Ok. Finally. I’m going to do it.

I still haven’t finished going through all the video footage. I still haven’t learned how to trim, edit, and finish the videos with the software I have. I still don’t have all the photographs organized…But I’m just going to get started. Blow by blow, I’m going to lay out for my readers the first leg of our Mexico-to-Canada horse pack trip.

Last April, I packed up my rig here in Salem, Utah with all the gear I had spent so many months, even years, assembling and preparing, along with two horses of my own and a borrowed mare, and headed south toward Arizona. Health certificates were all in place, plans all laid, and the trip had finally begun.

I arrived in Eagar, Arizona on Thursday, April 2, 2015, after a long, 11 hours of driving. Upon arrival, I let the horses out on my place there in Eagar. They really stretched their legs on the 20 acres and looked like they enjoyed the freedom, after the long ride in the trailer. See the video.

Dad and I spent the following week doing work on the place, getting it ready to hold the horses. Dad had spent the previous week building a corral and putting up fence. He even got Mom out there helping place fence posts! He and I finished up stretching the barbed wire. We also got water connected from the city and installed a spigot for the trough. We made a few purchases of last-minute stuff. We also made a trip down to Safford, AZ to sort of scout the route we intended to ride and to meet Joshua Jensen and Al Smith, whom we had invited to ride with us through the Chiricahua Mountains. Lucky thing we did that, because we were able to set up with Josh a means of resupplying ourselves with horse feed during the trip. During the week I made contact with the US Border Patrol supervisor at Douglas, Arizona to let them know what we were doing and when we’d be in their district. She was a great help in getting permission from the local ranchers for us to pass through their range.

Dad had acquired a new horse for me during the previous week, as we were still one horse short. It was a 6 year-old mustang named Jimbo. He was given to us for free. The story was that the owner had gotten tired of trying to catch him up every time he wanted to ride. Seems the horse was hard to catch. The owner decided to give him away. We took him, because we were desperate, despite the visions I kept having of this little mustang galloping over the hills in the distance with our packs on his back. Turned out it was one of the best decisions we ever made. I talked about him a bit in a previous post, so I won’t go into our acquisition of him here.

We had to move our departure back a couple days, in order to meet the schedules of our drivers, who would take us to the US/Mexico border and drop us off. As things worked out, that was also a blessing in disguise, as you will see.

 

We loaded up five horses and Honey the mule and departed Eagar on Friday, April 10. We arrived at Douglas, Arizona in the afternoon the same day, after a six-hour drive. We then headed about 19 miles east on Geronimo Road, a dirt road, to end up about a mile west of the San Bernardino National Wildlife Preserve, and about 100 yards north of the Mexican border.

Our drivers then dropped Dad and me off, helped us set up a rudimentary camp, and headed for a hotel in Douglas. They returned the following morning to help us get packed up and see us off on the great adventure.

Dad and I arose on April 11, almost early enough to see the sun come up and started the ball rolling. We fed and watered the horses and started pulling out all our gear and laying it out for packing. We did our last bit of separating gear into “take-this” and “don’t-take-that” piles and then moving things to separate piles for each pack horse. Even though we had practiced and worked on learning how to “manty-up” packs for our Decker pack saddles, it was still a learning experience as we started doing it for real. Even with the help of my brother-in-law, Kelly, and his son, Aaron, it still took us most of the morning to get packed up. We had a pair of US Border Patrol Agents drop by to visit for a few minutes. They were going to ride with us for a ways, but got called away at the last minute.

We packed up the pack animals first, making sure each pack was well-balanced. Two of our pack animals were carrying 200 pounds each of Equidyne Alfalfa Pellets, to supplement our horse feed while we passed through the dry, nearly grassless desert of southern Arizona.  We didn’t worry too much about that, though, as we would be feeding about 120 pounds of the feed per day. I had purchased four new canvas/mohair pack saddle pads for the trip, to protect the backs of our stock, but looking at them as we packed, Dad and I decided to add a regular saddle pad to each pack animal’s back on top of the new pad. It just seemed to be a good idea to give their backs extra protection. This turned out to be a mistake, which I’ll address in a later post.

We finally got mounted up and ready to go by about 10:30am. We rode the 100 or so yards to the border fence and took some photos for posterity. It was quite a feeling to be standing there with our horses tied to the US/Mexico border fence, ready to begin this journey we’d been thinking about and planning for so long. It was hard to believe.

I started out riding Lizzy, my coming-four-year-old Missouri Fox Trotter mare. She was green-broke at the time, but easy to handle. She loves to lead out, so it was a good choice for keeping the rest of the horses moving and strung out. I was leading Daisy, our borrowed Quarter Horse mare and my Fox Trotter gelding, Ranger. Dad started out on his little Quarter Horse, Black, who is a grandson of Doc O’Lena, leading our mule, Honey, with our spooky mustang, Jimbo, bringing up the rear.

As we started, we took the opportunity for a few photos at the nearby Mormon Battalion Monument, before heading out. I have to say, even nearly a year later, that was a very exciting time for Dad and me, particularly as we turned from the dirt road and headed up Silver Creek Wash. We were now making tracks on the ground that looked just like those that might have been made over a hundred-fifty years ago over that same ground.

We headed northward, following the wash, generally, for maybe half-a-mile or so, before finding the wash bottom so rocky in places and so deep in sand in others, that it seemed to be making the horses work hard. We left the sandy wash and tried the low rolling hills, as we followed alongside the wash, which was our guide to Indian Creek Wash. The latter would take us on toward the Chiricahua Mountains. We quickly returned to the wash, however, as we discovered the mesquite thickets were impossibly thick and tough to pass through. After a couple more miles we came upon a ranch road, just a two-track that showed no used in a long while, which took us on northward.

