Trail Riding Black Butte

Yesterday I had a day off, so I invited two of my staff to go on a trail ride with me. We loaded up three good horses and headed for Black Butte itself -- one of the few areas in Sisters that I haven't ridden around. The trail was supposed to be eleven miles, and while I'm sure we never got lost, I think we rode much longer than that. We were riding horses for 6 hours straight with no stopping, and by the time we got back to the horse trailer, I wasn't able to sit anymore....

We did the both the upper loop and lower loop around Black Butte. The trail was very overgrown with heavy underbrush that the horses had to barrel through. We lost the trail several times due to the dense brush, but managed to find the trail again each time. The trail also hadn't been cleared yet from winter, so we had to scramble over, around, and even under (I kid you not) fallen trees.

One tree was impossible to pass, but we had gone too far to turn around. I took my horse up a steep hill looking for a way to cross it, only to have to turn around and go back down. Then I determined we'd better go off the side of the trail -- down into a pretty steep gulley-- in order to get around it. I descended carefully down on horseback, listening to the staff girls whisper to each other how steep it was. My horse (whose worth his weight in gold, I've decided) carefully picked his way down and over large boulders, tree limbs, and yet more underbrush. Once we got down enough to cross around the tree, I turned my horse back up the hill and let him pick his way up. I told the girls, "let's just get this over with", and we all laid our heads on the horses' necks, wrapped our arms around them and gave them their heads. The horses barrelled back up onto the trail with us blindly putting our faith in them.

My horse especially was the lead horse when we came to difficult crossings. If it hadn't been for him sizing up each obstacle and then picking the best way through it, we honestly would have had to turn around and gone back the loooooonnnggg way we came in, 'cause the younger horses were refusing without a lead horse! We did some pretty insane trail obstacles, and my guy was perfect in every way.

The trail ride was beautiful, but I don't think I'll ride for the next day or two....





Beth on Bandita (with a small tree obstacle we just passed)


Our lead horse!

Tess from Scotland rides Rio: