Ridecamp: Re: [RC] Tevis

My husband and I took the Sliding Sands trail down to the bottom of
Haleakala Crater on Maui in January on rental horses and my husband spent
the whole time trying to get his horse away from the edge. If you can
imagine riding down the inside of a slippery cone of sand with this narrow
single track zig-zagging down it and every step you take, the sand is
avalanching down into this big hole. Scared the you-know-what out of him.
One step over and that horse would have just slid down to the bottom. The
guide kept telling him not to worry about it and we knew the horse had been
down there a million times, but you can't help thinking about it! My horse
was a good girl and stayed right in the middle.

:) Jackie
----- Original Message -----
From: "Barbara McCrary" <bigcreekranch@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Lif Strand" <lif@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "RIDECAMP" <ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 9:08 AM
Subject: Re: [RC] Tevis


> I feel the same way.....I'm absolutely terrified of falling, whether it be
> off a trail or off a cliff (without a horse, even), or into a river, or
> whatever.  As for horses walking too close to the edge, I've noticed
horses
> like to do that, for some reason.  A horse that stays to the inside of a
> trail on a mountainside wins my undying gratitude.
>
> Barbara
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Lif Strand" <lif@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "RIDECAMP" <ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 8:47 AM
> Subject: Re: [RC] Tevis
>
>
> > At 07:30 PM 7/22/02, Barbara McCrary wrote:
> > >I would love to know why a trail dangerous enough for horses to fall
off
> of
> > >is presented to the public for a competitive event.
> >
> > Actually the places I *personally* know of where horses have fallen off
> the
> > trail aren't all that dangerous in themselves - they're not necessarily
> > narrow or rocky or steep.  However, each time a horse has gone off a
trail
> > *in my presence* it's been on trails that are traversing very steep
> > hillsides.  These trails don't have any place to go but down if a horse
> > steps off the side of the trail.
> >
> > One year I actually saw a horse go off a trail I'd just ridden over.
I'm
> > guessing the trail, which was flat at that point, was 4' wide, but it
also
> > zigg-zagged around to follow the contours of the hill it was
> > traversing.  The horse no doubt went straight when it should have zigged
> or
> > zagged.  It only fell about 15' but it was still scary.
> >
> > I myself am so scared of doing just that - having my horse step too
close
> > to the edge or off the edge and falling all the way down to the bottom -
> > that I hug the inside of the trails.  One year, in the dark, this caused
> me
> > to be caught on the neck by a really thick tree limb that wouldn't have
> > touched me if I'd been anywhere near the middle of the trail where I
> should
> > have been.  I had to bend back over the cantle of the saddle to avoid
> being
> > decapitated and had a really bad bruise on my spine from that - but
better
> > a bruise on my back than fall down to the river!
> >
> > Anyway, my point is that if you look at any horse trail, you'll almost
> > always see some hoof prints where horses do step off the edges.  A trail
> > can be flat, wide and solid but if that trail is going across the face
of
> a
> > hill, a horse can still fall off of it if the horse is stepping on the
> edge.
> > _____________________________________________________
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