As I previously mentioned in a post about purchasing cowboy hats, we’re doing our best to become comfortable in our own tourist skins. So we embraced it in full measure by using them on a horseback trail ride.
We were led by a wrangler who had been doing this for six years. At first I too quickly judged him and gave him the nickname of Cowboy Calvin Klein. This was on account for his clean and barely used chaps and the fact that his cowboy hat seemed to deemphasize the cowboy aspects of hat-age. Moreover, it completed that de-emphasis with a feather.
A feather.
But, I judged him way too quickly and he turned out to be really cool, nice, and he knew his stuff. And let’s just say I would like him to be on my side in a roadhouse fist fight.
My horse’s name was Al, which I remembered through a memory trick that Paul Simon’s song “Don’t call me Al.” Marc’s horse’s name was Sacket, which he remembered through a memory trick of the lead wrangler yelling for “Sacket, to hurry up and quit being so slow.” It was an easy task.
They were trail horses so you didn’t get a chance to bring them up to a trotting speed. So instead you were left with having to just sit there, holding on to the reins, and in my case, make sure that Al didn’t get too close to Sacket’s rear end.
We saw parts of the park that few people and hikers get to see. That was the rewarding part about it. We went back to an area called Cracker Flats which is where a copper mining town used to be. The town no longer exists and you wouldn’t really notice it had been there unless the wrangler pointed it out. The ground was rough where the earth had covered the foundations and, once noticed, it no longer seemed a natural occurrence. The town itself grew to a population of 2,000 at its height and included a town newspaper. I couldn’t help but think of Garnet, MT as a ghost mining town. Make sure you look at that post if you haven’t already read it.
All was going well until we started to turn back to the corral. The rear wrangler was behind me was on a horse that was introduced to herd recently. The horse had barely been ridden and few knew what its quirks were. All of a sudden it got spooked and threw the wrangler off. Her head hit the ground, she wasn’t sure if it hit the horse’s head or a rock or just the ground. Still, it was frightening.
Her horse spooked my horse, which tried to get out of the way, but ran into Sacket. Sacket got a little frightened, but thankfully the chain of events was far enough apart that both Marc and I quickly got control of our horse.
The rear wrangler claimed to feel fine and only complained of a faint headache and a painful wrist. She seldom said a word as we rode the rest of the way in to the corral.
Despite that heart-pumping experience, it was still a great ride and it was nice to have the trail to ourselves. We were hoping to see some wildlife, but didn’t have luck. We were especially hoping to see bears as this would have been the best time to see them up close. You see, the horses aren’t scared of the bears and the bears see the humans as part of the horse. So the bears make a judgment call that these giant animals walking in a herd are probably too big and too many to mess around with and the bears wind up being the scared ones.
Not sure if that would give me comfort in the moment, but I suppose it would help a little.
Enjoy the limited pictures we have of the trip.
-
- View from the corral looking over Many Glaciers Hotel.
-
- The corral.
-
- A view from the trail.
-
- Marc on the trail with the lead wrangler in front.
-
- Just after the ride.
