Red Rock Ride, Part II - The Ride

"I just can't get it," I would think to myself every time I clicked the electronic shutter. The stunning view I was seeing on the back of that horse could not be caught - at least not in two dimensions.  Without depth, the small screen of my camera or phone would not convey the grand scale and beauty of nature's construction.   Even the view from our small cabin porch could not be wrestled by the lens. We awoke each morning to a sunrise that would reflect from the far-off red cliffs across the irrigated alfalfa fields. Breakfast was served early from the mobile kitchen parked next to the barn. One of several mobile kitchens used by Roberts business to serve forest fire crews or communities disrupted by natural disasters anywhere in the country. That was the natural extension of a part of his business that once served film crews as they used the Red Rock region as backdrop for their many western movies and television shows.

The view from the Red Rock Ride barn at breakfast

The Shower Trailer helped the awakening process

Breakfast from cook Houston in the mobile kitchen

The bus ride following breakfast brought us to the next vista, with horses waiting all saddled and ready to go. The wranglers had loaded them at Pitch Fork Farm, taking twenty minutes before breakfast to tack and load them. Dividing into two groups of about twenty, one group would leave twenty or so minutes before the other so the three wranglers per group could keep sight of everyone at one time. Keeping folks together was a measure of safety, as it was unlikely that any one horse could get too riled if another was just in front and just behind. And safety was clearly their first priority - another measure of professionalism demonstrated by the Mangum operation. 

After a shorter warm-up ride in Zion park the first day, we toured Bryce Canyon on our first long ride. Three hours in the morning were spent winding through the park. Each corner revealed endless Hoodoo's (columns of rock) and canyon walls. Hiking tourists were everywhere, each asked to stand motionless on the side of the trail as we passed by, so as not to spook the horses. No one seemed to mind, as they took pictures of us taking pictures of them.

In the afternoon of that day we exited Bryce Canyon through national forest. They called the extended ride the Snowy River ride, after the movie by that name, because it included a couple of steep sections. Both the length of the ride and the challenge of the descent caused about a third of the group to choose the shorter ride back to the drop-off point. The rest of us traveled along a plateau of desert brush and down to the lower elevation through the steep descent that I captured in the video below. I have to admit, it didn't seem so steep to Bonnie and me, as local rides include similar scopes. Some of the arena riders might not have that same experience. However, we'd never competed with a cow before. In the second stage of descent, after this video, a cow came up the narrow trail in search of it's missing calf, which did make it more exciting.

Our favorite ride was probably the shorter day four ride through Thunder Mountain, which followed what they called the Butch Cassidy ride on day three, both of them through the Red Canyon area of the Dixie National Forest. Butch Cassidy included a tour of a hide out presumed to be used by Butch. The area was known to have been where he grew up and sought escape after his train heists. But Thunder Mountain, so named for the area attracting among the highest number of lightening strikes of any in the country, held its own magic and charm. Including a narrow land bridge that got our attention because of the drop-offs on each side.

Thunder Mountain Bridge

Thunder Mountain Hoodoo's

The red rock is red because of its high iron content, which attracts lightening. What was fascinating to observe was the number of Pondorosa Pines that were twisted like licorice sticks, some still living with a scar down their bark, some burned monuments to their abruptly extinguished lives. The wranglers shared stories of being caught out in thunderstorms and the threat they felt because there could be no place to hide when lightening was attracted to the ground. Their hope was that the Ponderosa would be the lightening rod that would direct that threat away from them.



 Fortunately, we had no weather the entire week that would threaten our rides with rain or storm. Especially on day five, the longest at over eight hours, as we wound thirty miles down the Paria river through the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The wranglers favored this ride most because it best represented what a ride was like back in the wagon train days. In fact, the Paria trail was the main route into and out of the Red Rock country. At the end of the trail was the ghost town of Paria, where relatives of some of our guides had lived before floods wiped the town away in the early 1900's. In case any of our riders became too sore to ride on, a team-drawn wagon traveled the river bed with us. No one took advantage of that service, other than to see what it was like to ride in a wagon. Heather, one of our friends from Minnesota who came along on this trip, did so and reported that it was much rougher than riding on her mule. They bounced wildly on some of the river banks they had to navigate across.

The final ride, into the Grand Canyon, was a relatively short ride, all done on mules. At no time did we feel any insecurity on any of these rides, in spite of some of the trails being quite narrow, with steep drop-offs - a particular characteristic of the Grand Canyon trail. Only one descended the north ridge, and was shared by hikers and mules alike. That made for lots of stops to wait for hikers to find a safe place to stand. Our only disappointment in this ride is that it didn't go very far down the ridge, restricted by the park service. From it's end point, we could still see a couple of thousand vertical feet of trail before us, with the bottom of the canyon beckoning. The ride back up the trail, however, suggested the welfare of the mules might also factor into that limitation. They certainly earned their feed through the effort.

If you've ever thought to try an equestrian holiday, we'd certainly recommend this one as one of the most professional, well organized, and most scenic rides through some of the most interesting and captivating geographies we can imagine.

Our friends Heather and Bob atop Thunder Mountain

Footnote:

Pete demonstrating his "Cuber"

Well cared-for stock

Another of the many pleasant surprises of this trip was how Pete Mangum and family operated their horse farm. His stock was of the highest quality - well fed, well trained, and well treated. Each of his wranglers, most of them family members - with those that were not being long time cowboy (and girl) employees - demonstrated the utmost respect and care for their animals and their safety. From years of experience, Pete has developed an efficient and effective system for resting and feeding his animals. With nothing fancy, his home corral gave them plenty of space alongside a spring-fed river. They looked and were so well fed because of how he processed his hay. You can imagine hay is not easy to come by in the desert. He maintained a couple of hundred acres of alfalfa using spring fed city water, drawn from the nearby canyons, for irrigation. Instead of creating bales of hay to feed, leading to a fair amount of waste, he "cubed" the hay using mobile cubers. This created trailer loads of cubes that were fed into troughs weekly, giving the horses an unlimited supply of food. Because that supply was never constrained, they learned to depend on its availability, keeping them from over-feeding - often a criticism of using concentrated hay cubes.

I can't imagine anyone working harder than these folks did and do on a continuing basis, or with more satisfaction and joy in their relationship with the animals and the land. Each guide or wrangler could and did share a wealth of information on the history, climate, geography, wildlife, and fauna. It was a great experience, enhanced by the professionalism, character, and values of our hosts.