I am going forward with my plans to make another short segment of my Mexico-to-Canada horse pack trip. In May this year, I will make the passage from Flagstaff, Arizona to the Grand Canyon National Park. I will not be crossing the canyon on this trip, but will stop at Tusayan.

In 2015, my dad and I made our way from the US/Mexico border to Dad’s hometown of Eagar, Arizona, by mountain trails, deserts, and backroads. That leg came to 355 miles, measured by GPS, and took us 28 days. I documented that trip in several blog posts that are available for your reading pleasure on this site. It is difficult to express in words how much I treasure that experience with my father. He and I had been talking and dreaming about making such a horse pack trip since I was in high school. Dad turned 81 years old just after we finished that trip.

In 2016, Dad and I continued our trip. The second leg was supposed to take us from Eagar, AZ to Panguitch, Utah, just in time for us to ride in Panguitch’s Pioneer Day Parade and to celebrate the 64th Class Reunion of Dad’s high school graduation class of 1952. As it turned out,  however, that was a difficult trip for us. My favorite trail horse broke a leg on the fourth day and I had to put him down. Despite the tragedy, we continued the trip, but ended up having to stop at Flagstaff, AZ, due to extreme drought conditions and fire danger. There was not one drop of water anywhere in northern Arizona…at least not anywhere along our route. That leg of the trip came to 200 miles and it took us three weeks.

In about March 2017, Dad’s favorite horse bucked him off and dad suffered a couple pretty serious injuries. He has fully recovered, but it was touch-and-go for a while. He finally found a new home for that particular horse, so I gave him my little mustang as a trail companion.  Jimbo was Dad’s second saddle horse on our pack trip, so Dad has a long and special history with Jimbo. They are like peas in a pod. Two of a kind. Dad and Jimbo go together like pancakes and syrup.  Even though Dad has fully recovered from his injuries and is still able to ride, it made him realize that he has been pushing his luck. Last year my mother had to go through some back surgery and it fell to Dad to care for her and get her through the rough time. Dad has come to realize that if he were incapacitated, he would not be able to take care of some important responsibilities and that other people would have to be taking care of him. He has decided his horse packing days are done. Dad will not be riding any more of the Mexico-to-Canada horse pack trip with me.

That doesn’t mean we won’t be going on rides together, just not back country pack trips.

So, for the upcoming leg of my big pack trip, I have invited some friends. So far, I have two close friends (I don’t yet have permission to publicize their names) who will be making this third leg of the trip with me. The trip from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon National Park covers, as close as I can figure, about 108 miles. We expect to cover about 15 miles per day, on average, so the trip will take about 7 days of actual travel. Adding two rest days to that, and an extra day for unanticipated contingencies, the trip will be about 10 days total. We have tentatively planned the trip for May 13-25, 2019. Now, it looks like we will have only Missouri Fox Trotters and Tennessee Walkers on this trip, so we’ll see if our daily mileage beats our estimates.

We are beginning now to get ourselves and our horses “legged-up” for the adventure. We are getting our gear together and putting some miles on the horses, trying to get ourselves into condition to maximize our chances to make a successful and incident-free passage from Flagstaff to the GCNP. There are some logistical details we still need to settle, but things are rolling.

I have hopes that I may be able to cross the Grand Canyon and continue to the Utah/Arizona border in the fall.

In the spirit of all of the above, I have planned a three-day horse camping trip to the Moab, Utah area for April 4-6. That is a Thursday through Saturday. My cohorts and I will be practicing our horse camping and packing skills and making sure all our horses are well-broke to the pack saddle and that we have all our gear together.

We will begin in the North Klondike area, probably arriving Wednesday evening, setting up a camp, then riding the area on Thursday. We will head farther south on Friday, to the area near the Hole-N-the-Rock store, about 12 miles south of Moab, for some red rock canyon riding. On Saturday we will likely head about 18 miles farther south, a little past Wilson Arch, to an area we call Turtle Rock, where we will ride about half a day, before heading home.

Here is a small gallery of photos from previous horse camps in the Moab area. Click on a photo to see the full image.

Anyone who would like to join us for this horse camping weekend in the Moab area is welcome to come.  The whole event will be BYOE (Bring Your Own Everything!). There is no fee, no registration, and no specific plans. Just enjoyable riding and some pleasant evenings around a campfire. There will be no services at any of these places, so everybody must fend for themselves. There are places in town where one may fill water jugs, etc. and I suppose there’s a feed store somewhere in town.

While I’m not going to call this a clinic and there will be no fees for anything, I will be available during our evenings and mornings to assist anyone who may be wanting to get started in horse camping, horse packing, and trail riding, during those three days.

I will post updates on my Western Trail Rider facebook page as well as on westerntrailrider.com. Feel free to contact me by email at

tony.henrie@westerntrailrider.com

UPDATE:

For anybody thinking about coming to ride with me at Moab, here are the coordinates of my campsites for the nights indicated.

Wednesday 38°49’11.73″N 109°45’57.56″W
Thursday 38°22’52.43″N 109°27’23.13″W
Friday 38°12’51.91″N 109°22’3.07″W

You can enter those in Google Earth and see the places. As there will probably be a lot of folks there for spring break, we may have to move our campsites a little, but they will be very near those coordinates.

Come join the fun.