The Snake River

Wednesday is a day off for the ranch staff, and most of us opted to go white water rafting for the day. Monty had to be “six” again – I think he is getting quite confused now. Eliza and Sarah took comedy photos. ;
We breakfasted in Jackson, and donned wetsuits for the team photo. It was lucky we didn’t bring our car –
A 20 minute drive got us to the put-in, and we split into rafts, with Goodfellows all together and Dad predictably in the driving seat up front.
One reason I needed a good view was that I had planned to descend the same river again the afternoon, only in a kayak. I had heard stories about the “Taco” and “Burrito” rapids on this stretch and wanted to get a good look at them before the afternoon trip.

Tom was our guide, a veteran rafter, who according to my guide in the afternoon was a bit of a legend in Jackson rafting circles. He had done a number of first descents in his time, across the globe, and was full of good stories about the river and its wildlife. MY favourite one was of a Dodge Van that is submerged somewhere along the river, after some folk reversed it down to the get-in so they could more easily take the raft off the roof, only left the handbrake off. The van duly rolled into the river, but didn’t sink because of the raft still on top. Finally, the whole setup got caught in a stopper and the raft finally pulled off, leaving the van free to sink into the depths of the river.
We all had a good time in the water.
Jemima and Monty took it in turns to ride up front,
and Sarah even rode one rapid (the biggest) in a particularly undignified position rodeo style right on the nose of the raft.
After lunch, the family went off to some hot springs up the valley,
; ; while I was dropped off at Hoback Junction to meet my kayak guide. He turned out to be a good guy, Jon Souter, now a kayak guide but once in the US team so I was in good hands. I had learned by now that because everyone in America tells you that they are completely brilliant at everything, it is the wrong place for modesty when they ask you how good you are. You need to really cook it up, or else you get stuck in some great fat boat which won’t ever turn over. I had followed my own thinking here, and Jon turned up with a snappy little boat for me, along with some lovely carbon fibre paddles which I fell in love with. He tested my Eskimo roll (deemed “solid”), and then we were off. Paddlers have different obsessions on the water, and mine is standing waves, so we headed for these, with Jon giving me tips along the way.

Again, technology has really moved on in the kayak field and with carbon fibre 30 degree offset paddles, and a very comfy seat I would have been happy paddling all day. Highlights were indeed the Taco and Burrito rapids, the Big Kahuna, the Lunchbox, and Ropes. Taco sits right next to Burrito and at this low water level was merely a big hole, even if one you wouldn’t want to go into. At higher water levels, Jon told me that the hole can be “terminal”. Burrito, on the other hand, was a big standing wave, quite tricky, but good fun from watching Jon and some others play around on it. I only got onto it once, not quite ever getting the entry point right, and I kept falling off the back. There was also quite a gnarly ledge below the rapid which I didn’t really fancy riding upside-down.

After that feature, there is some II and mellow III until a flat stretch known as gauging straits. Immediately after that are the 3 best rapids of the run. Big Kahuna is a big huge fast wave in the middle of the river. After my failure to get onto Burrito, we decided to run this straight, which was a good decision – big high waves and lots of chop. After that was Lunch Counter, which is apparently one of the best surfing waves. This one I did catch, much to Jon and my surprise, and I rode this for a while. It was while grinning at Jon, who was surfing next to me, that I flipped over. No time to see it happening, I just slammed upside down. A moment or so upside down, but then much to my surprise I managed to roll up again – a real confidence booster for my next trip up to Perth with Tom. This wave is apparently “downright huge” above 15,000 cfs and gets ridden by big wave surfers who fly in when conditions are right. Not quite sure what happens when you fall off it, but apparently noone’s died yet.

Then it was a couple of mellow II-III's until the last rapid, which is the longest but not hard at all, and one of the most fun, with multiple small waves to surf. There is a big house sized rock in the middle and that's the only thing you need to avoid. The get-out was directly after this rapid and I was reasonably pleased to see it – we had spent a good 3 hours on the water and I was ready for a beer.

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.

Wrangling at the Spotted Horse Ranch (Hugh)

Until recently, I did not know what “wrangling” was, nor what the “Wrangler” name meant on the back pocket of poor quality jeans. Now I know. The job of a wrangler, at the Spotted Horse Ranch at least, is to look after the horses, lead trail rides, and lead packhorses up to the various backcountry camps.

But this is complicated by the way that they do things here. The horses are not kept in stables, or even put out to pasture on fields around the ranch; they are sent out into the 750 acres or so of National Forest which surrounds the ranch. Each evening at around 4pm, the horses are gathered up in the corral, have bells put around their necks, and then sent out across the river and out into the Forest with a wrangler at their heels.

The next morning, two lucky wranglers get to rise early, at about 5am, and go and find the horses and bring them back in to the ranch so that folk can ride them (or use them as pack animals, etc. etc.).

Having got to know the wranglers a little on our first few rides, I ask one of them, Wes, whether any guests ever get to go wrangling. He doubts it very much, but sees no harm in asking the boss, Christian. I pluck up courage in due course, because I think this sounds pretty fun, and receive a cautious “yes”, in that 3 or 4 guests go out each year. He says that he will ask the wranglers what they think about my riding, and then potentially I could go later in the week.

Somehow or other, I get the go-ahead, and so 5am on Friday morning sees me waiting at the yard, dressed in thermals + two layers, jeans, boots gloves and my trusty cowboy hat.
It is pitch black and there’s a heavy frost. My company is to be Dakota, a very jolly soul from Michigan, who is brilliant with the kids and also knows a thing or two about horses. I am useless with the tack etc., so she saddles up my horse Whiskey for me, and we are off, at a slow walk. It really is completely dark, but I am assured that Whiskey will look after me, as he knows the way well enough. He has apparently not wrangled for a while, but used to do it “plenty often”.

