Here’s where things stand up to now with regard to my long ride in 2015.

The plan is for my buddy, Dale, and me to make the ride from March to about mid July, or whenever we get to Canada, 2015.  I had figured the mileage would be between 2,000 and 2,500 miles.  The mileage by road is about 1500 miles, as I recall, according to Google Maps. The Great Western Trail website, greatwesterntrail.org, says the trail includes 4455 miles of trails, however that includes the mileage for all the trails in the GWT trail system, not just one direct route.  Some sites indicate the mileage to be approximately 3,000 miles, but I have not yet found any indication of how they came to that number.  As far as I can tell, nobody has ridden the entire trail from Mexico to Canada in one shot.  I have found mention of several individuals who have ridden from either Canada to Mexico or Mexico to Canada, but through California, Oregon, Washington State, on the Pacific Rim Trail and not on the GWT.

The website for The Arizona Trail, which is the Arizona portion of the GWT, has a much better website. It has precisely detailed maps of the entire trail, including GPS data points, and information regarding trail conditions, regulations, etc.. They show the Arizona Trail to be 800 miles from Mexico to Utah. As a grand finale, of sorts, it passes through the Grand Canyon and ends near Jacob’s Lake at the Utah border.

There is a group of four young men, including Ben Masters,  who are currently gathering funds to make the trip in 2013.  You can find them under the name “Unbranded” on Kickstarter here. They are doing the ride to benefit the preservation of the American Mustang, a worthy cause, and to promote wilderness preservation.  They will actually be riding and packing mustangs purchased at auction from the Bureau of Land Management and trained by themselves.  They are currently seeking contributions for funding and are hoping to make a documentary film of it.  Look them up and lend a hand. I am looking forward to monitoring their progress to help with the planning of my own trip.  I have made contact with Ben via email.  He was very cordial and free with his help and advice. I plan to keep in contact with him and pick his brain and learn from his experience as much as possible.

I am currently in the early stages of gathering equipment for the trip. I am going to need a lot of new equipment, since my stuff has worn out over the past 40 years or so, less from use than from storage, while I moved around the country with my career.  I am going to need a new saddle, at least two pack saddles, all associated tack, new camp gear, and even new horses.

Right now I have a 7-8 year-old Quarter Horse mare I’m working with to see whether she has the makings of an excellent trail horse.  So far she’s doing fine.  I bought her about 18 months ago as a green-broke and have been slowly bringing her up.  Since I retired in March, I have been able to work with her regularly and have been able to get her training pretty much up to speed.

Problem is that there isn’t anywhere to ride out here in Virginia that even closely approximates the trails I’ll be riding on the GWT.  I plan to get her out into the Shenandoah National Park several times this year to put some miles on her.  I’ve read there are over 180 miles of trails there, however, overnight camping with horses, it says in the regulations, “is allowed, but discouraged.”  Now what does that mean?  Do you set up camp and the park rangers come by to give you a hard time?  One rule says that if you can see your horse’s hoof prints on the trail, then you can’t ride on that trail and you must stay on the improved gravel trails.  What?!

So you see.  While there are places to ride out here in Virginia, it’s truly a different experience than out on the western trails.

I will need to purchase at least two pack animals in the coming year and get them trained up and ready.  I’ll need to get them out on some long, multi-day trails to get the kinks worked out of them.  I will also need to train them as saddle horses. No sense in having horses you can’t ride.

I plan to build my own saddle and pack saddles. This is something I have wanted to learn to do for many years. I particularly love antique saddles.  I love to see a brass horn and a tall shovel cantle. While I was visiting my parents in Arizona during November, my dad gave me an old saddle he has had in his workshop for many years. He can’t even recall where he got it. He called it his “cactus saddle”. It didn’t look like much. The only leather left on it was the pommel cover. The rawhide on the tree had been cut away in places, as repairs were made to the tree. I stripped off the leather and rawhide and took the tree completely apart and found the cantle and fork broken and the bars badly damaged. The brass horn is a little bent, but not bad. I found the remnants of rawhide braid around the base of the horn, evidence that the brass horn was hidden under braided rawhide. I was surprised to find hidden under the rawhide on the top of the seat-side of the cantle, a label that said “Visalia”.  I expect this saddle was once a Walker Visalia saddle, which would have been very collectable.

I have since repaired the cantle and fork and am in the process of repairing the bars. Since old saddles don’t fit modern horses very well (we like our horses big and fat, while horses back in “the day” were generally trim and fit), so I recut the angles on the fork to give the bars a more modern angle, of about 90 degrees.  I also re-cut the cantle angles to make it fit the new bar angle.  It now has what might be considered “semi-Quarter Horse” bars.

I temporarily assembled the tree with the new bar angle and tested the fit on my mare, who has low withers and a broad, flat back.  It still fit a little narrow for her.  I have the use of a 22 year-old Quarter Horse, who looks more like about 16, so I tried it on him.  The tree with the new bar angles fits him like a custom-made saddle.

So, now the plan is to duplicate the saddle tree and cut the bar angle on the duplicate to fit my mare, then build both saddles. I will have a saddle to fit my mare with full-Quarter Horse bars, or thereabouts, and another saddle to fit horses with taller withers and narrower, sloped backs. The saddle I build for my mare will be the saddle I ride on my trip.

Incidentally, I am also rebuilding a pony saddle in the same way.  The original belonged to my brother-in-law, but was in less than restorable condition.  I have disassembled it and am in the process of duplicating the tree.  I will build the pony saddles before I start my saddle. I hope it gives me the necessary experience to do a decent job on a good work saddle for myself.  It certainly won’t be a show saddle, but functionality and a look that won’t embarrass me are what I’m aiming for.

Sometime in the next month I will order leather and start the saddle projects. I will also make myself a set or two of good leather saddle bags.  I actually prefer canvas saddle bags, but I haven’t been able to find a good pair recently.  Everybody seems to have gone to nylon and cordura. I’ll try a leather set and see how I like them.

My dad has a couple of pack saddles he would let me use for my trip, but I think I’ll go ahead and build a set for myself. I have always used the crossbuck style packsaddles, so I expect that’s what I’ll stick with. I have no opinion as to whether the crossbuck style or the Decker style is better, I just like the crossbuck style. It’s just what I grew up with, I guess. I’ll use Dad’s pack saddles for patterns for both the trees and rigging.

I still have just over two years to get all this done, but I expect to get the saddle gear done this year, so I can start using it and getting all the kinks worked out of the horses.  If any of the horses were to prove too much of a knothead for the trip (remember, I’ll be going through the Grand Canyon and they’ll have to go through a tunnel and cross that long suspension bridge at the bottom!), I’ll have to have time to sell it and get another and get it worked out before the trip.

Lots to do.  I get excited just thinking about it.

Ben Masters and friends, good luck to you in your endeavor.  I just sent you a small donation.  I’ll keep up on your progress.