A group of us go on a four day camping trip up in the mountains somewhere every year. And every year, somehow, we end up in at least one life-or-death situation. :rolleyes: I’ve recounted one of the worse situations we’ve been in…it’s rather long. 
That year, we’d actually had a rather rough weekend, all in all,…lots of rocks, several bee nests, and a couple of difficult trails…so we were all tired by Sunday and so all we wanted was to do a nice, quiet, easy ride, come back, eat some lunch, pack up, and go home.
So, we remember seeing this very nice looking trail that went off of one of the main trails from a previous ride. The way that trail heads off, we figure it will come out on the top of the mountain, where we can pick up the Virginia Highlands Trail, come back across the top, and drop back down to camp via the main trail, basically where we started…of course, this trail we were thinking of was not on any of the maps…and no one in the area had mentioned it to us as a trail to ride…But it LOOKED nice. So we thought, “we’ll just ride it, and if it gets yucky, we’ll just turn around and come back.” Seriously, that was the plan…
The trail WAS very nice, for quite some time. Wide, well-traveled, you could see where people had clipped trees and brush back. We came to a very very rocky area, but could actually see where it ended in about fifty feet and the ground was good footing again, so we carefully crossed the nasty spot, and continued on. The trail got a bit narrower and is now working it’s way up the mountain on a slant. However, it still looked decent…right up until it didn’t. Without warning, it took a sharp turn straight up the mountain. The horse and rider in lead was caught off guard and the horse was going up before the rider could react. Now, once one or two horses started, there was no way, really, as unexpected as it all was, to stop the other nine horses on that narrow trail. They were all fresh and if some had tried to stop, they may have danced and fussed and that was not something we wanted to have happen on the narrow trail. So, in a split second, one had to make a decision, and of course, we all figured that it would level out again in a few feet (that maybe it was just a switchback) and no one realized how HEINOUSLY steep and LOOOOONG this was. Honest to God…I was about the fifth one back or so, and when I saw them start up this thing, and saw what the horses looked like as they were scrambling…I actually got sick to my stomach. Our feet were on the horse’s hip bones, our hands up near their ears, the horses were scrambling so hard, lunging and digging,… it was obvious that had ANYONE stopped for any reason, or lost forward momentum, that they would topple over backwards. I’m not exaggerating. Then we had to JUMP fallen logs across the trail! After one of these, my horse’s back feel slipped out from under him for a second and I thought we were goners. We couldn’t even stop to get off of the horses. Finally, when I thought the horses couldn’t possibly, physically go any further (and had visions of us all tumbling down the mountain), the trail leveled off alongside the mountain. We just had room for all of us to level off (and the horses had stopped to catch their breaths) when one of the riders behind me, Stacy, says, “hey, people, look here.” We turn and look at her and she’s got this 3/4 inch, 2 foot long dead tree branch sticking out of the air vent of her helmet. Somehow in the mad scramble up, this branch got lodged in the air vent. She told me later that it was pulling her head back and back, but she knew she could not stop, and when she heard something snap, she was not sure for a split second whether it was her neck or the branch breaking…
So, of course, someone whips out their camera and takes a picture of it.
One of the riders, Angelika, who is somewhat new to trail riding and trail riding with our group in particular says, “I have never, in my life, felt my horse’s hip bones with my feet.”
Just then the rider in the lead said “the trail makes another turn straight up the mountain right in front of me!” Okay,…at this point, we are now standing 10 horses on a trail that has now become an 18 inch ledge on the side of a 60 degree angle slope (and yeah, I don’t think I’m exaggerating the angle any). As soon as the words leave her mouth, the ground gives out from under her horse and they start sliding on their sides down the mountain. Sandy, the rider, manages to grab a tree and get free from the horse, and Half-Pint (her Shire/TB cross) comes to rest on some boulders. One of the boulders is dislodged and we hear it going down the mountain…and going…and going…and going…, Half-Pint, bless his heart, carefully picks his way through the rocks and makes his way cater-cornered back to the trail above him. Both he and Sandy are okay, but now we are all looking at each other, and I know that everyone is now thinking the same thing…OMG, what if there are bees up here?? What if a horse starts fidgeting (we are crammed together on that little ledge)…what if more ground gives way…and about then I say, “So…does anyone else feel like they’re going to vomit?”
One rider near the front, Joanne, says that she will got off and go on foot to see what the trail up ahead looks like, because honestly, at that point, we don’t even KNOW if we CAN get turned around, let alone face the thought of getting down that slope we just came up. So Joanne gets off her horse, and promptly slides right under him and off the trail and literally has to grab one of his legs to stop herself from falling off the mountain. What a good boy her horse is, he just stands there and looks at her as if she were crazy. Okay, Joanne gets back up, and crawls, actually crawls on her hands and knees, up the trail, and we hear her calling back, “It’s very steep, I am on my hands and knees…It keeps going up…uh oh…the trail just disappears! There’s nothing up here!”