As we passed through the desert, we were surprised at the brilliant colors of the tiny little flowers along the trail, purple, blue, yellow, white, it was quite beautiful. The photographs just don’t do justice to the brilliant little flowers. We also found a lot of “Loco Weed”, a noxious weed cattle sometimes become addicted to, when other feed is scarce, that eventually causes them to lose their senses and can be fatal.

During the first few miles on the trail, we had some trouble with the pack horses. While it didn’t take long for them to begin to settle into the trail routine, we found our Decker pack saddles kept sliding to one side, even though we had meticulously weighed each pack and balanced the load. I had ordered the saddles with single, rather than the double, cinchas, and now I was regretting it. We had to stop and resettle the packs on the QH mare and my FT gelding several times within the first three miles or so.

Each time we had to stop, something would happen that would spook our mustang, causing him to pull away and break the pigtail that tied him to the Honey, our mule. The spooky mustang would then trot around and stay just out of reach until one of us would get lucky and snag his lead rope. We went through this routine five or six times in the first five miles or so. We also had to resettle his pack a couple times. At least he didn’t leave us and head off across the hills, like I had imagined. It didn’t take the pack horses long to realize they could easily break free by giving a good, sharp tug on the lead rope, breaking the 1/4″ hemp pigtail. Still, we stubbornly stuck with the pigtails, preferring that the little mustang break free than pull Honey over or break her pack saddle rigging. Still, each time, we would catch the mustang, reattach all our pack animals, and get back on the road. After several of these frustrating episodes, we realized that the solution to the problem was to lead the mustang and put my gelding behind him. After that, we had fewer break-away issues with Jimbo that day.

About five or six miles into the trip, we started watching for any indication of water for the horses. Our Delorme InReach Explorer GPS, combined with our USFS maps were pretty accurate in showing us where the water troughs and windmills were located, however, we had no idea whether any of these actually had water. In doing my planning, I had located water holes along the route about every five to ten miles and planned the travel accordingly. It was critical that we find water at least twice per day for the horses. What a relief it was to come to our first water hole and find it was a well-maintained and the water was clear. In fact, there were trees and shade as well. We stopped and took our lunch break there…about 3:00pm or so.

Here’s a video I took at the five-mile mark of the trip.

By this time, Dad and I were getting tired. We had both struggled with the horses, but Dad, at 80, had gone down a couple times after getting bowled over by moving horses. He was ok, but it was pretty scary for me. The horses were still sorting out their pecking order, and our borrowed QH mare, Daisy, came in season due to the stress. She was the worst of the bunch. She missed no opportunity to bite, bump, or otherwise attack, the other horses. Additionally, she was disrespectful to Dad and me, causing us to have to severely discipline her a time or two, before she learned that it was not wise to push us too far. In the days that followed, we began wishing we had not brought her. Additionally, our mule, Honey, normally the bottom of the pecking order, discovered she could buffalo our spooky mustang, Jimbo. She pushed it to the limit, which was what was causing him to break away. Eventually, after a few days on the trail, my FT mare took over as the Queen Bee of the group and things settled down a bit.

During our break, dad tied Jimbo to a metal pipe under an old windmill. It didn’t take long before Jimbo had tangled himself up and was getting upset. As he moved around, he dragged his pack under a piece of barbed wire that was just high enough for him to get under and rip the plastic tarp covering his pack to pieces. That was going to be our rain fly! Oh well. This is Arizona, right? Took us a while, but we got him untangled with no injuries to anybody or any horse.

After about an hour we mounted and headed back out on the trail. We followed the GPS map and found another ranch two-track that got us headed toward the juncture of Silver Creek and Indian Creek, hoping to find a decent campsite with water somewhere in that area. A few miles further on, as we began watching a storm gather on the western horizon, we came upon a small ranch. There was a house, barns, corrals, and some horses and cattle. We didn’t intend to stop there, thinking that we would try to make a few more miles before making camp, but we thought we’d stop by and see if they would mind us watering the horses and filling our canteens from their water.

I dismounted at their gate and walked to the house. I knocked and was greeted by a young Hispanic woman. I told her Dad and I were on a long horse pack trip and asked if we might water our horses and fill our canteens from their water hose. She invited us to do so, while looking at us like she was trying to figure out just why we were there. About that time her husband came out of the house and it was apparent he did not speak English. I simply broke into my fluent Spanish and started a conversation. The ice immediately broke and we were not only invited to water our stock, but to join them for dinner!

Jesus led Dad and me to a corral, where he helped us unload the horses. As we were doing so, a strong windstorm blew in, causing us problems with the horses as the wind made the barn panels rattle and bang. We had a particularly tough time with the QH mare, which by now we had nicknamed “that stupid mare”. Jesus let us put up our horses in a corral with a nice water trough, and we got them fed.  We separated “that stupid mare” and put her in a separate corral to ensure she would not injure any of the other horses during the night.

After taking care of the horses, I asked Jesus if he would mind if we threw out our sleeping bags in the barn for the night. He looked surprised and asked us to follow him. He led us to a bunk house with beds, a stove, bathroom, and shower…and hot water! Just what the doctor ordered for the first night of our big adventure. We washed up a little and headed up to the house for a wonderful shrimp taco dinner and excellent conversation.

In our beds, we slept quite well that first night, as the storm wailed outside. We had made only 10 miles. Not many miles, but we learned a lot that first day.

As this was Saturday night, we expected to take a rest day on Sunday, so we figured we’d just take our leave of Jesus and Aracely in the morning, go a few miles, find a decent place to stop, set up camp for Sunday, and take our rest. That’s not quite how things worked out.

Stay tuned for the next installment: Day Two.