The Spotted Horse Ranch

We drive down to Jackson. I have really had enough of driving the RV now and am sent up Snow Bird on an ancient mountain bike to calm down. I ask the rental dude how fast he has done the climb and he gives me a target of 35 minutes to aim for. Disappointingly even in this state of angst I have to stop 3 times and miss his mark by 5 minutes. He warns me that it is “really tough” and that I’d have a lot more fun if I take the bike a mile up the road, but I judge that my state of mind is just right for a challenge of this sort on this occasion so decide to go for it anyway. Unsurprisingly, cycling up a black run turns out to be rather an esoteric pursuit, and the kind of climb that has absolutely no let-up; just about as steep as you can manage all the way up to the top. It occurs to me, as I gradually calm down and the challenges of parenthood dissipate, that I could turn around before I get to the top, but the 35 minute target and having to admit to failure spur me on. Finally, I decide to give up, and stop to ask an amused dog walker how much farther is the top. He reports only another quarter of a mile, so I continue. Fantastic view from the top, and a great descent; when I return I find the team playing happily on swings and slides with some local kids. That’s better.

Little do I know that my loaned bike helmet is to be the last protective head gear we see during this holiday, despite spending a week horse-riding across territory that would have Chris Bonnington looking for his ropes. The received wisdom in Wyoming is that a simple cowboy hat is good enough to protect the head from any unintended contact with the ground (or rocks, tree branches etc.) and the availability or otherwise of what we in the UK call a “riding hat” is never brought up. Reassuringly, fishing gear is available to borrow however.
We arrive and are shown around the ranch by young Chelsea, who is quite the image of the Marillion song, but whom I never see again until it is time to pay at the end. Not quite sure what she does really. The ranch has a communal building including a dining room, bar and pool table, and then ten or so cabins spread around. Ours is apparently the original “historic” cabin, built some time in the 1970s I guess, and super-comfy with a roaring fire, 3 bedrooms, “Grandma” style porch with rocking chair, and decorated by various items nailed onto the walls which have you guessing what they are. We have dinner with other guests then reasonably early bed ready for the next day. Breakfast bell is 8am, and we all manage to attend, for the first and last time. The food is hearty – eggs in various forms we have never seen before, pancakes, bacon cooked in brown sugar and maple syrup, and lashings of coffee, which after Costa Rica Sarah and I are now fully dependent on before speech becomes possible. At 9 we line up for our first ride.
Sarah has written to the ranch to inform them of our respective abilities, and they are very good at matching horses to these templates. Monty has “Pay-check”; and on camp day, Elvis;
Eliza has “Pops”; Mima has “Leftie”,
Sarah has “Charlotte”
and I have “Whiskey”.
We stick with these all week, except for Mima who had a less forward-going mount on the very first ride; Sarah whose horse is bitten badly on the penultimate day; and Whiskey who I tire out one day by going wrangling. The first ride is as a family, led by guides Dakota and Wes out up the canyon, and very steep terrain, but much to Sarah’s relief we all love it. I worry slightly about Monty, who after all is only 5, because you wouldn’t really want to fall off in some of the places that we go, but the Western saddle has a useful post which he holds onto for grim death at sketchy moments.
The first ride is mostly at walking pace, interspersed by trotting, and this is enough for the kids. The last thing we want to do is scare them, after all.

Which is why the afternoon ride with Zak, Sarah and I agree afterwards, is probably a bit fast. In retrospect, perhaps Zak sensed a little impatience from my end (why do Americans say “on my end” by the way?) at the perambulatory pace, but we end up “cruising” on Barney Flats strung out at a full gallop. Jemima decides that cantering downhill is not for her, just yet. Eliza seems totally unfazed and whoops quite a lot, but it all gets a little much for Monty. Pay-check never actually breaks into a run, but high-speed trotting is acutely uncomfortable even if your testicles have yet to drop, and the final straw is an Irish ditch which Pay-check leaps quite athletically given his age, and Monty doesn’t think much of this frankly.

It is while gathering breath and comforting Monty that we notice that Sarah’s camera bag has come fully unzipped in all the excitement. Sarah’s technique with zip technology is to almost do the zips up to the end, leaving an enticement for the zip fastener to gradually edge open and I am constantly huffing and zipping up her bags. This is a top “I told you so” moment, but at least I get to go back along the trail looking for the camera. Miraculously, we find the errant item on the path about 200 yards back, intact, and so just have the video camera to find now. This proves more difficult and Wes and I spend an hour or so going back up the trail to where we started lopin’ but to no avail. In the back of my mind, there is a small chance (very small) that the video camera was never in the bag and is resting happily on the desk back in the cabin, and this is indeed where we find it in the end. Wes is pretty cool about all the wasted effort - “Any time spent on horseback doing pretty much anything is just fine with me” so all’s well in the end.