Thursday a.m., D and I hauled up to a beautiful private ranch (Music Meadows Ranch) just south of Westcliffe, Colorado, for the fall version of the Sangre Springs ride. You might remember we had planned to go to the spring version of this ride back around Memorial Day, and it had poured, so we nixxed that idea and stayed home.
Our host, Elin, runs grass-fed Hereford beef cattle on her ranch, and was kind enough to open up the ranch to the endurance riders for the weekend. The base camp was on a grassy, flat area at about 8000 feet with views of the Sangre mountains off to the west, and gorgeous views of aspen groves that are all golden along the hillsides.
Since Sam had been recovering from his ligament injury, and hadn't been to a race since May, we opted to take the boys out on the 35-miler on Friday. The route consisted of 3 loops, a 13-mile, a 12-mile, and a 10-mile loop, which all came back into camp for the vet checks.
Loop one was probably the most technical. There were several rocky sections, and one really steep hill-climb at about the half-way mark. Loop two headed out across the grassy pastures, following a 2-track road, and was a speed loop, and then loop three repeated part of loop one, minus the steeper hill-climb.
A lot of the riding was across open spaces, which meant riding point-to-point along the tape markers. If you click the above photo to embiggen, you can see the bright pink surveyor's tape on the small bush next to Sam's left front leg. The trail was pretty well marked, although sometimes, since many of the ribbons were at ground level, you had to look for the flags since they were blowing in the wind and sometimes got tucked up under the plants. This was the open meadow at the top of the steep hill on loop one. We headed off into the copse of trees you see to the left-hand side of the picture.
There was plenty of water on the trail - a few stock tanks, but Elin's property has a lot of creeks running through it as well for natural watering stops. A lot of the trail was easy to follow, dirt single tracks along fenceline.
The boys' favorite part of the trail was coming in to the back edge of Elin's property (which was duplicated on each loop). Even though we approached the access road from a different direction on two of the loops, they quickly recognized the gate, and once we were through this, it was an easy trot back into basecamp for each loop.
On Friday, we finished in a respectible 4:55 time for the 35 miles, in 5th and 6th places. Bhen and I even got the best vet card score (tied with our new friend, Lisa) for our weight class, so we got a great saddle pack as a prize! We also were treated to a wonderful afternoon with Cathy and her husband, M, who came down from Ft. Collins area to visit with us for a few hours before heading on to SW Colorado for a weekend trip. It was fantastic to see them both, and I blame Cathy for all of this horse business. No.... seriously. Totally her fault.
Since the boys had done so well, we got up on Saturday a.m. (after a night of very cold temperatures down in the 20s) and did a second 35-miler. We slowed the pace down a little bit, and finished up in about 5:20 for this day, in 6th and 7th places.
Even after 70 miles in 2 days, the boys really looked good. Sam's legs did just fine, and both the boys had great metabolic criteria at all their vet checks. Today, they are both taking it easy, having naps in the sun, and eating some extra hay, while they recharge their batteries.
This was a really nice ride. There was great food from the ranch kitchen, beautiful scenery, and we made several new friends who we hope to see at the Moab ride over Halloween.
All for now....
