Pacific Crest Quest

It was a lovely, sunny morning in the meadow where we camped the night before; there was even a cabin/shelter at the campsite, but I still chose to sleep in my tent (sometimes those old structures are pretty infested with mice!). This day's ride was a beautiful 21 miles to the trailhead in Pine. We dropped quickly off of a mesa and then rode along its base for several miles. I even quite literally stumbled upon a newborn elk calf! It was lying just on the side of the trail at

This was the last day of our section of trail, which took us to the trailhead where my truck and trailer were waiting. It was another dull day view-wise, but we had some interesting challenges, like getting water from a huge tank and crossing Highway 77. Unlike the PCT, much of the AZT runs through rangeland and pastures or fairly near "civilization" in one form or another. That's been a good thing in terms of the access to water; I've pretty much come to the conclusion tha

It was very appropriate, after spending the night at the Gila River, that one of the first things I saw the next day on the trail was a Gila monster! It was a very beautiful specimen, with brilliant markings, and not camera-shy at all! He let me get up-close and personal with the pictures. The views on the trail the rest of the day were not as impressive and we did a long 32 miles. The morning was scorching hot while the late afternoon felt like we were in a wind tunnel. T

I had a truly awesome day on the trail today. I started with the horses at the Picket Post trailhead and rode to the Gila river. The whole way there I was on the lookout for the guys in the non-profit organization Heroes and Horses that I met the day before while out caching supplies for this next section. This is group dedicated to helping veterans through a program of wilderness riding. I had been following their "500 Mile Project" on social media for several months an

Today was another long day and consisted of snakes and downed trees. I saw one kingsnake and two rattlesnakes along the way. I lost count of how many down trees, some of which I had to use my saw on to clear dead branches out of the way before the horses could cross them. But nothing was too challenging, so that was a relief. I did miss a turn-off while in Saguaro National Park so that added an extra three miles to what was supposed to be a 26 mile day, and we didn't get to

Today ended with one of the most famous and spectacular sections of the PCT, the Kendall Katwalk, just before we reached Snoqualamie Pass. (And yes, that's a thin thread of trail that you see blasted into the side of the sheer granite cliff!) But before we got there, we had a lot of other adventures along the trail. It began with another sunny and beautiful morning, and we had only about a dozen more fallen trees as we left camp that we had to deal with before the trail beca

I rode into the Mammoth area today, and had a marvelous welcome at Agnew Meadow from the pack station managers there. My mother had called Red's Meadow earlier in the week to check on whether I would be allowed to stay overnight at the pack station, and they extended an open invitation for the corrals at either place. I stopped briefly at Red's Meadow on the way in, but I really wanted to make the extra miles so that the next day's ride wouldn't be too long, and I opted to

Another fairly easy day of only 20 miles as we crossed Mather Pass, but it ended with a very funny and strange encounter with a determined deer. We started with a glorious clear day of sunshine as we began the climb up toward the pass itself. At the top we paused to take in the beautiful view before heading down the steep other side, which is named the Golden Staircase. The Golden Staircase descends from Mather Pass into a valley filled with lots of lovely meadows. As I sai

Today was a big day, as I rode over two big Sierra passes, including the highest point of the PCT, Forrester Pass, which tops out around 14,000 ft. I believe we were some of the first stock over these passes this year, and I was very grateful that they were almost entirely free of snow--certainly none that caused us any trouble--so my strategy of skipping this and heading north to ride elsewhere and then coming back for the Sierra section is paying off at last. Because of t

The day started off well as we passed some beautiful scenery, including pretty Toad Lake. But it quickly took a bad turn when Takoda lost a front shoe. Probably it got battered by yesterday's rocky trail, however the way it came off all at once and taking a big chunk of hoof along with it also seemed to indicate that he stepped on it with a hind foot or caught it in a crevice as we were walking today. In any case, I looked back and all the sudden saw that he had no shoe.