Pink Flamingo

After our wilderness tour of the Sawtooth's it was off to the Pink Flamingo Classic near Cascade, ID. A very nice 2 day event held in a beautiful area of soft wooded trails. Nothing like the rugged Sawtooth's. We just rode the first day since we'd only been back from the Sawtooth's for 3 days.
The first loop found my horse rather full of himself, there's a news flash. Thunder is ALWAYS full of himself! The trail took us by a lovely mirrored pond and offered us some nice views of Cascade Lake and West Mt. The second loop I told my bratty redhead that he could move out a bit, for which he was quite grateful. We passed a few horses on this loop, some destined for both days of riding.
The last loop of 12 miles had some steep up and down with little inbetween. The last couple miles of relative flat dirt road was out of the trees and it was hot! It was a fun ride. We finished the 50 in a bit over 7 hrs and I was happy with that. My horse was sound and healthy and vetted through just fine.
Now it's off to the coast to visit and play!

Riding the Sawtooth Wilderness

Wow! What a week. What I thought was going to be several days of "trail riding", turned out to be the adventure of a lifetime! A friendly hiker took this picture of the 3 of us near the Snowyside Peak Divide on our 4th day of riding.

We first camped at Grand Jean and rode 3 days out of there, taking the Elk Lake trail, Baron Creek Trail, as well as portions of the South Fork Payette and the Trail Creek Lakes Trail. Some of the streams were quite high and swift plus they have logs and holes amid the rocks. Crossing them was quite treacherous. When we had to cross North Fork the second time, we said a couple hail Mary's and yeehawed across the raging water with Thunder in the lead, jumping the log and onto the bank! We left a very confused backpacker sitting on the bank wondering "What the ????"

The deadfall from old burns made for some slow travel if we couldn't simply jump the logs, but the views were gorgeous! Rock slides on talus slopes stopped us from actually reaching Baron Lake unfortunately. Too have continued on the talus slope with little or no trail would have been disastrous with a horse. Very little work has been done on these trails, they work the backpackers but the horses couldn't fit under those logs. :-)
We went on to Stanley for supplies and camped at Tin Cup. We headed out mid afternoon for a ride from Pettit Lake up around Toxaway, over Snowyside Divide, down through the middle of the sawtooths past Twin Lakes, Alice Lake, El Capitan and back to Pettit Lake and made it back to camp by dusk! This was an outrageous ride, not for the faint hearted. We had some wild riding and high adrenaline moments, beautiful views, great days of weather and no I am not really glad to be back home but here I am. :-) Here is a link to pics. http://picasaweb.google.com/zap6000

BOGUS BASIN

Last Saturday, July 5, we went up to Bogus Basin, NE of Boise to ride. The road gets pretty windy and steep for about 13 miles. We dodged bicyclists all the way up to the parking area near Schafer Butte. We rode for several hours, enjoying the pine trees and shaded areas and beautiful vistas from the hill tops. It was a very clear day and you could see forever! It was different riding alongside the ski lifts. We had to backtrack several times because our logging tracks ended and the brush was too thick to try to figure out where to go. One track ended about 100 yards from the cat tracks that we needed to take us back. It was getting late and no way was I turning around. It was 50 very steep yards then it was just uphill, but I led Hollie up. Josette sent Roseanna up behind me. They're tough and I sure didn't feel like trying to figure out how else to get back to Schafer from there if we had to back track again! Luckily we found a couple springs with water for the horses. I couldn't resist a picture with this sign "Last Chance", it just seemed so appropriate. What a great ride, hope we get to do it again!

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

Today I went solo on Thunder. This is the first time I have gone out totally by myself on him since our wreck in November. We have come so far - its amazing! The last few rides on him I have gone way out ahead of the others with him and he did just fine. Joe had him out by himself and he did well then too. I just needed to get back all the confidence so I could do it. And today when my riding buddy called and canceled, I decided what the heck, and we went anyhow. We had a fine ride, trotted a lot of trails, galloped the hills, walked and even took time to let him scratch and eat a bit of grass. It's great to be back to my old self and really enjoying my horse and God's country. :-) Gives new meaning to "independence" day!