Trek to Klickitat (long)

["Dawna Bynum-Boyd" <EndurzRider@worldnet.att.net>]

I wasn’t sure I was going to ride at Klickitat this year as I had a nasty
bout of food poisoning all week that I was trying to recuperate from.  I
attended a three-day Diana Thompson Clinic last weekend and grabbed some
tainted chicken on the way home Monday night, which started the whole mess.
If any of you are familiar with Diana Thompson, she is the founder of the
now gone Whole Horse Journal, her clinics are well worth the time.  She
covers accupressure, massage, Bach flower remedies, Chiropractic care, and
various other topics in a hands-on clinic.  I learned plenty of ways to help
both my horses overall health and his well being after rides.  The clinics
are limited between 8-12 participants and 4 horses so there is plenty of one
on one instruction.  I took my gelding Jay, who was sure we were going to a
ride, but ended up in an arena much to his dismay!  The after effects of the
unfortunate meal lasted until Thursday, upon which I felt better.  Since I
was sponsoring the BC awards I thought I’d at least well show up.  I wanted
to ride but needed to wait and see if I would have the energy to ride after
being down and out all week.  As it turns out I was happily feeling better
Thursday night and decided to ride at least the 50 miler at Klickitat on
Saturday.

Friday found me up early and on my way, after all I had an abundance of
sleep over the past week from being sick.  I wanted to get on the road early
and out to the ridecamp so that I could deliver the brochures for the RP
saddles (sponsoring the BC awards)  to Marilyn (the ride manager) and help
her out if need be.  We had an uneventful drive over, it was sunny and
bright and we arrived in camp fairly early with only a handful of riders
already there.  I picked a spot close to the vetting in area and close to
one of the many water spigots.  How nice, running water, now this was a
first for me in ridecamp.   Hummmm, I could learn to love this.  Ridecamp
was situated in the Glenwood Rodeo grounds amidst lots of evergreen trees.
The trees are quite close together but there are plenty of roads in and out
and places in between the trees to slide a truck and trailer.  In the years
past we have camped in an open meadow, so the sight of so many shade trees
was a welcome sight as the weather was predicted to be hot.

I found a suitable spot, unloaded Jay and tied him to the trailer, while I
and set about getting his corral ready.  Then I set up a couple of highlines
to attach the dogs to, gave everyone water and food, then made my way over
to find Marilyn.  Marilyn was organized as usual, took the brochures, and
set them with the other items for registration.  She seemed to have
everything in order and didn’t need help so I returned to finish setting up
my camp area, took a short nap and then wandered around camp.  Registration
began in a few hours and the vetting in began around 4:00 p.m. or so.  Jay
vetted in just fine as expected.  There was a pretty steady stream of
incoming vehicles until well after ride meeting and I think the ride ended
up with about 125 participants.

A decision was made to move the start times up a half an hour as the weather
was predicted to be very warm.  So we were off at 6 a.m. on Saturday
morning.  Thanks to some early risers at the concession stand, I even had a
nice cup of coffee before I got on the trail.  We headed up the trail with
Anne Blythe and Cynthia Peticous-Stroud and her two juniors Sara and Amanda,
and a couple of other riders.  The trail was nice and the pace was fast.
Cynthia and the girls had been training for this ride in particular and
their horses were eager and flying.  After the first vet check I decided
that Jay didn’t need to be traveling so fast so we dropped back after to a
bit slower pace.  I had some trouble with Jay’s pulse hanging at the first
vet check which turned out to be a very full bladder.  Poor boy, he almost
invaribly will not pee anywhere there is a chance of splatter so he was
evidently waiting until we were on more appropriate grounds.  Of course, I
didn’t realize this until we reached the right spot ?  After that no more
pulse problems…..sometimes I just wish he would just say it!  The trails
consisted of lots of winding trails and dusty two track through the woods.
I have never seen such a huge effort on the part of ride management to mark
a trail, but even so if you weren’t paying attention, you’d loose your way
due to the winding of the trail.  A test of my attention span for sure!  By
the end of the first loop it was pretty comical to look at one another with
our faces all dirty with dust and sweat.  What a sight we were that day the
lot of us.  After the first loop we rode with far fewer riders, I was
grateful for a smaller portion of dust to eat than on the first loop.  It
was amazing how that dust just hangs in the air, you truly cannot see the
ground in front of you if there is another horse leading.  To boot it just
seems to hang in the air rather than settle back down to the ground.  There
was quite a dust plume to be seen for some distance from the activity on the
trail.  The second loop was equally as nice, the footing again great, still
dusty.  Marilyn had some great signs up saying for instance “Jump or go
around” announcing logs in the trail.  Since Jay loves to jump we hopped
over almost all of them during the day as they presented them selves.  By
the third loop the day it had really begun to heat up.  I didn’t mention
before but the incoming and outcoming trail were a shared trail and by the
third time out Jay was demanding to know if I was okay.  He was sure we were
going the wrong way.  Everytime someone would approach us from the opposite
direction (coming in) he would just stop and practically shout “See…we ARE
going the wrong way”  It took some convincing on my part that I wasn’t
crazy.  Of course then when we came around again, he happily cantered his
way in.  We vetted out with Mike Foss, after trotting him out for his 10
minute CRI I was standing while Mike examined him.  Then I felt the world
getting dark and decided I’d better sit down before I ended up laying in the
dust.  Arlene Neale Wood was kind enough to take Jay and give him a nice
walk so that I could relax a minute.  Always present Jerry Pulju got me
something cold to drink and Cynthia presented him for BC for me when he was
ready.   Sue Griffin brought me by some electrolyte tablets that help
tremendously.

After I got Jay situated I spent a few minutes just resting and getting cool
after which I was able to gather enough energy to give Jay a light massage
and rub down with some Arnica and wrap his legs.  Later I took him for a
walk in search of green grass and I and the dogs had lunch up at the
concession stand.  It was quite a treat as they virtually never get people
food, but they had been such good dogs I decided a little treat would be
fun.  They were quite enthusiastic as you can imagine.

Marilyn and her family did an equally wonderful job at the awards the
following morning providing coffee and a large assortment of various mini
scones and muffins for everyone.  She had sweatshirts as completion awards
along with some very nice top ten and BC awards.  One of the fun things she
gave out was a Klickitat Trek Top Ten decal (now wouldn’t that be fun if we
had decals from all the rides ?  I can just see my trailer now!)

After meeting with a couple of riders interested in the RP after the awards,
Jay and I had an uneventful drive home, both of us glad to get out of the
trailer and truck respectively.  I turned him out into the pasture with the
other horses and went about getting the truck washed and cleaned out and
ready for Santiam.  Of course by then I was really on a roll (actually the
house was unbearably hot from being shut up all weekend and the hose and
breeze were much more inviting) so I spent the rest of the afternoon
cleaning and hosing out the barn, cleaning stalls and scrubbing water
buckets and troughs.  Then of course I brought all the horses in for the
night so they could mess it all up….oh well!

For those of you who didn’t make it to Klickitat you missed a nice ride, for
those of you coming to Santiam…see you there.

Dawna