This is a story I wrote for Trail Rider Magazine in 2005
We went elk hunting this weekend in the West Elk Wilderness nearGunnison , Colorado
Saturday we rode out in the dark with headlamps at 5 AM. The first climb was up a ridge, a spine of rock that fell away 100’s of feet on both sides into dark timber abysses. There was dead-fall everywhere, rocks and snow – there was no trail. That was the scariest horseback ride I have ever been on. In the first mile we realized the mule that Donny was on just couldn’t do it. We were tackling a 45-degree slope of scree, rock outcroppings and nothing but the grade to guide us in the direction we needed to go. Donny had to turn back to get another mount. Zitali and I waited, in the dark on the windblown ridge. Donny came back in a half an hour on another mount. We continued up the ridge. We got near the top and the dead-fall became too much. We tried to drop off the sides to get around it but it was too steep and dangerous. We ended up having to drop off one side and side-hill to the next ridge over through a deep canyon and through dead-fall h%$l. There was snow, there were downed trees everywhere and the slope was still extreme. Zitali balked at NOTHING. I had to lead her through the maze of rock and trees and dead-fall and she willingly followed, never even crowding me. Even I had to duck and scramble. This climb and traverse took over four hours. The horse was flawless. She never lost her footing, never refused anything I asked and she was my rock when I was on the edge of my own sanity.
We finally reached the southern-most ridge which had a shear 1000 foot drop off to the valley below. We tiptoed down that ridge working our way through the rock formations. If I had not been so scared I would have been awestruck with the beauty – okay so I was anyway. We scouted a couple of elk parks over there but realized we had burned the best park of the morning feed in that climb. Donny had been up the ridge countless times, but it had been several years. The dead-fall this year was more than ever before. We didn’t know it was that bad until we were actually IN it. I can’t describe what it was like other than to say it was like a big box of kitchen matches had been dumped on the sheer, stunningly, steep side of a snowy mountain and we had to weed our way through it.
We worked our way down the ridge and dropped into the dark timber below. We wound our way through it and finally came into some open grassland. We checked for sign but found the lower parks had been inundated with other hunters. Not an elk or fresh track to be found. We decided to call it a day and worked our way back up to camp. All told that first day we covered about 18 miles – most with no trail and NOTHING remotely easy and NOTHING flat. My little horse did everything. Donny was floored by her ability and her heart. In 25 years of outfitting in theRockies he has never seen a
better horse. Nothing blew her skirt up – she was never edgy, never anything
but stoic.
The next morning I hunted alone on foot and then did an evening hunt in some lower areas to see if we could figure out where all the elk were. Still nothing. We knew we were going to have to get to the high parks to find elk.
The last day we took the horses out early afternoon to hunt the farthest "finger" of the elk parks. We had a narrow trail that traversed the bottom of each of the basins. These are not really basins but are avalanche chutes off the face of the mountain where nothing but grass grows – the bottoms riddled with broken timber from the last avalanche piled on top of the remains of a 100 years worth of avalanches. There were areas that the "trail" was an almost imperceptible traverse line across a rock face at a 45-degree pitch…truly it was no wider than a single hoof carved into the rock. These were places where we dismounted and lead horses across -- never stopping for fear that one second too long would cause them to lose footing. We made it to the base of the park we wanted to hunt. We turned up the ridge and climbed again up a face that would have been a challenge to simply stand on. We worked our way up as high as the horses could go and tied them in the trees only to climb the rest on our own.
We went elk hunting this weekend in the West Elk Wilderness near
Saturday we rode out in the dark with headlamps at 5 AM. The first climb was up a ridge, a spine of rock that fell away 100’s of feet on both sides into dark timber abysses. There was dead-fall everywhere, rocks and snow – there was no trail. That was the scariest horseback ride I have ever been on. In the first mile we realized the mule that Donny was on just couldn’t do it. We were tackling a 45-degree slope of scree, rock outcroppings and nothing but the grade to guide us in the direction we needed to go. Donny had to turn back to get another mount. Zitali and I waited, in the dark on the windblown ridge. Donny came back in a half an hour on another mount. We continued up the ridge. We got near the top and the dead-fall became too much. We tried to drop off the sides to get around it but it was too steep and dangerous. We ended up having to drop off one side and side-hill to the next ridge over through a deep canyon and through dead-fall h%$l. There was snow, there were downed trees everywhere and the slope was still extreme. Zitali balked at NOTHING. I had to lead her through the maze of rock and trees and dead-fall and she willingly followed, never even crowding me. Even I had to duck and scramble. This climb and traverse took over four hours. The horse was flawless. She never lost her footing, never refused anything I asked and she was my rock when I was on the edge of my own sanity.
