Tales from the trails
I found “Lost and Found” (EQUUS 500) very interesting! I have ridden in the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness, and would like to add two points about riding the backcountry.
First, wilderness rides are not for green riders with green horses. Make sure your mount has experience with difficult trails and will not panic at wildlife jumping out near them---or worse yet, spying a bear or cougar!
Also make sure someone in the group is experienced if you are not. My rides were always great due to having an experienced trail horse and experienced friend taking me out.
Next, on suburban trail rides, if your horse gets loose use social media! Post not only a good photo, but also the city and street where your mount disappeared. Call Animal Control. If there is a local pet “Lost and Found” page, post on it and make sure your post is “sharable.”
I learned how these measures can help in early 2019. We were hit with a horrendous snowstorm that took down fences, trees and even buildings. My horse Chico spooked at all this and disappeared. Within 12 hours the folks who found Chico and I had “found” each other.
Midge McGinnis
Oakland, Oregon
I would like to share my experience with having a horse get loose on a wilderness trail. My husband and I and another couple took four riding horses and one packhorse to camp out on Vail Pass in Colorado.
The pass is at a 10,666-foot elevation on I-70 with higher mountains around. On our second day the horses got loose. I figured they would head downhill and was worried that they would find lush, grass in the median of the highway. On our search, I came across some
outfitters who were going to set up a hunting camp. They told me they had seen three horses heading uphill.
Sure enough, I looked up at the horizon and there I saw the three horses above the timberline at approximately 11,500-foot elevation.
The outfitter said that horses tend to go uphill, not down.
After a long hike I came upon the horses, munching on the sparse grasses at that elevation and I rode one down with the other two following all the way back to the campsite. Lesson: Don’t assume you know where horses will go. And, according to the outfitters, “look up.” Fortunately, this was a happy ending, if an exhausting one.
Jackie Dunn
Elbert, Colorado
At the end of the article, the author states that she thought her horse
Fletch could be dead or still out in the wilderness. There is, however, another possibility: Someone may have come across Fletch and simply kept him. That actually did happen in the Cascade
Mountains here in Oregon some years ago. A Foxtrotter went missing from a campsite and could not be found despite extensive searching and other efforts. Later it came out that a person knew who had taken the horse but refused to divulge the name. That person later died taking that information to their grave. Melinda Hartman
Grants Pass, Oregon