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Re: [RC] Long X Ride - Ed & Wendy HauserWendy and I have to enthusiastically echo this post. I intended to post this morning, but had not yet gotten around to it. If you have never been to this ride, it should be on your list. There are a number of reasons: 1.Management. The managers are enthusiastic and work hard to make the ride as fun as possible. Their hard work produces a lot of sponsorship money and prizes. What fun! Ft. Dodge sponsored the completion t-shirts and one vet. Local businesses kicked in money and feed prizes. The 4H girls were wonderful. For a donation they would clean up after your horse. Such a luxury, especially since we arrived on Thursday, and left on Monday. 2, The trail. The popular misconception is that ND is dry, hot, flat and boring. This ride is extremely scenic, and not boring in the slightest. For those who do not know, the area is part of the "bad lands" that the bandits in old cowboy movies hid in. It is very easy to imagine that it is 1880 and you are chasing outlaws who are easily hiding up the canyons. The area is right next to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The camp is right next to the Little Missouri River. That means that everyway you look you can see multicolored cliffs with horizontal stripes of different colors. Most of the sediment has not been subjected to enough pressure to turn to rock, so it erodes rapidly and turns to sticky bentonite mud in the rain. Each stage starts near the elevation of the river, and climbs up to the top, more than a thousand feet. You then ride across the prairie and periodically go through another canyon. On the top the wind combined with the low humidity keeps you and your horse cool. At the end of the first stage you descend to another camp for an away check. The second stage is back to base camp. The last stage is ~12 miles and is a loop up, across a different part of the prairie, and down and back to camp. The area is leased for grazing, so there are stock tanks periodically and lots of cows. This year there was a broken water pipe and the ranchers were out trying to find and fix it. They really felt badly that we had some areas with less than the desired access to water. One rancher came to the away check to tell us that he had observed that some riders had missed a developed spring on his place so we would be able to have more water on the way back. This is not a flat run for speed demons. It also is not an impossible trail. You just have to ride smart. Walk up and down the steep parts of the hills, move rapidly over the prairie, and trot the less steep hills. 3. The vets. There were 3 vets. All were excellent. The defacto head vet (not the one listed on the web) is world class and ran a nice tight ship that carefully protected all of the horses. Each vet check started by pulsing down in p/r lanes. Then you went to the vet who evaluated gait. At the end of the hold, you went back for a CRI and all the other stuff on a vet card was checked. This excellent method allowed her to evaluate not only the condition of the horse as it entered the hold, but to make sure that proper recovery was taking place. There were no treatments. The only serious metabolic pull was a rider that got heat stroke. One mare was ROM at the first check. She was a classic "ain't doing right". By the afternoon she was fine. A good example of a rider doing the right thing. There were some tight butts from the hills. 4. Who should go? Anyone who likes beautiful western scenery will love this ride. If you live in the Midwest, and have wondered if you and your horse would like a western mountain ride, this is a good way to find out how you do on the hills. If you ride the Rockies, the scenery on this ride will be totally different than what you normally see. Ed Ed & Wendy Hauser 2994 Mittower Road Victor, MT 59875 ranch@xxxxxxxxxxx 406.642.6490 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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