June 10 2025
Planning a ride season nowadays is pretty much a crap shoot, with work and other commitments and the West now always prone to exploding in fire and changing your plans for you.
My main Endurance goals for Hillbillie Willie and me are to have fun and maybe, just maybe achieve Decade Team, which is equine and rider teams who completed at least one 50-mile+ endurance ride each year for 10 years. This is year nine for Team Hillbillie Willie and Me.
We rode and finished a 25-miler at Eagle Canyon in April, but that is one hard hilly ride, and Willie is not a hill horse, so I wasn’t about to attempt a 50 there for his first ride of the season. It was a good hard training ride for him.
So along came the 3-day City of Rocks in Almo, Idaho, a ride we have put on, or helped put on, the last 15 years. This year I’d shoot days 1 and 2, and Cat would shoot day 3 so Willie and I could attempt a 50.
Heat, heat, heat, was in the forecast, though Day 3 was the kindest of them all. A small chance of thunderstorms were in the forecast, which I either prayed wouldn’t happen or just pretended they weren’t going to happen. City of Rocks can have some doozy storms on those hot summer days (oh, wait, it’s not even summer yet.) and boy am I scared of lightning.
I was hoping we’d find someone to ride with. While Willie can go alone or in company, and he appears to enjoy the 25 milers solo, I didn’t think he’d much like blazing 50 miles of the hot trails alone. We ended up starting out with Danielle and Huey, and companionably rode with them the entire day. Willie pretty much instantly makes best friends anybody he rides with and he of course thought Huey the Quarter horse was the Bomb.
Highlights of the ride:
Only 7 of us started, including the famous Christoph Schork, riding GE Haatra for her third day in a row, and we got to ride with them for the first 15 miles or so of loop 1. That a was a first for me!
The Arrowleaf Balsamroot/Mules Ears were out of control this year
We leap-frogged throughout the day with Tricia and Bentley.
Wait… we’re approaching our pristine spring water trough at 7500’ at Indian grove where our horses have climbed and climbed and are sweating bigly and need a drink here… what is this!
It’s one of the nearby campers! She has found the perfect place to read her book in an inner tube in her bikini!
She kindly got out and removed the inner tube because our beasts did *not* want to drink while she was in there!
On the first part of the 12.5-mile loop three (which was a repeat of loop two), Huey was leading the way along a single track beside a small creek, when we all heard a strange but familiar honk… both horses spooked and stopped because a baby sandhill crane was in the trail ahead and mama crane was honking startled and frantic! We stopped and watched while the baby ran to the creek to the left (good) but mama ran off to the right (not good), then back and forth across the trail as if she’d lost her baby. We tried to walk on past, but mama kept going further away. Finally when she bolted to the right again, we scooted past her, hollering apologies over our shoulder.
With five miles or so left to the finish, along this long fun two track road in the park, Danielle asked Huey if he wanted to canter. Canter he did, and Willie broke into a canter. He won’t usually hold it too long before he shifts to a pace (which he did), but as long as it’s smooth, I let him do it. Then Danielle says, you want to gallop? And Huey broke into a gallop, and Willie broke into a gallop, and he galloped alongside Huey for an exhilarating quarter of a mile, wheeeeee! I’d never galloped that long or fast on Willie, and I was so proud of him for holding that gait for so long! Willie was pretty proud of himself too. Tricia and Bentley were in sight ahead of us, and Danielle hollered, “WE’RE GOING TO CATCH YOU! BETTER PICK IT UP!” (They heard us yelling but didn’t know what we said.) And we giggled and slowed our horses down.
As we were walking back along the park road to the finish (Willie was practicing his fast walk!), a rattlesnake suddenly slithered across the trail in front of us. Danger danger! Willie saw it and planted himself. He knew it wasn’t a good snake! We let it slide on off the trail before we moved onward. Successful snake encounter!
It was a hot day, and while Willie felt great all day, his pulse did run 10+ beats higher than it normally does in a ride (I ride with a heart rate monitor). It took him several minutes to pulse down at each vet check and the finish, even though each time we walked in the last mile or three miles and I sponged him down.
At one lunch break where he just nibbled (he’s never a voracious eater) when I sponged him off, his pulse dropped those 10 beats. He didn’t drink well from water troughs on the trail, but at one of the small creek crossings with the teeniest puddles to siphon from, he took a good drink.
Willie’s CRI was 60-72 ten minutes after his finish, so we didn’t show for BC. But the rest of him looked great, and we finished our 50…
Year nine on the way to Decade Team!
