2025 Old Salem Part II: Cruising the 50 on Day One

August 30 2025

Hillie Willie and I would be riding Day 1's 50-miler with his BF (Best Frenemy) DWA Papillon. Pappy and Connie were entered in the AHA Arabian championship 50, so her goal was to top 10 in that division. She was going to let Pappy move out faster than he usually does, and Willie is long-strided enough and fit enough now that he he and Pappy should easily be able to cruise along together at that speed. It turned out to be Willie’s very comfortable moving-out pace.

Pappy got to lead because he gets really wound up if Willie trots beside him or too close behind him, and Pappy was really wound up at the start anyway because he thinks he’s a racehorse, which he never was, but he could’ve been, and he was out to conquer everybody in front of him. 

But after the first couple of miles, we ended up in this beautiful Bubble (nobody close in front or behind us) that lasted almost the entire first 25 mile loop. It was glorious. The day was glorious. The footing glorious. It was a cool morning, not smoky, the trails were perfect from Wednesday’s rains, and our horses ate up those two-track winding logging roads. We had a blast and got the 25-mile loop done in three hours.

Willie felt fabulous and strong the whole loop. But strangely, when we trotted out for Dick the vet, I thought I saw a slight bobble or two of his head as I glanced sideways, and Dick said there was something going on and he waved Joe the vet over to watch him trot out again. Oh dear! So I trotted Willie out again, and this time he was better, and Dick and Joe could not pinpoint what or where the "something" was, and it wasn’t consistent. Connie saw it, and she said she didn't know what that was. Never seen it before. Dick asked me to come back before we went out on the second loop and I said absolutely, I wouldn’t take my horse back out on a 25 mile loop if he was at all questionable. 

During the vet check I purposely didn’t try to find any stiff muscles, and I didn’t walk him around at all, just let him eat and rest and drink, because if there was anything going on, I wanted it to show up when I trotted him out again. When we went back for a trot out before we left on the second loop, Dick and the vet Robert watched him trot out, and said maybe they saw something and maybe not, but it was much much better, if it was even there at all. Dick said I could go out. I said I’d start out and if I felt anything I’d turn right around.

Well. I tried for 10 miles to find any kind of bad step or anything, and I couldn’t find one. So then I just quit worrying about it, and we had another great loop. We had a Bubble for a while, then lost it when four riders caught up with us and we played leapfrog for a while, and Pappy got all wound up again, and Willie got a bit wound up. I'd switched him to his jaquima halter for this loop, but he wasn’t uncontrollable, so that was good. We kept moving along at a good pace, and finally got a comfortable Bubble again ahead of the riders for the last part of the loop.

I still couldn't feel a single bad step, and Willie felt so strong and powerful. I am so amazed at this horse at how easily he just cruises along, and how he really seems to like it.

We finished that loop in 3 1/2 hours, and because there was a kerfuffle with trail markings, quite a few people ahead of us missed the correct trail unfortunately. We almost did, but we figured it out right away, fortunately. So that’s how we ended up in fifth and sixth places. And honestly, I couldn’t give a hoot about where I finish, I just want to complete my rides with a sound and healthy horse. In the end, nobody remembers where you finish, it doesn’t matter. The healthy sound horse matters.

I was holding my breath for the trot out, but Willie looked perfect. Another 50-mile finish for Hillbillie Willie. 

Go Standardbred!!!

So, during the ride when I thought my horse might end up lame, I thought, just let us get a completion on this ride, and we won’t do anymore this weekend. But on the second loop when my horse felt so strong, and didn’t take a single bad step, I thought we might do an LD on day two and/or day two and three. I would trot out for the vet in the morning and see if he could see anything. And of course if I started and felt anything at all, I'd just turn around back to camp.

Also, there was still that rooster chicken hanging around ridecamp. He made himself right at home front and center stage during the ride meeting and dinner.

