Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Kananaskis, I've come home.
I've really missed seeing the Rockies and yesterday's horseback adventure ride into the mountains was beautiful and so...adventurous. We ended up at an altitude of 4060 ft. It's never felt this good, cantering through alpine meadows and racing through forests when you don't know where the next tree branch is coming from (ok so the second was not so smart...). At one point my ribs hit straight into a branch - luckily the rotten wood gave way before I did. A punctured lung would not have been quite as much fun. My horse, Nebraska, got little too excited and started doing some hopping and bucking midway through one of our meadow races. Needless to say, we lost pretty badly. He went skittering again when he spooked at a piece of tarp that was blowing in the wind. Silly monkey. We also got a little soaking wet (a little? soaking wet?) splashing around in Three Points River. We got halfway across when some genius decided to flick some water around. I'll spare you the details but it got COLD. We all learned that being wet in mountain air was not so fun. We ran into a few bear tracks, but old ones (we hoped), hopped a few fallen logs...oh almost cracked my head open jumping over a log when I didn't see the other tree a bit above it. I'm never playing a game of follow-the-leader ever again. Although the other "leader" didn't do so well either. She led us through a bog as a "shortcut" where we ended up sinking in almost to the horse's belly. The mud and guck was so deep, our feet were grazing the ground. We were jokingly throwing around the idea of tying a rope to each horse and rider so that if one of us disappeared, we'd be able to pull them out. Don't know how feasible that would have been. All that fun comes with a price though. I was so sore this morning I could barely get out of bed. I was moving in slow motion all day because my muscles were screaming at all the hard riding I'd done the day before. Was it worth it? Definitely.



Breathtaking scenery, although Nevada was unsure about the hill we were standing on. He was asking me why I was walking him off a cliff...

One of the meadows we were racing through, pockmarked with gopher holes. The big tree on the far right was one of them I almost killed myself on. They just kind of pop out of nowhere...
My mother would kill me if she knew what I was up to.

Relaxing for lunch on a sunny hillside, after which we climbed the mountain in front of us.

A photo of accomplishment. We almost made it to the top of that mountain. Wish we'd packed some rock-climbing equipment!

Nevada's also taking in the great view.

Going down was twice as rough as going up. At one point it got so steep and slippery with so much shale that we had to get off and lead the horses down the trail. At the end, I felt like a nice hot tub and a good massage.
What a day...