Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

> When I rode Tevis I dismounted and jogged with horse in hand down every
> hot  steep canyon. I could fly down those steep slopes and he knew just
> how to  follow me without stepping on me. I was hoping that I was saving
> his front legs a  little with my weight off of him.
Again, if you can do this and like to do it, fine.  But I'd point out that
if your horse is hammering his front legs going downhill, he isn't doing
it right.  A balanced horse downhill is practically free-wheeling in
front, and if he stumbles, he will stumble with his hind feet, because
that is where his weight and balance are.

I'll freely admit that there are a lot of horses out there who don't know
how to do this, and some for which it comes a lot harder than others.  If
your horse can't do this, then you likely ARE better off to get off. 
Having to ride rough country all the time, I'm not very tolerant of horses
who DON'T learn to do this--it is very high on my personal priority list. 
I've been blessed with families who do it naturally, but I've also had to
teach many horses to do it, and some have a harder time getting it than
others.  I suspect it is getting harder to find horses who do this easily,
with the modern craze toward overly-long legs and longer backs.  A horse
does best at this with good low-set hocks and the ability to really tuck
his hind end.

The Tevis canyons are a perfect example of a place where a horse can fly
down at a balanced trot with a rider aboard, and take advantage of gravity
without having to expend metabolic effort to carry the rider, as opposed
to what I understand the OD riders are describing, in the sort of
downhills where one has to pick one's way a lot more.  If I were fit and
athletic, and trying to spare my horse, I'd fly down the canyons at Tevis
mounted (if I cared to go back to Tevis, which I don't) and tail UP the
other side.

Another Cliff Lewis contribution several years ago was a series of
training rides that he did with a runner friend.  For those of you who
don't know Cliff, he was a short round man about as wide as he was tall,
and most definitely a heavyweight, but a pretty good rider, for all of
that.  Anyway, he had this long training hill--pretty good grade, and
something like 10 or 12 miles.  He had two horses, and he did several
different trials, where he would ride one horse and the runner would lead
the other horse, and they would go up together, or down together.  (He
could trailer to the top, so in either case, he was starting with fresh
horses.)  He did several repeats, and he and the runner also switched
horses on different days, to eliminate it being a matter of one horse
having better recoveries than the other.  The upshot of the whole thing
was that if they went downhill together, there was virtually NO difference
in the recovery rates of the led horse vs the ridden horse.  But if they
went uphill together, the ridden horse always took significantly longer to
recover than the led horse did.

Bottom line--the law of gravity is real, and it takes energy to make
weight go up a hill, whereas it will go downhill with no extra energy
expended whatsoever.

I've never forgotten this, and it never ceases to amaze me, when we are
out on logging grades, how many people will trot-trot-trot uphill and then
pull up at the top to walk down.  That's where I go off and leave 'em--I'm
not about to waste a good downhill, where my horse can just "idle" down
with me still on him...  (And here, I AM talking about "booking"
downhill--as opposed to what is clearly needed at Sherman's Gap...)

Heidi


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Riding alone is when you teach a horse all the "tools" and "cues" he needs
to handle the trail, to hold a speed, deal with hills, etc. It's also where
you develop the "bond" that causes him to "defer" to you before losing his
cool.
~ Jim Holland

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