**top photo by Steve Bradley** 
We let Pappy get a ways ahead of us before I let Willie go by Steve. He shifted to High Gear Pace to catch Pappy, so yeah that's his racing pace in the photo!

2025 Old Selam Part I: Before the Ride

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.

City of Rocks: Year 9 on the way to Decade Team

 

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!

Last Ride of the Season: Hillbillie Willie’s Trick or Trot

October 29 2024

My Oscars speech:

This weekend could not have been accomplished without help. I forgot Willie’s bridle. No way would I have started him in his lovely hybrid Jaquima halter (and, turns out, No. Way. could I have ridden him on the first loop in that!!!) So, mucho mucho thank you to Stevie, who supplied a headstall that fit Willie’s big honkin' Standardbred head, and thank you to Layne, who happened to have in her barn the exact same big honkin’ kemberwick port mouthpiece bit Willie uses! (He hates a snaffle). Both of those saved my bacon whilst Willie was On Fire the first loop!

In Endurance riding, you have to be flexible. Have goals, yes, but leave them subject to change, depending on your horse, depending on the day. My goals for the last ride of the season were two LDs at the Trick or Trot ride over the Eagle Canyon trails. And of course a calm start with a finish at the end! I hoped Willie had the same goals.

No matter how you slice it, in the spring or fall, the trails at Eagle Canyon are hard. Willie is not a hill horse. He *can* climb hills, but they are hard on him, and often he just isn’t comfortable on the downhills. And everything on these trails are up, or down, with little flat in between. 

It was near freezing in the morning, so we saddled up early and walked around camp for 20 minutes before the ride. Willie had plenty of energy but was calm. When I mounted up amongst the witches and headless horseman and skeletons (it was Halloween), he stayed calm. When the trail was open, we strolled out side by side with Karen and Riley, and Willie stayed calm as we started trotting up the long hill (first of a thousand) out of camp. We trotted (uphills) and walked (downhills) with Riley for a mile or two, after which Willie started revving up. By the time another mile passed, he was like, Alright already, time to move. 

Hopes for a slower ride went out the window then. Willie wanted to go, so we went! It really does no good fighting him for mile after mile, because he’s wasting as much energy revving as he would if he was just moving out. There were gopher holes, and some badger holes to be a bit careful of, but he’s pretty sure-footed and pays attention, more-so when he’s moving out than when I’ve got an anchor hold on him. 

I always tend toward the conservative - that’s my endurance upbringing - looking forward to finishing one day and riding the next day, but after a while, I gave up and let him go. Willie’s not so much about having to get to and be in the front; he just likes to move out and have a space in front of him (that coveted Bubble a lot of us like), to adventurously fly down an open and new trail, the bigger view the better, the twisty-er the trail the better. I really think he likes the feel of the wind in his mane and tail! I know he loves the Endurance trails, which are soooooo much better than running round and round and round a racetrack.

In the April 25-miler at Eagle, the first few miles he was on crack and legs spinning every which way, and at the first vet check, he had a hitch behind and was pulled. Today, I just figured with a hard fast 12-mile first loop, either he’d pass the vet check and we’d go on to loop 2 (where I knew he’d slow down), or if he got pulled, it had just been a hard fast first conditioning loop of 12 miles, and it was fun.

He zipped along happily on a loose rein, up and down and up and down, and the 12 miles flew by, and we arrived back in camp some 18 minutes ahead of the next rider. Not my intention! But happily, he was already pulsed down when we arrived, and he was sound! Forty minute hold and we were off on loop 2.

We did take loop 2 easier. I let Willie pick the pace. Trot or canter or pace where he wanted to, walk when he wanted to. Nearing the end of loop 2, he was taking more of the downhills at a walk, and I even dismounted to walk down several long steep hills. As long as I knew I could climb back on him at the bottom! He drank deeply at the water troughs (yay!) and the only other horses we saw on loop 2 were in the distance on the 50-miler, and a few trail riders out for their own fun.

