Belesemo Bros Rock Silver City

Tuesday July 22 2014

From the brink of obesity to the finish line of an endurance ride, it's been a long (dieting and exercise) trail for Belesemo Dude, aka The Dude, aka Dudley.

When Steph got him back in September of last year (she'd sold him in 2011), he had some bad feet to repair, and he got fat with the herd over the winter. When he started his serious diet and exercise program in February, he just had a hard time letting go of that extra insulation. He's how you define an "EASY KEEPER."

Some days it was hard to get up and go to the gym (trail) every day. We did it anyway. I felt his pain. His sweat stained my half chaps. But slowly, ever so slowly, some of the padding thinned out and firmed down to muscle.

Our main goal was to keep him sound and get him fit; the long-range goal was possibly a 50-mile ride at the 3-day City of Rocks ride August 7-9… but... only one day at a time.

He'd come along well enough that I knew he was fit enough to do at least a 25-mile Limited Distance ride at our backyard Almosta Silver City ride July 19. But a 50? I wasn't sure. Dudley could still lose another 50 pounds or so, and he's not too good in the heat (just like me!). I kept an eye on the weather: if it would be over 90 degrees with no breeze, we'd ride the LD with John and Sunny. If it would be under 90* with a breeze, and company to do the ride with… possibly the 50.

On Friday, the next day's forecast said 88* with a breeze. And then the first rider arrived in camp, and that's when the obvious decision was made. Lynn White, with her horse Roger - Belesemo Moon - would be attempting to complete Roger's first 50 miler (Lynn had pulled rider option on 2 previous attempts). "Third time's the charm," Lynn said. Dudley hadn't done but one 50-miler 6 years ago. Dudley and Roger are cousins (their sires are half brothers). So of course the terribly handsome Dudley and terribly cute Roger - the awesomely cool Belesemo Brothers - would ride the 50 together.


We'd take it one loop at a time. If they finished the first loop in good order, we'd do the next loop; and if they finished the 2nd loop in good order, we'd go out on the third and last loop.

Aside from the lit stick of dynamite beneath me for the first couple of miles, Dudley and Roger marched steadily over the first 25-mile loop, taking turns leading, trotting a steady 7-8 miles an hour. Both Lynn and I rode with heart monitors to keep an eye on our beasts' beating hearts.

Dudley didn't take long to pulse down at the first vet check, standing in the shade and getting hosed with cool water (I hosed myself down too!); it only took a couple of minutes. By the time vet Matt Dredge could check us, Dudley's pulse was 56, and his CRI 56-52. Yay! (He'd pulsed in on Friday at 40, which surprised me!)

Roger took a little longer to pulse down, but they both passed the vet check with mostly A's. (Dudley had a "B" on gut sounds - how is that even possible!?!?) 1 loop down, halfway done; 2 more loops to go!

The 12 1/2-mile Rim Trail loop 2 was a shorter but hotter loop, and Dudley took a few more minutes to pulse down at vet check 2, and his CRI was 64-60. But after the final loop 3 (a repeat of the second loop), he pulsed down faster than both loops! His CRI was 56-60, but he got A's on everything, including gut sounds!

"Who's first?" Regina asked us when we rode in to the finish. "We're tying!" I said. "For 11th place?" "Absolutely!" And, unknown to us till later, two more Belesemos finished right ahead of us! Flora Gertsch and Belesema Epic Diva were 9th, and Bethany Sargeant and Belesema Finalia were 10th. I'm pretty sure it was a historic Belesemo Arabians endurance moment.


Dudley was pretty proud of himself after he finished (though not near as proud as me). He had two most favorite parts of the endurance ride:

Carrying The Raven on their first endurance ride together.


Eating as much as he wanted during and after the ride!


City of Rocks, here we come!

On the Trail of the Old Gold Miners

Monday July 30 2012

When it gets too unbearably hot in the Owyhee desert, you load up the trailer and head for the hills. A steep twisting road takes us up into the Owyhee Mountains, up the old dirt Silver City stage road. Even though it's graded and well maintained, it sure makes me glad I'm not a stage coach driver back in the gold rush days - and it still makes me a bit nervous with its steep grade and sharp curves. The road deposits us 2500' above the valley floor where it's a delightful 15 degrees cooler, and a hundred years older.

