Pigeon Mtn. GA trails

["Angela C. McGhee" <rides2far@juno.com>]

Well, for those of you who like to spend training weekends at Pigeon Mtn.
in GA, the trails (most of them) are re-opened.

We had a pretty bad ice storm around Christmas and LOTS of trees came
down.  Can't count on the hunters to clear them out, and there's only one
ranger, so it's up to the endurance riders.

Our fearless leader,  June Parsons has a new horse and was really ticked
at having to lose a training day, but she set the date for Saturday.  It
started pouring rain (about 1") Friday night.  Karen Zelinski (masseuse
migrating to Florida) was staying over Fri. night and said, "Well, don't
guess you'll be clearing trails now".  RIGHT!

Called June and heard what I expected.  "You can stay home if you want
to, I'm going to see what I can do.  I'm just glad I'm not missing a good
RIDING day!"

9 endurance riders, 3 males with chainsaws, and 6 females to drag brush
(we're SO traditional in the South). Kati Walker, as in "Katnmaj@aol.com"
managed to pick up an entire garbage bag of beer cans along the way.  I
pity the next poor soul that she passes on the trail who is drinking Bud
Lite.  There WILL be a murder.

It was about as bad as this stuff gets.  Rained a couple of inches during
the 7 hours we were out there, but like June said, "at least we didn't
miss a ride."  My favorite part was 1/2 way through the day when we got
to a normally small creek that was now close to 2' deep and a rushing
torent about 10 yards across.  Had to just wade on across and try hard
not to get knocked down.  It was 40 degrees and a long way back to the
truck. Rubber boots are a pain when they're holding the water IN. 

We've got tremendous winds today after all that rain and I can
practically "see" pine trees falling right and left.  As far as "how to
carry a chainsaw on a horse" it wasn't necessary. We hardly had to walk
over 10 yards from the trail head to start cutting.  No need for horses,
but it was amazing how much steeper and longer this trail was without
them!

Somehow, since Pigeon is a WMA it would be nice to have a sign somewhere
saying, "trails cleared by local endurance riders" or something to that
affect.  I can just imagine the hunters thinking that all those huge
funds they pay for their hunting licenses every year have put this trail
system in and maintained it, and that they wish we'd stay the heck out of
there.

Angie (tired and wet, but we've got a place to ride)

___________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html
or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]