My Horse Fell Off a Cliff

Our campsite before we left, with my tent.

We had a pretty eventful weekend and yet somehow nothing actually went wrong, which was very surprising.  I worked from 9-5 on Friday so we had to wait until I was off before we could leave.  My brother had arranged for a friend of his who was also going camping to drive us halfway and meet our dad, so they met me at my work and we left from there.  This friend is one of my brother's that I actually don't mind but I have to admit, his driving could be rather terrifying at times.  Though our first near-death experience wasn't his fault.  He was passing someone and when came up beside the guy, the van almost drove right into the side of us.  People kept cutting us off and swerving badly on the highway, it's amazing we didn't get into an accident.

We met my dad and then went back to his house.  It was 7:30 by this point.  We had to pack up the trucks and then load the horses in the trailer.  Thor and Seven went in surprisingly easily considering we've never really worked with them that much on trailering, something we should change.  They just walked in after Pawnee.  Then my dad went in the truck pulling the trailer and my brother and I followed in the other truck.  By the time we found a campspot it was 11:30 and pitch black.  We set up camp in the dark and stayed up talking until 1:30. 

 We woke up around seven and sat around for the next few hours because it was too cold to do anything.  My sleeping bag had broken during the night so it didn't zip up, and it was SO COLD.  We had a very good, but rather strange breakfast of steak and shrimp.  We had a search-and-rescue guy come to our camp.  Apparently there was a lost hunter in the area.  I honestly wasn't very impressed with the search-and-rescue guy.  He didn't believe the guy was lost and was annoyed that he had to go out looking for someone.  After that we saddled up and set out.  Our ride began with a fun chase of the cows grazing in the field in my picture.  And by chase I mean Thor and Sev loped in their direction and then went "Oh my god, are those monsters?? You're not getting me anywhere near those man-eating beasts!"  Apparntly they forgot about the herd of cows they live with at home.  We had to stop because my saddle pad, the first time I've used this one, was awful!  We had to take it off, it kept sliding around and my saddle was completely off-centre.  We hid it in some trees and continued on with the ride.



Thor Checking out the river

We had to ride down the road for a couple of kilometres before we finally came to a spot where we could cross the river.  It was Sev and Thor's first time crossing a river and they were great.  Thor gets his head right down and watches carefully when he walks through it.  We were looking for a trail up a creek that broke off from the river that would take us up to a little cabin my dad and brother had found two years ago.  We just knew the general direction that the cabin was in, so we started by riding in that direction.  We saw two more search-and-rescue guys down at the river near where we crossed.  We decided to keep an eye out for people and any traces of people while we rode, since we were going off of the usual trails. 



The river after we crossed it for the first time.

 

Riding on the beach

We rode down a quad trail for a few minutes and then broke off onto a deer trail.  The trail was rough, there was a lot of ducking and frantic attempts to try and get our legs out of the way before they were crushed up against a tree.  And my favourite part...spiders.  Everywhere.  They are half of the reason Thor and I ended up behind my dad and brother.  Here's something you learn quickly, when you're on a deer/animal trail, don't be the one in the lead.  You let someone else ride through the spider webs first.  The other reason was at first we were riding too close behind Alex and Thor got smacked in the face with a branch.  It was my fault, I wasn't thinking and didn't have enough space between us.  Thor was fine, but he was really watchful of branches after that.  The first hour or so of the ride was through the dense pine trees and we were beginning to think that we wouldn't find the trail.  We stopped to give the horses a break and Sev decided it would be a good time to roll, with his gear on.  He was sweating and was itchy.  We managed to get him up before he rolled and hurt himself.  The poor guy, after that we took it even slower and let him cool off.



Sinking in the mud

We eventually came out to a meadow, to our great relief.  We had to cross a tiny little creek again, and as you can see in the picture, the bank was pretty muddy.  Thor wanted a drink but unfortunatly since we were behind the other two horses, he didn't really get one.  He would have, except Sev decided it would be fun to paw at the water and stir up all the mud.  We left the meadow on another deer trail and kept coming across these little meadows.  There were a bunch of stallion piles on the trail, but they were all old so we figured the wild horses hadn't been here for a while.  Finally, as soon as we let Thor lead, we found a pretty decent trail.  The logs were all cut on it so it was nice riding.  It wasn't big enough to be a quad trail so we figured it had to be used by other riders. 



One of the meadows


Thor was very happy to be leading at this point and Pawnee and Sev were having a hard time keeping up to him, so alot of the time it was just me, Thor and Si, our dog, with my dad and brother further back.  I have a video of us riding down the trail because I wanted to show what it is like to ride a Mustang through the Alberta forests, but it will not load for the life of me. 




Thor was not impressed about the hill

We eventually came out to the trail we'd been trying to find, by total fluke.  It was pretty funny because it took us two hours to get to it...and we could see the river we'd crossed in the beginning from where we came out.  If we'd gone down the other way down the river then we would have come across the trail quicker.  There was a big hill, as you can see in the picture, that we had to go up.  It didn't look bad until you got to the bottom of it.  Thor was great, he's so powerful he just launches himself up the hill.  I hold onto Thor's mane when he runs up the hill and I make sure to give him his head.  He doesn't need my help to go up or down hills, I just get in the way if I try to help.  



Continuing on the trail





High up in the foothills

The trail went up pretty steadily.  I tried to take pictures to show how high we were up but I'm not sure if you can really get a good idea.  To our right it was a very steep hill up, and to the left it was a straight drop down.  At a few points Thor decided it would be a good idea to walk on the very edge of the trail on the left side.  We had to have an arguement which I then won.  That's another thing you learn quickly on the trail, do not ride on the edge of a drop.  Thor learned that lesson firsthand later on but I'm getting to that.  We reached the top and then the trail took a dramatic turn down.  That's probably the steepest hill I've gone down.  The horses were sliding and I was just hoping they didn't fall.  They didn't and they were great.  We saw some GIANT Moose tracks in the mud, biggest I've ever seen.  I was very thankful we didn't run into it, Moose scare me more than anything in the woods.  My dad was attacked by one once and we've had several terrifying encounters of our own.