Karen and I ride her horses Rusty and Gil, through the streets of Silver City, 

an old mining ghost town and national Historic district, which produced some of the richest hauls of gold and silver in Idaho's history, and which served as the county seat from the late 1800's to early 1900's.

We successfully explore a new loop on some old back mining roads. We ride past many old mines - adits tunneled into the mountainsides with their white tailings scarring the slopes, and open shafts sunk straight down right on the edge of the roads. 

We ride up alongside a series of tailings and a newly-under-construction road, which are part of the Oro Fino mine, originally discovered in 1863, and now being re-mined. 

Now the Silver Falcon Mining company is sifting through 30,000 tons of tailings they've hauled down from the mines, including the Oro Fino, on War Eagle's flanks. I'd heard they were going bankrupt and so pled for permission to start leaching for minerals. They just won that request. Doesn't say what process they'll use, but the industry standard for leaching gold is cyanide, which is of course toxic to the environment. And people. One can only hope there's no leak in their liners anywhere.

According to one source, the original Oro Fino mine produced $1,800,000; according to another source, it "yielded $2,756,128 in six years, without any considerable cost to its owners." That's at the value of the dollar back then. Silver Falcon expects to recoup 6 million dollars worth of gold and silver from the tailings.

But gold fever hasn't grabbed us, and we're more interested in riding these historical trails, like this steep descent from the War Eagle saddle, and 'discovering' new sights, like this cool old mining shack. 

Note the old outhouse that perched right over the creek (!!! woe to the downhill neighbors!).

The ponies work hard, climbing 1500' to 7600', just 300 feet below the top of War Eagle peak, then scooting and slipping back down the other side, reminding us just how hard the mining days must have been, not just for humans, but for the 4-legged beasts that toiled the roads, making possible the Gold Follies and Dreams of men (and women) of the Idaho Gold Rush days.

[slide show here]

Give Those Cow Ponies Credit

Monday August 21 2011

We've been talking about finding a trail to ride up into the Owyhee Mountains to Burnam Flat from home. Over the years, Steph, Carol, and Regina have ridden up there at different places with some ranchers, but some of it always involved scrambling off trails up some steep slopes, and they don't exactly remember the routes. If you don't know where the gates are, you won't get through, and we tend to like to avoid cliffs.

Regina and I studied maps and Google Earth (I caught Steph's bug - it's addicting when you look at 3D images of mountains and wonder where you can go and how you can get there!), and we plotted some of the cow trails Regina rode with the Joyce Ranch cowboys as they were gathering cattle last fall. You can't always see existing roads on Google Earth (because of the forest), and you sure can't trust the accuracy of the USGS maps - sometimes they show old roads and trails that no longer exist; sometimes they don't show the newer roads that do exist. Regina has a good knowledge of the area, but a lot of that is cross country because that's how the cows go.

I drew our proposed route on the maps: up Fossil Creek and cross to Gerdie Creek where there is a road (Regina rode on it) going up the creek; up out of that drainage, over a saddle to the Sinker drainage, down and along the (? unnamed?) Southeast Fork of Sinker, turn up the South Fork of Sinker, and hit Scotch Bob Road. If we were lucky.

It was maybe 7 mountain miles in to Scotch Bob Road, so either 7 miles back out, or find another route.

Scotch Bob connects to the Silver City Road (if there are no locked gates; an old mining tunnel is being reopened, so who knew if public access was cut off); roads off Scotch Bob should eventually reach Silver City, though that would take other days of exploring.

We cheated a bit by hauling the 6 miles of boring straight bumpy rocky road up to the base of the mountains to start out on the route we we picked out.

Unloaded the horses - and realized I forgot the maps.


Well.

Regina thought she had most of the trails in her head. We wouldn't get lost, and I at least had a GPS to take waypoints if we had to navigate back somewhere, and to see later where we'd gone on the maps.


