Let's just say we rode... and rode... and rode... and I thought I was going to fall out of the saddle the last six miles because I was completely exhausted. The next time I totally put my foot down from the beginning. I was pretty tired before we even started since I'd only been back in the state for 3 days and hadn't had a chance to sit still for very long... any way... I still don't know how far we rode. I know we were up at the crack of dawn and had the horses loaded and were up in Bedford by 7:30 in the morning. We took the trailer up to one of the lower turn outs by Strawberry Reservoir and rode in to the Reservoir... at about 8:30... and we went back to North Fork Lake... up behind Haystack... and out the White Creek trail in the Greys River area. On the highway it's 25 miles from Bedford to Alpine... I'm guessing it's at least that far if not a bit farther going up and down the range...
I have to say when we pulled up at Mr. C's I was pretty excited. There were people there that I'd not seen in a decade... like my best friend from high school's dad and notsolittleanymore brother... and the church youth leader who taught us all what you're supposed to do when you see a Popeye headlight... but that enthusiasm wore off quickly...
So starting at the top left of the collage...
The first picture is of the trees at the top of the mountain where we stopped to eat lunch at (9,400 feet according to one of the guy's GPS things). The second shot is the shale rock cliffs immediately to the west of where we ate. Only slightly higher than we were... but just about as steep where we went down.... as depicted in the third picture because between those trees is where it drops down and where we let the horses go and then where I managed to ride down the mountain on my ass for a couple of hundred feet... it was steep and nasty and at the point I was D.O.N.E. I wasn't expecting to go on the ride so all I had with me were really old tennis shoes that I happened to have in the car because we'd gone out and about at Dirty Gulch while in Colorado. The last picture on the top row is of Kidd and Jayden, who sadly at 10 and 11 whined less than me at 31.
The photos in the middle are of the guys having lunch on the top of the mountain (there were 11 of us in all and my mom and I were the only women on the ride)... Mom resting... Mom and Dallas being convinced into taking a picture together (we never seem to get both of them in the same picture at the same time)... Kidd and me attempting to take a picture of the two of us (hardest feat of all because we both have GINORMOUS heads)... Kidd trying to stay on the mountain while he eats... a map of the area we rode in (we rode in the tan Greys River District... started just east of the 89 marker and came out at Alpine)... and the view back down the mountain when we stopped for lunch... you can't see where we started... it's below those trees and miles and miles down and between the mountain crevices there.
I came down one entire side (had to be a 10% grade) of the mountain with ONE stirrup because the rigging on mine slipped (likely when the horse and I had to slide down and jump the slate crevices) (plus the new saddle needs some serious adjustments and breaking in)... which meant I held on for dear life with my thighs... and couldn't walk for 3 days after. We were horseback riding and yet my feet were killing me... again... stupid stirrups... felt like I was riding on shards of glass by the time we finally reached the trailers parked up Greys.
Of course, once we're safe and sound and loading up horses the men declare that THIS... T.H.I.S. was the worse ride they'd ever taken anyone on... that what we rode was as bad as it gets... and the roughest terrain they've likely ever ridden... geeze. Now I know why their wives didn't come along. Thanks guys.
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