolutely stay on the trail.
There are things that mix better
with horses than land mines. We
blanketed up the boys and turned in, very happy the rain had quit. It was pitch black and cold when
we got up, but the outside lights on the new trailer make short work of the
night. Judy, on
her young Appy, Color, and Gretchen, on her mare,
Spice, and me, on my Donzo. (Although this
weekend his nickname was “Ned” for some reason. This poor horse has about ten
names already!) We all headed out from camp at a nice walk a few minutes after
the pack had left. We caught up to
Julie Suhr and Doug White in a couple of minutes; our group of three was now
five. The ride headed out from camp
on a nice, moist, trail that went a quarter mile before crossing a paved road;
we then hopped onto a fire road that was the main route in and out of camp all
weekend. It had a couple of rolly polley hills in it right
outside of camp, but the rest was nice and trottable.
After a couple of miles we were supposed to take a cool single track
trail away from camp, but the BLM dudes said no, too wet, so stick to the
road. Oh well, we just trotted down
a nice, flat road for a couple of miles instead. Don and I were in front, and his ears
perked up a bit as we caught up to what looked like a tightly grouped pack of 8
dogs, and, what is that, it looks like a dog sled! What, we are in
Once we cleared the top of the next big ridge, we started the long climb up towards the Laguna Seca raceway. It’s another long, grinding walk up that hill for a mile or more, right to the edge of the track. No F1 cars or superbikes were shredding their expensive tires on the paved road course today, although we went through the parking areas where you could probably park a hundred thousand cars. After a bathroom break halfway up, and a drink from the only water puddle on the whole ride, we skirted around the track and made our way up another slight grade to the main series of fire roads up on top of the highest ridges in the area. Big, wide, flat roads you could drive a semi on, but yes, you guessed it, rolling up and down. There were 2 very strategically placed water troughs up here that would come into play later on. They were sure a welcome sight. We trotted along for a while, pausing to walk up and down hills, when the leader of the ride popped into view a hundred yards ahead or so, heading back towards us from the vet check. I was in front- Don just looked at him approach as we trotted along, but then I heard a ruckus behind me. Spice wasn’t quite so sure about that horse approaching, and as a result did a huge spook that Gretchen almost rode out. I heard everyone else shouting “Oh no, Gretchen, hold on!” You know that absolutely helpless feeling you get when you see someone falling off. It seems like it takes 5 minutes to happen, and you wish you could just jump in and grab the horse, but it just doesn’t work like that. Whammo! Gretchen hit the ground pretty hard. She got right back up and hopped back on. She whacked her shin pretty hard on the front of the saddle on her way over the bars, she thought. Ouch! Back on track now, we got to the long, long downhill that went all the way to the bottom of the canyon. I hopped off and led my Teacup all the way down the hill- we all hoofed it for a long while down to the valley floor below. We turned left at the bottom and were actually able to trot on absolutely level ground- for a half mile. We found the vet check, and spent a restful hour eating and drinking. It took us three and a half hours to get here. It was cold in the shade, but just lovely in the sun. All the horses ate just fine, and Don started his string of 44/44 CRI’s that he’d maintain all weekend.
Now its time to go back to camp. We back tracked up that long, long uphill we just walked down, then hung a right on a road to do the “lolli-pop” loop. Why do they call them that? I guess its cause you go straight out a road, then do a big loop that merges with the same road, then you come back the way you came, on the stick. This loop was no lolli pop, it was shaped more like a twisted potato on a stick. (A new fast food franchise, perhaps?) It was all nice fire roads, but it started out going down hill a long way. It did flatten out a little at the bottom, but after a little trotting, we hung a left up a hill that took us to a rolling road along another ridge. We had just walked up a hill when we started trotting. I was once again in front, and darn it, there’s that ruckus again behind me. Spice has tripped, and is walking on her knees. Judy swears it was for twenty feet, but the horse finally dropped down, and poor Gretchen came tumbling off again. The landing was much better, but it still hurts. She hops right back on and insists she’s fine. She’s a tough one. Spice was okay, so we continued on up and down more hills, looking for the end of the twisted potato loop. We came down a steep hill to a paved road where we found a water trough- big drinks by everyone. I realized there was water placed at very good spots on the ride, and all weekend I never saw an empty trough, even though every drop was trucked somewhere. We walked down the paved road a while, and then passed the bizarre dedication that was spray painted across the whole road in white paint: “Absolute Power to Mouse, and Death to everyone else.” Huh? Okay, whatever. Something like that. Mouse must be big around here.
