As I was looking through the video footage of last year’s first leg of our Mexico-to-Canada horse pack trip, I found a video we did, documenting our process of making camp one evening. It was Day Four of the trip and we had only been able to make 10.5 miles that day, due to rough terrain and having to do a couple miles of bushwhacking to make our way from one trail to another, where there was no connecting trail. This was in the foothills of the Chiricahua Mountains, southwest of Texas Canyon Road. It was rough country and slow going.

By the time we made camp that day, we were bushed and so were the horses. We had come across a nice pond about a quarter mile back, so the horses were well-watered. Dad and I still had plenty of water in our canteens, so a dry camp didn’t bother us.  The terrain was pretty rough, so we settled on a small knoll with enough flat area for a comfortable bed for us, a little grass for the horses…and some cholla cactus we had to watch out for. This was a lucky spot for us. We found a small gun-cleaning kit and an insulated vest someone before us had left. That vest was lucky for me, because I had lost my heavy coat earlier in the day during a mishap (story for another post) and that vest proved to be a real blessing to me later on in the trip.

Those of you who are readers of Louis L’Amour western novels, as Dad and I are, will recognize the names of some of the places we passed through that day from the novel High Lonesome. We spent the previous night camped in Half Moon Valley. We bushwacked our way through High Lonesome Canyon, passed by High Lonesome Spring, filled our canteens in the stream, made our way past some old mining prospects, and on over to Texas Canyon Road.

We found that over the first week or so of the trip, we developed a division of labor to maximize the use of our time, whether we were packing up to depart camp, or just ending the day at a likely looking camp site. Not that any assignments were made, we just sort of fell to doing whatever there was to be done and sort of developed a system that worked.

Every morning we rolled out of bed about 5:15am, except Sundays (our rest day). After handling our morning ablutions (which did not include shaving), Dad would start cooking breakfast. While it was heating, we would feed the horses and lay out our beds to air out. By that time breakfast would be ready and we would eat. We would then start packing our beds and gear. I would pack up four manties, ensuring they were within about two or three pounds of each other in weight. They contained things like horse feed (80-pound bags of Equidine pellets), sleeping bags, and some odds and ends. Dad would normally pack up the two sets of paniers and start saddling pack animals. In the paniers went things like food, clothes, cooking utensils, first-aid kit, etc.

Once I had the manties ready I would pitch in on the saddling. Once we had all four pack animals saddled and ready, we would begin loading manties onto the Decker pack saddles. It normally took both of us. Then we would load the paniers onto the crossbuck pack saddles. Finally, once all four of the pack animals were ready, we would saddle our riding horses and make a final search of our camp for leftovers, leaving our camps clean and as little disturbed as possible…with five horses and a mule. No matter how we tried, or what adjustments we made, we never made it out of camp before 9:00am. There was one day we thought we were going to get off by 8:45am, but then a fellow traveler stopped by camp and we talked for a half-hour. Oh well, it was worth the delay.

Every evening, we would select a likely camp site. We would look for enough flat area for a bed, no more than a gentle slope for the horses to be kept on, and water. We didn’t necessarily camp right at the water, but we looked for a water source we could easily access, where we could water the horses evening and morning and refill our canteens. Most of the way we found water holes or stock troughs every five miles or so. The longest we went without water was about ten miles, between the Chiricahuas and San Simon. However, we learned by sad experience that we needed clean water for our canteens, even though we had a good filter, for the very expensive filters clog easily. We were normally successful in finding a running creek or a running well at a stock tank every day or so for that.

After selecting our camp site,  we would unload the pack horses, starting with the one packed the heaviest. Each horse would then be allowed to roam free to graze or be tied to a tree, while we continued with the other horses. Finally, we would unsaddle the riding horses. All our gear would be placed in a pile, configured such that we could access the items we would need for camp. The pile was a defensive measure against weather, so that we could cover our gear in case of rain. We always covered our gear, but we were especially careful when we expected rain. From there we would begin unpacking the manties and paniers, so we could feed and brush the horses.

Once the horses were fed and cared-for, we would begin unpacking our gear for the evening. Dad would dig the food and cooking gear out of the paniers, while I began the process of laying out the beds.  We took no tent, preferring to sleep out under the stars. For a ground sheet we used one of the manty tarps, made of about 15 ounce canvas. On top of that I would toss our sleeping bags, clothing bags, coats, air mattresses, and personal “doc kits” on top of the ground sheet.

By that time Dad usually had our meal ready – we had a choice of re-hydrated vegetable stew or creamed corn (both got pretty old after a month), so we would sit and eat and rest for a few minutes. We seldom had sufficient energy left for a camp fire, so after dinner we would spend a couple minutes blowing up our air mattresses, rolling out our sleeping bags, and crawling into them. We would pull another canvas manty tarp over our beds to guard against dew and rain.

After a few words between father and son about the enjoyment of the day, we would drift off to sleep.

Watch the video.. It’s long and boring, but it is reality. This is what we did.