We started at the corrals on Fossil Creek. The ruins of an old cabin mark the spot of some old homesteader. Presumably someone lived there back in the days that water was flowing, because Fossil is bone dry now except for the 100-year flash-flood.


We crossed a ridge into the Gerdie drainage (eventually reaches Sinker Creek) and hit an old road that wound up into the mountains.

Quite scenic - and quite rocky. And it got rockier. Hard to believe anybody would drive on this road, but it's been done. The horses were having a hard go along half a mile of scree slope, where the rocks were the road.

It was a bit like snowshoeing without the snowshoes - step and slip back with every step, with your momentum arrested. We passed the scree slope but then the road started climbing, quite steeply. The day wasn't too hot yet but the horses were drenched in sweat by the time we reached a high point -

and still had more to climb.


Jose was panting when we reached the saddle at 5600' (we'd started out at 4100'), but it didn't stop him from noticing the spectacular view of the spread of the headwaters of the Sinker drainage. We could see Burnam Flat up there to the southeast (another 1600' up), and in the distance to the north, a little piece of the Silver City Road.


At this point, Jose, August, and Krusty the Younger were sure glad they aren't cow ponies, because Regina was pointing out an even higher ridge they'd ridden to gather cows. Her mount Mufasa (who's ridden that ridge) was nodding his head in agreement. Those cow ponies have to be tough for the amount of ground and the kind of country they sometimes cover searching for cows. And they could move fast too - Steph and I had learned that when we thought we'd be cowgirls and help a local rancher round up a bull.

We saw a lot of cows back here in the mountains, and wondered how on earth the cowboys know how to find the ones that don't want to be found.


We got off and led our horses down, down, down from the pass toward the creek below, thinking we sure didn't want to have to go back up this on the way back.

Unbelievably we saw ATV tracks on the road. Braver souls than me and Jose! We alternately rode and led down to this unnamed creek, Jose ogling the view along the way.


We came to a fork in the creek, and here's where Regina's good memory of the maps faded (mine was kind of non-existent, anyway). She thought downstream was the North Fork of Sinker and it would eventually hit Sinker Creek; but the decision on which way to go was easy, as no road or trail continued downstream, and the road continued up the other fork of the creek.

The road began showing so many ATV tracks, that we figured we had to be on Scotch Bob road. Sure enough we came to some signs of human life: campers, holes in the ground, and miners. Jerry was busy at work mining his claim for gold.


Yes, he said, we were on Scotch Bob road, there was a waterfall nearby, a road that would take us to Silver City, the Sinker Tunnel down the road, and the Silver City road 2 1/2 miles away.

We'd done it! Already we'd decided there was no way we were backtracking over what we'd done, so we set off at a trot for the Silver City road.

On the way we came across Sinker Tunnel (the Silver Falcon Mining Corp, who moved in last year to sift through tailings for traces of gold and other precious metals, is digging in the Sinker Tunnel and will work it, if it can be made safe, though we heard rumors that already they're having trouble with collapses),

and an old mining cabin still standing.


We hit the Silver City road and zipped the 4 miles down to Sinker Creek. From here we'd travelled 15 miles; it was probably at least 10 back to the trailer (it would be rocky, but not difficult, and little climbing like the last 15 miles). We considered calling Rick to come pick us up, but by the time he got to us, we'd probably be almost at the trailer. It wasn't too hot a day, so we rode back - and oh, what a trail!


Sinker Canyon is the archetypal Owyhee County canyon - rugged high-walled ryholite cliffs framing a creek (this one flows year round) - a treasure hidden in the rolling desert hills you see from the highways. Most of it is rocky creek bottom that we had to walk, but both Jose and I were gawking at the scenery anyway.
[slide show here]


Carol knew to turn up the North Fork of Sinker - this is the same trail Steph marks for the Sinker Canyon day of the Owyhee Canyonlands - and we followed our familiar old trails back to the trailer. We sure were happy we'd cheated and saved ourselves the extra 6 miles of slow riding home.