Well, that’s it, we have no choice now but to somehow get everyone turned around and get back down. Everyone gets off. Now, some of the riders were riding English and had the short English reins… if you’ve ever turned a horse around on a narrow trail, you know that there can be quite a bit of scrambling as the horse gets around, sometimes it gets scared and jerks around quite fast. If you are too near it, you can get knocked off your feet. Joanne’s dismount showed us just how bad it would be to get knocked over by the horse, to say nothing of if the horse lost it’s footing and started sliding. So before we start, I had all the English riders take one rein off of one side if their horse’s bit so that they then had double the length of rein and could get away from their horse up the hill a bit and then tug on the rein to signal it to turn and be far enough away from it to let it do what it needed to do. We also started with the horse that was originally in front (Sandy and Half-Pint). He was already turned around from his slide, and then we turned the horse next to him around, and so on, until the LAST horse to turn was the one who would actually start down the hill first (most of you know that once a horse turns around and thinks he’s going home, it’s hard to make them stand and wait patiently). This whole process took about half an hour and during this time, we were formulating a plan for getting off of this mountain.
It was obvious we riders would have to walk. Gravity simply would not allow one to stay in the saddle on this slope going down. We also figured it would be too dangerous to try to take all ten horses down at once. Should one or two get to sliding or get anxious and start going too fast, it could cause a snowball effect through the whole group. So we decided to split the group up into two smaller groups and have about five minutes in between them.
Those in front of me were all experienced trail riders, all but one, but they were all somewhat younger, physically fit and agile. They all figured they would be able to stay near their horses while they worked their way down and keep them under control as much as possible. Those behind me, though a couple were experience trail riders, were either older, or had poor shoes for this sort of thing (tall boots and the like), or had a physical problem. Two people, Virginia and Angelika, had problems walking in this situation. Virginia had a fused ankle from an old break and Angelika had an old tendon injury, and both had difficulty walking on uneven or tricky ground.
So it was decided that I would stay with these people while those in front of me went on down first since Shadow was not a horse that worried about horses in front of him–particularly when I am on the ground with him. We’ve done extensive ground work for leading situations on the trail. He follows hand signals for leading and doesn’t need a lead rope/rein, will “stay” when told to and is just very much focused on me when I am on the ground. So Shadow would not be concerned with “catching up” to the group in front of him, particularly with me on the ground with him. The reason this was important is because those behind me would NOT be able to stay with their horses in this situation…The riders were going to have to walk behind the group of horses and carefully and slowly pick their way down. We were going to have to take their reins off and place them in a line behind Shadow, who I would have to keep under control. Generally, as most of you know, if horses are in single file behind each other, they tend to walk exactly in the footsteps of the horse in front. We were going to use this instinct to get them all down in an orderly fashion. One horse, Virginia’s horse, was quite used to doing this, he often would follow Shadow on trails when we were cutting brush and working on foot, so we put him in the middle of the group hoping he would be a steadying influence on the others if it were needed.
At this point, Angelika says, “I have never, in my life, taken my reins off of my horse and left him to find his own way down a mountain!”
I take Shadow’s reins off, I don’t want them getting caught on something, and we start down. Because I don’t have to hold on to him, I am mostly off to the side, and literally letting myself down from tree to tree. I point at the trail, and Shadow stays on the trail. A few times, I had to move onto the trail because of heavy underbrush, and I would signal Shadow to stop, get down on the trail a bit ahead of him (in case he should start to slide) and then signal him to walk and point directly behind me so that he would know to follow my footsteps. Like I said, we’ve done extensive schooling for stuff like this. He knows the cue for “walk, but stay ‘over there’ (which is wherever I"m pointing to)” and the cue for “walk and follow my footsteps,” and the cue for “stop and wait for instructions.” He also knows that it’s up to him how to negotiate an obstacle. He is not expected to go as fast as I go or anything, just to keep moving or not. He knows best how to negotiate himself past an obstacle, so I leave him to it, and he knows I will wait for him if he has to go slow, so there is no hurry in him while we are getting down that trail.
I look back at him periodically. He and the other horses are literally sitting on their tails and rumps and carefully sliding in places. Shadow is closely studying the ground in front of him as he goes, nose nearly touching the ground and his slow, careful steps are keeping the other horses slow and careful, too.
Once, one of the horses did start to slide and slid off to the side and got out of line. Once he was out of line, he started walking on his own and passing the others. I signaled Shadow to stop, went back and caught that horse, placed him back in line, and went back to Shadow (who kept everyone else standing still) and got Shadow moving again.
FINALLY, we were down to where the ground leveled off and we could get back on again. We waited for the people walking behind us to catch up, got everyone’s reins back on, and mounted. Eventually, we caught up with the other group where they stopped to wait for us. Everyone made it down and though there were some slipping and sliding, no one was hurt. Stacy ended up with a sore neck from practically being impaled in the forehead, there were some cuts and scratches, but that was it. ] Thank you God.
And thank you, Shadow, for being such a wonderful, amazing partner. ]
I have tons of stories like this…We’ve decided that what we do should be the next Olympic sport…Extreme Trail Riding.