We finally reached the southern-most ridge which had a shear 1000 foot drop off to the valley below. We tiptoed down that ridge working our way through the rock formations. If I had not been so scared I would have been awestruck with the beauty – okay so I was anyway. We scouted a couple of elk parks over there but realized we had burned the best park of the morning feed in that climb. Donny had been up the ridge countless times, but it had been several years. The dead-fall this year was more than ever before. We didn’t know it was that bad until we were actually IN it. I can’t describe what it was like other than to say it was like a big box of kitchen matches had been dumped on the sheer, stunningly, steep side of a snowy mountain and we had to weed our way through it.
We worked our way down the ridge and dropped into the dark timber below. We wound our way through it and finally came into some open grassland. We checked for sign but found the lower parks had been inundated with other hunters. Not an elk or fresh track to be found. We decided to call it a day and worked our way back up to camp. All told that first day we covered about 18 miles – most with no trail and NOTHING remotely easy and NOTHING flat. My little horse did everything. Donny was floored by her ability and her heart. In 25 years of outfitting in the
The next morning I hunted alone on foot and then did an evening hunt in some lower areas to see if we could figure out where all the elk were. Still nothing. We knew we were going to have to get to the high parks to find elk.
The last day we took the horses out early afternoon to hunt the farthest "finger" of the elk parks. We had a narrow trail that traversed the bottom of each of the basins. These are not really basins but are avalanche chutes off the face of the mountain where nothing but grass grows – the bottoms riddled with broken timber from the last avalanche piled on top of the remains of a 100 years worth of avalanches. There were areas that the "trail" was an almost imperceptible traverse line across a rock face at a 45-degree pitch…truly it was no wider than a single hoof carved into the rock. These were places where we dismounted and lead horses across -- never stopping for fear that one second too long would cause them to lose footing. We made it to the base of the park we wanted to hunt. We turned up the ridge and climbed again up a face that would have been a challenge to simply stand on. We worked our way up as high as the horses could go and tied them in the trees only to climb the rest on our own.
From there it was a foot hunt – it was hard, it was steep, it was long, it took hours. I finally did get a crack at a 5x5 bull from 485 yards but the shot was uphill to boot and my shot was 4" low – for me close enough to be proud of under the circumstances and with respect to the distance. I corrected for the distance but not for the extreme slope. It was near last shooting light when I made the shot and then I tracked the bull on foot for another mile or two again in dead-fall, snow and down the backside of that park into the ravine behind it. They were covering some country though and were headed into really dense timber so I had to throw in the towel. We had to turn back in order to be able to find the horses before it was too black to see.
We got back to the horses in the dark where they were waiting patiently tied. We picked our way down the ridge and then worked that side hill trail back through the chutes, across rock-slides and into the forest trail. Zitali actually found the trail for us a number of times as we wound through that black forest. She had been on it once in those three days and already knew her way back to camp. We rode that last hour and a half in blackness, she, always stepping out with ears forward.
We packed out camp the next day – without an elk but with newfound knowledge about my horse. There is NOTHING I will not trust this horse with. She wore saddlebags, a scabbard with a rifle and me with a full backpack on – most of that totally new to her. She is an "old soul"; she has been on this earth far longer than her six years. She has seen it all and done it all – it really felt like she already had. She was, yes repeating myself, STOIC. This was the most challenging, scary, physically demanding riding I have ever done, and I have done quite a bit. She was the leader and basically told me, "don’t worry, I’ll take care of you." And this Spanish Mustang did – like no horse I have ever known.
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