After the fantastic ride Jose was only a little tired but I was whooped. We'd ridden about 26 miles in 6 1/2 hours, a strenuous Limited Distance ride, though I felt like I'd been about 75 miles.


I'm glad I'm not a cowgirl, and Jose sure is glad he's an endurance horse and not a cow pony. Those cow ponies sure earn their oats!

You Are Welcome

Wednesday July 22 2009

You Are Welcome

As Karen B said in her Summer Heat Horse Tales blog, "The weather has been HOT but the riding goes on." The riding does go on, and there's a little treasure out in the Owyhees mountains if you can brave the heat and your horse can endure the effort in getting there.

There's been little variation in the weather the last few weeks except for the digit after the 9: 92, 95, 98, 99. The NOAH forecast just shows a big blazing orange disk in the sky.

But, if others can put up with your whinefest (i.e., if they can put up with my whining), there's nothing like a new trail to make one (me) forget temporarily about the hardships of riding in the summer desert heat.


Carol and I hauled two of her horses up the road toward Silver City early in the morning and met Karen S for a change of scenery. We'd been talking of a ride all the way up to Silver City, but it really is too hot for that right now. (How about in the fall, or better yet, the winter when it's 60 degrees cooler!?)

Instead, we did a loop that took us over part of a trail we will one day take to Silver City - an old mining ghost town in the Owyhee mountains that was once one of the leading producers of silver back in the 1860's. Silver City is in the National Register of Historic Places; you can still stay in the original Idaho Hotel, originally built in 1863.

Our rutted 2-track dirt road led us into Diamond Basin, and up and up...and more up. The expansion of the view was proportional to the angle of the ascent (some kind of mathematical formula I've forgotten from school).

My mount Cinco and Carol's mount Suz aren't fit yet, so they were feeling the climb. We had to stop where it started getting really steep and catch our breaths in the shade; and then they staggered up the final steepest 40 yards. It was possibly the biggest hills these former arena horses had ever seen. Karen was riding her fit endurance horse Gil, and even he was thinking this was a rather amazing horizontally-challenged road, or else he was empathizing with our two wobbling sweatballs.

What was REALLY amazing was that someone in a pickup had driven up this road at some point, someone with stronger nerves of steel than me, which we could tell by the fact that their camper shell had fallen off and was over the edge of the road and planted in the dirt on the steep drop-off. Do you think they didn't notice that it fell off their truck?


We rode over the top to Milk Springs, and down to Tiddie Springs (really, that's the name) and the North Fork of Sinker Creek. Way down in the valley far below, Sinker Creek is the creek we cross at the Joyce Ranch on some of the Owyhee endurance rides.

The dirt road along this upper part of North Sinker wove through a juniper forest, and crossed the creek at an old homestead cabin. A handwritten note on the door says: "To anyone that stops here. This was originally the Montini's homestead cabin. It is still used as a cow camp occasionally. If you want to stay here you are welcome. Please leave it as good as you found it. Please close the door. Thank you! - Joyce Livestock Co."

Nice or what? The door was unlocked; inside was a little food and some water jugs, a little pile of firewood for the stove, and a cot. And a guest book to sign. Outside was a campfire ring (some litter in there :> : ( - next time I'll bring a pack to haul it out) under a big cool juniper, an outhouse, and a corral for horses. Oh, all kinds of ideas were popping into my head.

But today we left the cool oasis, and made a loop back to the high point we'd crossed. Then we walked on foot back down the steep section, and continued back on down, down, down, to the heated valley floor.


Not much of a breeze anymore, and the mercury was climbing. The water in my bottles in my pack was getting near boiling - didn't taste too good or do too much quenching going down my throat, and it didn't cool me off too much when I poured it all over my head, but it was still a good thing to have.

The horses were happy to get back to the trailer, and we loaded up and got the heck outta Diamond Basin before we started to cook.

It is a good way to beat the heat in the Owyhees: ride early, discover new treasures where you are welcome. Next time I'll remember to freeze my water bottles overnight.