Willie pulsed down right away when we got back to camp, finishing first, trotting out sound (yay!!!!), and later just missing Best Condition by a point or two. So close! Nora’s Portia finished second, after taking a tumble a couple of miles from the finish and bruising Nora spectacularly (but nothing broken!!) and took Best Condition.

I was thrilled with Willie’s ride, and thought I’d just end our season on that note. He didn’t eat great throughout the day (he got A's on his gut sounds at the first vet check and finish, and his pulse was always low, so nothing was wrong), and day one was just one tough ride for a not-hill horse, even though it was only 25 miles. We didn’t get our two days of riding in, but a sound finish on a hard ride - a perfect end to a season of Standardbred fun!

Top photo by Steve Bradley!

Hillbillie Willie and the Last of the Autumn Suns

October 12 2024

Normally I shoot the 3-day Autumn Sun Endurance ride in Gooding, Idaho, but this time I wanted to shoot days 1 and 3 (and RM Jessica’s dad would shoot day 2) and ride Hillbillie Willie on day 2 on the 55-miler. He was fit and hot and ready to roll, and he could use another ride after his 3 days of LDs at Old Selam five weeks earlier.

However. It would just be Willie’s second solo voyage to an endurance ride. He’s not a great ride-camper anyway (always messing and getting into stuff), but, going solo….. I apologized to everybody at the ride beforehand (if you didn’t hear me) because Willie was going to be VOCAL, calling for his BFF DWA Barack all days and nights.

We parked right next to Shyla and her Thoroughbred mare Nya, and mare mule Sadie, and Willie made instant fast friends, especially with his new BFF girlfriend mule, although he kept up his whinnies for at least 48 hours, just in case Barack was within earshot.

Ever since Willie’s meltdown at the start of Eagle Canyon in April, our first ride of the season (after 7 seasons!!!!!), I’ve since been a little nervous about starting rides on him. Although he’s steadily been improving this year. But you just never know. At Old Selam we had 3 days in a row of calm starts. But here he’d be without his buddies all weekend, so…….

Autumn Sun is not a hard ride. It’s a rocky ride. There are places you have to walk, places where you can move out as fast as you want, and places you could move out but be careful and be ready to slow down. We’d have a big climb on loop 2, but the rest is mostly flat, gentle hills.

It was chilly Saturday morning as we saddled up, so I hand walked Willie around camp with 15 minutes to start time. At 5 minutes till, I climbed aboard. He was still a bit amped, but good. He wanted to go already. Only 4 other riders were ready to start; nobody else was even in sight. I’d thought maybe I’d ride with Kristen and Chancey, Sara and JoJo, but I didn’t even see them saddling up when we walked around camp. Maybe they’d decided to do the LD instead.


When ride manager Jessica yelled “Trail’s open!” at 7:30…… nobody went. *I* did not want to go out first. I wanted to drift in after other riders, with a little bubble. Love the Bubble.

Stevie and Sonic, Alex and Alexander Hamilton went out first. Two other ladies went out next, so I fell in a bit behind them. But Willie was so amped he wasn’t going to keep a space there, and he was starting to irritate one of the horses, so we went on past them. But we didn’t have quite enough of a gap from Stevie and Alex ahead of us, so, I had the anchor hold on Willie. He kept to a trot, but he would have preferred to go a hundred miles faster.

Only a half mile or so out of camp, the two-track followed a rocky trail, so we had to slow to a walk. Willie watched his feet but boy was it a fast walk. Back onto a two track road, the trail quickly made a sharp left turn back onto another trail. Stevie and Alex had missed it. Dang. That put me and Willie in front where I didn’t want to be. I hollered at the girls to turn around and fortunately they heard me.

It was a super rocky stretch of cow trails, and super sparse ribbons because the dang cows ate them, again and again, after Jessica and crew kept putting more out. I kept a sharp eye out for hanging ribbons, ribbons on the ground, and shreds of ribbons that the cows forgot to swallow. Willie was fabulous about watching his footing, and he wasn’t amped anymore, just forward, ready to move out!


