Friday August 29 2025
I learned a lot!
Originally my lofty goal was to ride three days of 50s at Old Selam. This is one of my favorite rides ever, mostly along soft-footing old logging roads, gentle ups and downs with just a few climbs/downhills, ample water, and the lovely Boise National Forest, with the occasional wildlife sightings. More to come on that!
Willie was fit, from rides and from spending several weeks at the DWA Arabians spa in Bellevue with Helen, where I got to go up and ride him a couple times on some really good training rides. So he was ready. The question was me in the heat, and as the ride got closer, and the forecast showed it was going to get hotter each day, I decided to do a 50 on day one and then play the rest by ear. I just can’t handle the heat this year.
The three days of the ride would be Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We arrived on Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon ride manager Debbie asked me if I could go out with her and help mark a little bit of trail on foot that was left to mark on one of the loops (I'm always up for hiking and marking trail).
We went out on the ATV and checked some things, but ran out of daylight, so Thursday morning we went back out. She dropped me off at a spot and I had about a 2-mile hike of marking trail, and then I would meet her back on the road.
I ambled along the lovely, cool forest, which smelled so great because we’d had a great downpour the day and night before. It was so misty riding on the ATV that my glasses stayed fogged up. I hiked along hanging ribbons, keeping my eyes out for moose, and while I was hiking along a creek thick with willows, I came around the corner and WHOA, there on the hillside was the biggest moose I have ever seen.
It wasn’t just huge, it was HYUGE, a big bull moose, up the hill about 40 yards away, and he turned to look at me. (Of course I'm on foot so it looked even bigger, but. it was HYUGE.) OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I needed the moose to leave because my trail went below him, and I couldn’t hike all the way back to where I started. but how the heck do you move a HYUGE bull moose??
So, I crept forward to behind a lodgepole pine that had a trunk about a foot wide, and I started yelling and whistling at Mr. Moose. I hollered and I whistled myself blue in the face, and all he did was look my way and tried to zero in on me. I figured if he moved anywhere, he was going to move down to the trail and on into the willows. At least I *hoped* he would.
But instead, he started moving towards me! OMG. My heart started thumping really hard. I made myself very very small behind this tree and I shut up. He knew something was behind the tree.
And then he moved closer!!! OMG!!! I looked up this tree to see if I might be able to climb it if I had to, and believe me I could have if I had to. He moved even closer to within about 20 yards of me and I stopped breathing. And I prayed a couple of times. Keep moving to the creek. Keep moving to the creek.
I was trying to rack my brain as to what I knew about moose. I knew they hated dogs. I thought they didn’t like people, but I wasn’t sure. Later, Robert Ribley told me a scary story about nearly being attacked by a moose, and then Anne told me about a moose encounter she had where (long story) she suddenly found herself in front of a moose in her driveway, and she did the only thing that came to mind, which was to drop down and curl up and play dead like you do for a grizzly bear (turns out this instinct is a good choice). The moose actually came and sniffed her face while her eyes were watching its hooves before it wandered off.
I had an idea that moose couldn’t see very well, but that couldn’t stop him from getting irritated at whatever was spying on him from behind the tree. He crept a few feet closer, and I would inch around the tree trunk, trying to stay very skinny.
Finally, thank the Lord, he turned down to the creek and trotted on into the thick willows. I waited a little bit and got back to breathing normally, then I made a big wide swerve up the hill and around where he had been. OMG!!!!!!!!!
So then, Debbie picked me up on the ATV and we continued on with her driving and me hanging the ribbons, and we came to a creek crossing, which we drove into just fine and out of, but going up the other side was a short steep, super soft few lengths of sand. I saw that and said I’m skeered, and I jumped off! (I am afraid of ATVs if the road is not completely flat .)
Debbie tried to gun it up, but the sand was too soft and the four wheeler just dug four deep holes. So we were stuck, and stuck good. But. Debbie was smart enough to have had a winch installed on that ATV, so I got to learn about winching an ATV!
We tried one tree and then had to get a different angle and used another tree, and then had to move the winch hook to a third tree, but the winch was two inches too short, but Debbie had two belts for padding the tree and connected them together with a steel carabiner. I stayed far away in case something snapped and broke, but by golly Mighty Red the ATV got winched up that little hill with Deb nursing/steering it along and out of that sand and we hopped back on and kept on marking trail! I may never have to winch an ATV out of a spot again, but I know how now!
But we weren’t quite done with adventure. We had one more creek to cross, but it was more like a dammed up beaver pond, and with all the rain we had, the water was quite high, so it wasn’t even possible to lift your feet high enough and keep them dry because the ATV was like halfway under water, but Deb just gunned it, and Mighty Red swam and got through there, but coming out of the pond, OMG, the wheels grasped for traction in the mud, and there was a little hill, and the ATV did a wheelie, and I thought I was going to die, but before I could get too skeered and bail off we were out. Booya!!!! I hate ATVs but I love Mighty Red!
The rest of the day was pretty much boring, just the usual, vetting in my horse and getting ready for riding the next day!
Also, there was a semi tame rooster chicken hanging around ride camp central.