We came out the creek we'd been looking for all along and then ended up crossing it about six times in a row.  Thor finally got his nice long drink.  Unfortunatly my dad took the lead again so Thor and I were in the back.  Both of us prefer to be in the front and riding side by side wasn't an option on this trail.  I amused myself by taking pictures.  We came out to a flat spot on the river and decided to stop for a break and my brother wanted to fish a pool there.  I hung out with the horses while they fished.  I hate fishing and have long ago given up pretending to care about it.  Pawnee kept trying to wander off until I got mad at him and he settled for taking a nap instead.  Sev kept getting tangled in everyone else's reins and Thor was the only one being a good boy.  He just stood there and watched the other two being idiots.  My brother didn't catch anything and we had some beef jerkey before we continued on.  Beef jerkey has to be the best saddle bag food out there.

We crossed the creek again and we finally came to where the cabin was.  It's not even a true cabin, it's tiny.  It's barely taller than I am.  We think it was probably built in the 70's as a place for someone to stay when they came out to check on the free-range cows.  It's built in a beautiful area.  It's right against a cliff going down to the river with some falls not far away.  It looks out over a huge meadow.  We decided to take another break here and stipped the horses' gear off.  They enjoyed the chance to graze.  Then my brother went down to the falls to fish and my dad went for a walk up the other way of the river.  I once again stayed with the horses.  Sev and Thor were tied up and Pawnee was left free.  He stayed near Sev but then started to wander down the trail so I grabbed his lead rope and held onto him while I sat on a log.  Then something very strange happened.

 My dad was on his way back up to where I was with the horses and he heard a loud growl, very close to where the cabin was.  While he heard that, (I didn't hear it) the horses were all of a sudden just very strange.  Sev stopped eat and started making soft snorting noises and kept looking around.  He'd pull at the end of his rope and then freeze, and then start it all over.  Pawnee suddenly couldn't get close enough to me and was walking quick, almost panicked circles around me.  Then Thor started calling, which is very strange considering he never, ever calls.  I grabbed Pawnee and ran over to where Thor was and just stood there, kind of afraid, I won't lie.  When horses start acting strange I take it very seriously.  Then, after a few minutes everyone went back to eating and it was fine.  Talking about it later we think probably a bear was passing through.  We know there was a bear in the area, after we left the cabin we came across some giant black bear tracks that were a couple hours old.  I am very thankful that the bear, or whatever it was, decided we weren't worth the trouble.

Before my dad and brother got back but after the horses calmed down I ended up taking a nap.  I didn't really mean to.  I had spread some of the saddle pads out on the ground near Thor and Pawnee and next thing I knew I was being woken up by my dog's wet tongue.  I felt much better after the nap but it was not the least bit comfortable.  I don't suggest sleeping on horse blankets.  We decided to return to camp after that and the horses were more than happy with that.  We got home much quicker than it had taken to get out there.  We took the same trail back and it was uneventful except for when a spider fell on me.  Thor and I were leading and I brushed up against a branch.  A huge, fat gray spider fell on my leg and I was panicking.  Thor just kept walking along as I was freaking out and trying to kill the spider, and then find it as it fell down onto my saddle.  I never did find it and I'm still grossed out.

We kept going straight down the trail instead of onto the horse trail we'd come in on.  We came out to the river but there wasn't any good place to cross so we had to ride down the beach for awhile.  When we finally did find a good place to cross it was near to guys cutting firewood.  I'm pretty sure we scared them.  They were busy so they didn't notice us until we started to cross the river.  They stopped to watch us and asked us how our day had been.  We rode the rest of the way home on the road, until we got to where we'd hidden my saddle pad.  I carried that home and that simple fact was amazing.  Thor has an issue with having other things on his back but he got over it right away.  After we unsaddled we all just vegged out for a while until we went to bed.  I had the tent to myself and my dad and brother had air mattresses in the horse trailer.  We don't sleep near each other, it's kind of ridiculous I know, but my brother snores like there's no tomorrow.  I refuse to sleep next to him.  The first night my dad had slept on his air mattress outside of his tent.  The second night he quickly regretted sleeping near Alex. 



The culprit

The next morning I woke up to Thor falling off a cliff.  My sister has informed me that I'm not allowed to say that because it makes it sound like he fell of a 30 foot drop, but still, it's technically what happened.  Our camp was by a a creek in a very deep creekbed.  Part of the creek went under ground and it was a six-eight foot drop to the rocks below.  My dad woke up first and tied Thor on a long rope behind my tent.  Well Thor was standing near the cliff and stepped on his rope.  He backed up to get off of it, and went off the side.  He tore the ground up where he tried to keep himself up.  My dad started yelling and ran over to him and saw him lying on the bottom, tangled up in the rope.  My dad ran and got the knife and cut the rope, then had to convince Thor to get up.  Thor didn't even have a scratch on him.  I'll admit, my dad got a lecture afterwards.  I was mad at him for tying Thor up where he could reach the cliff. 

After that we had breakfast, packed up camp and left.  We ran into some other people on horses and learned of a new trail to ride on.  All in all, it was a fun weekend but there were a lot of near-misses.  I'm very proud of Thor and Sev, they did amazing!  I got to hang out with Cas and the others for a while too but I'll add that in my next post.

Our first view as we set out