We finally made it out of that rocky-snot section, passing Wally who took our picture, then out on a smooth two-track road where we were able to move out at a smart trot. Willie was happy to be cruising along the sagebrush desert. After 10 miles or so, we had a little detour to a stock tank, where I was so happy Willie dunked his head in and took a big drink. Yay! Off we went.

After another 5 miles or so, a pair of riders were coming up behind us. It was Kristen and Chancey, Sara and JoJo. No, they had not changed their mind to do the LD, they woke up at 7:27 AM, scrambled up and out, threw their saddles on and took off after all the other 5 of us had long gone!


We rode together for miles. It was nice to have the younger girls get off and get the gates off their shorter horses. :)  Also, it was nice at one gate that Kristen opened, that I was able to peel my fleece jacket off, and turn my backwards shirt around. I had wondered why my shirt pocket seemed to be around on my back, and why my shirt was so tight around my neck. What can I say, it was cold and I dressed under my sleeping bag with just a flashlight so I kinda got the shirt put on the wrong way.

Willie had a fun time with his new BFFs, trotting, pacing, cantering, and we girls yakked and the horses eyeballed each other as the miles went by. About 8 miles or so from camp, Kristen looked back and saw dust from two riders in the distance behind us. “Let’s go!” She said, and Chancey and JoJo shot off, and Willie stayed with his new BFFs, and yeehaw, the ground flew under us faster and faster, as the canters became gallops which became sprints. I let Willie do his thing, and his trot became a canter became a pace which switched to a racing pace (!), and ohmygod we were going fast. And then he lowered his body down and he switched to a higher gear and OHMIGOD I have never ridden that horse that fast! He was back in a race on the racetrack and he was FLYING, he was going so fast he was not wobbling back and forth but very smooth, it was fun and exciting and thrilling and then it was just getting too fast too much for me, with some rocky sections coming up on the road and I said, “Eeeeeeasy Willie, let’s slow down here!”

He would have rather gone on that fast but he consented to slowing down, let his little human come back down to earth, and I had to catch my breath more than he did because that was so insane!


I had to dismount for a gate (Kristen and Sara were long gone!), and that gave us a nice Bubble again. So we cruised the last few miles solo at a nice trot (or walk through a rocky dry wash), and by the time we reached camp, Willie had already pulsed down to 56.

He didn’t whinny once for anybody in camp, instead he chowed down on alfalfa in the middle of the vet check, then ate the rest of his hour hold in his pen, not even worrying about his mule girlfriend who was gone out on the 25-mile ride.


Stevie and Alex had arrived a few minutes after Willie and me, and when Alex and Alexander unfortunately got pulled, Stevie and I decided to do the last loop together. Our first part of loop 2 was a long climb up into the hills, our horses cruising companionably along, Stevie and I occasionally talking, often just silent and riding and enjoying being out in the desert on our horses. We had the same ideas of riding, moving out on the good ground and the gentle hills, getting off and walking the downhills, walking the few steep uphills, giving our horses time at the water troughs for good deep drinks (yay! Drink up!), eating alfalfa from the bags that RM Jessica left for snacks. The hay tasted way better when Stevie hand-fed Sonic and Willie.


We tied for third at the finish, and Willie ended up with High Vet Score again, yay Willie!

He was just happy he’d made yet another BFF with Sonic, and when I finally put him back in his pen, his BFF mule Sadie was back from finishing her second LD, and he could rest and gaze at her lovely big ears 5 feet away from him. (I don’t think Sadie was quite as impressed with Willie.)

Willie was tired enough after his ride that he didn’t make one peep that night, nor the next day until about mid-afternoon. :)

I’m so glad we got to ride this last Autumn Sun ride, so glad Willie survived his second solo ride camp and made soooo many new BFFs, so glad I have a horse who is enthusiastic riding alone and in company, so enjoyed riding solo, and with Kristen and Sara and Stevie, and so proud of my Standardbred!!!!!