Off the paved road and onto another road to the left, up and down, but trotable, for a couple of miles. A sharp right turn took us down a steep hill on a great single track that wound through some big trees, but then started going up, pretty steeply. Once to the top of that, it was another fire road that stuck to the very top of a series of ridges. The view was nice, but the road just kept going up, and down, and up, most at a walk. It was like riding on a trail of whoop de doo’s made by a five hundred foot tall dirt bike- walk up, down, up, down, up, down. I looked at the flat trails and roads in the valley below with envy. We stopped for a while to let the horses eat some green grass, which they did so very happily. We FINALLY got through the ups and downs of that ridge and back to our main road, where we turned towards home. Once back above the ranch, we back tracked on the same trail we took out, all the way back to that neat single track trail that led us down to ranch and the water. It took a while to get there, though. We passed up that neat sand dune we had descended earlier, and trotted along on a nice road for a while- again, trotting on a mostly level road was a treat. The road turned towards the camp, which was still a few miles away, but we got treated to a couple of nice trails on and off on the way back. There was a few hundred feet of that unbelievably deep sand again that we trudged through. The trail wound in and out of old bunkers, torn down buildings, concrete slabs, all kinds of old military clutter. We finally hit that main fire road, crossed the paved road, and walked the last half mile into camp- we made it in at about 2:45 pm for a ride time of just under 7.5 hrs. It took a while, but we were by no means going slow. There was just so much up and down! Julie reported that she and Doug had finished day one at 1:45, an hour faster than today. The trail was basically the same as today, with a little cut off at the start, and they did the whole long loop, including the twisted potato loop, in the other direction. The horses vetted out just great. Color finished fine, with no signs of his post ride tummy ache he has had a couple of times, making Judy very happy. Don looked like his almost un-ridden self- 44/44, and quite lively looking. Spice looked fine, and Gretchen was okay, but moving kind of slowly. I spent a lot of time with Don after the ride- icing his legs, wrapping, walking, and feeding him whatever he liked. I was very interested in how he would do tomorrow.
Sunday Morning and another 6:30 am start. It was 37 degrees when we rode out of
camp. Judy was not going today- one
day was her plan on Color. Gretchen
got up and tried it, but she was pretty sore from her painful escapades the day
before and elected to sit it out in the plush
The road back to the raceway was a long thing, and was, you guessed it, up and down. It took a while to come all the way back, and we spent another 15 minutes letting the horses eat at the second stop as well. They were hungry, and it was 12:45 already. We realized that we would be back tracking on the out trail all the way back to camp, and as a result we knew that this was going to take a while. The problem was that the ride map showed that this first loop was 30 miles, and we had to do two more loops of 12 miles of the orange loop. But that orange loop came all the way back out to this race track, just about the farthest point of the trail! We scurried away towards camp, but the science of math, distance, and time showed me something was really wrong. It was now 1:00, we still had at least an hour to get back to camp, and we had not seen a leader yet on their way back out on their second loop. We pondered it a lot, and we all realized that there was no way it would be possible to do it. Back down past the ranch, and up to a big arrow that points us back UP the mini sand dune. That was quite a pull up that thing. At 1:30 we were still heading back in, worrying about the fact that there was no way this was right, when we see two riders coming towards us. They were on the LD. Huh? This CAN’T be right. I kept thinking there had to be something going on, when we see two more riders. It’s Hugh Vanderford and his grand daughter. They are going back on out- it can’t be! We hollered over to them, they stopped, and Hugh gave us the good news- The map is wrong, no two more loops, just one more loop around here, not back to the race track. At last! Good news, and a little wave of relief. That’s more like it. We kept on hustling our way back to camp and arrived at a little after 2pm. Yeah, I’d say something was wrong. Yesterday this same basic loop was the fifty mile ride, and we finished at 3:00, including the one hour hold. Here it is 2:00 pm, and we are just getting into the 30 mile hold? Nada! At least it was corrected for everyone. I think the loop we just did was close to 45 miles. Another two trips to the race track would have made this a 70 mile ride! We vetted the horses through with no problems, with Donzo checking in with another 44/44. He got to see his buddy Color at the trailer, where he ate like a fiend for his hour hold. Hooray! I had run out of water at about 11:00, and was starting to get dehydrated, so the lunch stop and about a gallon of fluids were wonderful. We gathered up our little herd of three at a little after 3pm as the sun was getting low in the sky. Another 12 more miles to go! I was so pleased with Don- he had to go back out there again, away from camp, and he did so just as happy to be going as at the start. He did lean his nose a little to the left and right as we crossed roads that he knew went home, but he just trucked along as he had done all weekend. This loop was a little easier to ride as it avoided the huge ridges and miles of up and down roads. We got to do the super cool single track from the day before, and rode basically the same trail again along to the neat downhill sand dune, and then yay- we went left towards camp. Back through the deep sand, and past the old military stuff, and finally, back to that same main fire road that led us to the paved road crossing and the finish. We finished right at 5 as the sun was setting- that last 12 miles took us about 2 hours- much more like it, since we did get to trot most of it, and some at a nice fast pace.
Whew! What a long day in the saddle. It was most certainly a 55, and probably longer. Scott is right in his ride flyer when he classifies it as moderate to difficult, with a leaning towards the moderate side. Julie and Doug had made it all three days, although it was unfortunate to have to ride the same trail on all three days, in different directions. Sometime during the long day we were talking about endurance goals, and it’s hard to do when you are with Julie. She said she only needed about 300 more miles to get her to the last goal she has set for herself- 30,000 miles. I’m coming up on seven. It boggles the mind. I hope she continues to keep at it, since she’s just a joy to ride with.
It was a great two days for me and Don, since it was his
first back to back ride, and just like I wanted, he was stronger on day two than
one. Don’t you just LOVE that? I do! He now is 8 for 8 since starting his
ride career in May this year. He’s
doing everything I want, and next year his job is to complete as many fifties as
I can do at slow to moderate speed. (fifteen sounds
like a nice, round, number) I know he’s a hundred mile horse, and it’s going to
be tough waiting till 07 to get him in his first one. Next stop-
Nick Warhol