We head up the steep bank above the ranch and through the low aspens at a slow walk. Soon enough we hear bells (or Dakota does, I don’t hear anything until we get pretty close). I can just see a few shadowy shapes, about 8 or 9, trotting around in a flat clearing in front of us. Whiskey is a real loud mouth and whinneys at his pals; they all whinney back. You really get the sense that these horses are semi-wild, although they are perfectly well schooled. Dakota and I trot on to the end of the clearing, and then break into a lope back up, driving the horses before us with cries of “git”, “git”. I guess that is “get” rather than some pointless derogatory term, but being English I am not very good at this. It’s enough to hold on, let alone yell things out loud as well. The loose horses all react pretty well, however, and soon we are caning it along behind them, along single track trails through the trees. There is no slowing down, you simply have to keep behind them, driving them along, and if they run, so do you. And they do really leg it, all the way home. They slow at one point, to go through a stream and some very thick trees, but then they are off again, at full pelt. Because we are at the back, once our horses get across the stream, they seem to charge along even faster to catch up with their mates, and it’s all quite exhilarating. The one really scary point was seeing two large aspens straddling the trail ahead, while charging along at a full gallop. I’ve passed them since, and when you walk your horse past, you generally have to be ready to budge your horse one way or another to prevent one or other leg being knocked. You don’t get an opportunity to do this at full gallop, but somehow Whiskey looks after me, and we didn’t touch on either side. I can’t imagine what would happen if you did – I doubt whether you would be doing any jogging kids up and down on your knee again.

Once these 9 were sent down to the ranch, we turned around for the rest – we were looking for 23 or so in total. We found another 3 almost immediately, and sent these on their way, but much to my relief, did not chase them down to the ranch along the route between the aspens.

The pace of things then quietened down significantly, and we spent the next 90 minutes or so wandering around looking for more horses. It got very cold, and I wished I had brought along more layers. But the sun finally rose over the mountain, and by 730 we had got high enough to get little warmth from it. At about the same time, we bumped into Wes, who was covering a different area, but he had found nothing.

We rode along for 30 minutes or so, then he split off and went looking amongst the low and middle aspens. We moved higher, right up to the ridge above the ranch, probably 400 or 500 metres higher, and tracked back along at this level. I knew we had to find these horses, but this was not looking promising for the Goodfellow skill set. I have done plenty of hunting in my time, but most of the running is on the flat. There are a few fences and hedges, sure, but you can see these coming in good time and lash yourself on. Out hunting with Jonas with the Ledbury, I was prize entertainment for them all - the whole field would get over the big hedges and then turn to watch me go over. I generally stayed on, in some fashion or another, but it was always quite a good show for everyone else to watch. But now, if we found the horses up here, we would be facing a good 3 or four mile run, and all of it downhill. This was not going to be comfortable.

But right on time, as these thoughts were percolating through, we heard the sound of bells. It was now 8am, and about the time that the wranglers generally turn around and go home, hoping that the horses have been found on the other flank by the other wrangler. We blundered off the trail, and soon found them a little to our left. Again, we yell “git” enthusiastically, and I potter about on Whiskey trying to make myself useful and get behind a few of them. It’s interesting to see the horses together in a group, because they are all different characters, with leaders and followers, friends and enemies, and it seems that once you have persuaded the leaders to move, then they all go together. And so they did. It loot a while to get them going, but soon enough, off they go at a healthy canter, with us caning it along behind.

It was definitely pretty hairy, but probably the best fun that I have ever had on horseback. Basically you are doing what you are never ever allowed to do, which is to charge about like a lunatic. When I first wanted to go hunting, I remember being told that I shouldn’t really go along until I was happy to canter downhill. “Well how do I learn?” I would ask, to be told that to learn I had to go hunting.

On this occasion, there could be no concern about riding style, it was all about holding on. And that’s what we did. We ran back to the ranch, taking all of 10 minutes over ground which would normally take at least an hour. Eventually, we career into the fields opposite the ranch. Dakota went off to fetch a couple of runners, and I chased the rest over the bridge and into the corral. Sarah and Jemima were there to take some pictures, and I did my best to look the part.



Unfortunately, my “git”s weren’t too great and the horses wandered slowly across the bridge, in contrast to their usual charge, but I’d had a serious amount of fun and was dosed with adrenaline up to the armpits.
Trail-riding was going to come a very distant second place after this.

Yellowstone highlights

A bit too close for comfort. We decide to purchase bear spray.
Canyon is called Canyon for a good reason.
This is the "Lower Falls" at Canyon. We have now purchased bear spray so have more of a spring in our step.
The kids amuse passing tourists.
Jemima gives Mummy the heeby-jeebies.
We arrive at Old Faithful and realise that we have selected the same day to visit as one Barrack Obama. There are some dodgy characters in the crowd that we suspect are not just listening to the cricket.
Finally, he has the good grace to go home. We never get close enough to point our laser pens at his forehead, unlike BIO 2003 in DC and that lovely man Bush.
Old Faithful goes off just after he left.

Mammoth Springs is a funny old place. No President here.

The chocolate monster.
We have tested out a lot of these things and we think that this is the perfect firepit. Expect to see one down on Polecat Pitch for next summer.
Monty goes feral at Bridge Lake in the snow.
Eliza tries to keep up.
We see a Bison only on our second day and take a gazillion photos, only to drive over the next pass and encounter a herd of some thousands.

Now where did we put the car?
Tower Falls
We wake up in Yellowstone and it is only 43 degrees in the van. It snowed overnight. We head for the ranch.