 Canadian
Rocky Mountain
Horseback Adventure
Twenty elk looked up curiously as we rode our horses out
of the spruce forest into the meadow. The bucks watched us
intensely as the does and fawns continued to graze. When we
continued further into the meadow, the lead buck decided our
presence posed a threat to his family so he signaled to the
others it was time to move on. The graceful bucks held their
heads high so their huge racks sloped backwards to avoid getting
caught in the low hanging branches as the herd silently melted
into the forest.
Our 9-year-old twin granddaughters, Emily and Jessica, joined
me, four hikers and seven wranglers on 16-day horseback adventure
in the Canadian Rocky Mountains of Alberta Canada. The Wild
Rose Outfitters, operated by Dave Manzer, took us deep into
the southeastern corner of the Willmore Wilderness Area, a
1,700 square mile park without roads, bridges, houses or permanent
residents.
As we left the Rock Lake trailhead, Emily, Jessica and I
rode at the back of a pack train containing 10 riding horses
and 24 pack horses/pack mules. To support 14 people on our
16-day ride, the pack train carried two tons of food, tents,
cook stoves, sleeping bags, luggage, a complete blacksmith
shop, axes, chainsaws and Dave’s guitar.
Emily and Jessica attended a one-week horse camp in their
hometown of Centerville, Ohio a month before our trip to learn
horse safety and basic riding technique. The girls learned
their lessons well. They got on and off their horses by themselves,
even though their stirrup struck them at eye level. To mount,
Emily and Jessica would hook their toe in the stirrup, hang
upside down while holding onto front and back saddle straps
and then pull themselves up into the saddle with sheer strength.
The girls rode up and down steep, rocky mountain trails that
would scare an experienced rider, forded raging mountain streams
shoulder deep to their horses and disappeared into overgrown
trail of 12-foot high willows.
We camped at six remote sites high in the Rocky Mountains.
A sugar-coating of frost covered our tents each morning. During
the day, the sun warmed the air a bit, but we usually rode
higher into the mountains above the tree line and across huge
drifts of snow where the air felt nippy.
On one of our rides into Desolation Pass, Dave spotted a
grizzly bear in the far meadow. As the bear disappeared into
a deep draw, Dave led us in that direction. Cautiously and
silently, we rode up to the edge of the draw. The sow bear
was a scant 100 feet away on the other side of the draw with
her twin cubs. As I took photos, the bear started digging
into the hillside after a ground squirrel (they are the size
of our groundhogs). The dirt flew from the bears gigantic
paws like a Ditch Witch running in high gear. In minutes she
had moved a ton of soft dirt and had a five-foot diameter
cave dug five feet deep. Mama bear finally reached the squirrel’s
den and the frightened squirrel shot out between the bear’s
legs like greased lightning. The sow reared up on her hind
legs, swirled around and dove through the air for the squirrel.
Her paws clamped around the squirrel as her 500-pound body
bounced down the hillside. The bear quickly scooped the squirrel
into her mouth and I could hear an audible “crunch”
as she put the squirrel out of its misery. Mama then carried
the limp ground squirrel back up to her cubs and laid it between
them. The cubs started at opposite ends and all signs of the
plump ground squirrel disappeared in a few seconds.
Another day we rode over Hardscrabble Pass and encountered
a deep snowdrift blocking the narrow passage. Dave rode Blaze
out onto the snow looking for a safe route across. About halfway
across, the horse sank down to his belly in the snow. After
struggling on the soft snow for a minute or two, Blaze found
his footing and made his way across. “Don’t come
this way,” Dave warned. “Follow the edge of the
snow pack around the wall and climb up on that ledge,”
Dave suggested. We followed the edge of the snow and then
climbed up on a rock ledge. At the end of the ledge, the horses
had to step down about three feet to the rocks below. At first
my horse, Dancer, was reluctant to take the step, but with
a little encouragement from my heels in his ribs he jumped
down. From the top of the pass, we could look down in Lake
Azure in Jasper Provincial Park, see the Ancient Wall and
the Natural Arch. As I marveled at the magnificent snow-covered
mountains in the distance, one of the wranglers pointed out
four caribou grazing near the lake. Emily, Jessica and I watched
as they ate their way toward the lake and then trotted off
down the valley. Turning from the caribou, I noticed a shaggy
animal running toward me over the rocks a few hundred feet
away. I thought it was Happy, our bearded collie camp dog,
but just then Happy walked up in front of me. I looked again
and identified the animal as a marmot. He kept coming closer
and closer until he was just 50 feet away. Then the marmot
sat on a rock and watched us. Usually marmots are shy and
hide from people, but this one apparently wanted to know what
we were doing there. We may have been the first visitors he’d
seen this year.
Emily, Jessica, a few wranglers and I rode for six to eight
hours every day, either between camps or on a day trip to
another scenic vista. The trails were not maintained by the
park rangers and we often came to downed trees across the
trail. The wranglers would get out their axes and chop through
the tree if it was six inches or less in diameter or haul
out the chain saw if it was a big tree. A lot of the trails
went through swampy land called muskeg. Dave has a simple
rule about riding through muskeg: “If the horse and
rider ahead of you disappears into the muskeg, don’t
go that way!” He claimed there is a complete horse with
its saddle buried in the muskeg down in the valley below us.
Riding through the thick spruce forest we came to a fallen
log across the trail. It wasn’t high enough to require
cutting and the horses in from of me stepped over it and continued
on. As my horse, Dancer, got to the log he hesitated a second
and then took a flying jump over the log with all four feet
leaving the ground. The jump caught me by surprise and all
I could do was hang on to the saddle horn with both hands.
After I composed myself I mentioned to Emily that I wasn’t
ready for the jump. “You should have expected him to
jump, Grandpa,” Emily informed me. “After all,
his name is Dancer not Stepper!”
While crossing the rain-swollen West Sulphur River, the head
wrangler’s dog, Avery, got caught in the raging current
and was swept down river. Jessica was crossing the river on
her horse, Yeller, and Avery washed up against the upstream
side of Yeller. The water was shoulder deep on Yeller and
Avery clung to Yeller’s side while Jessica urged her
horse across the river. As they got to the far side, Avery
swam free and scampered up the bank. He stopped long enough
to shake the icy water out of his coat and then trotted on
with the horses.
One day, the head wrangler, Wendy, told Emily and Jessica
they were going swimming in the lake in their birthday suits.
“Mine doesn’t fit any more,” Jessica said.
“Grandpa didn’t put it on the clothes list so
I didn’t bring mine,” Emily said. “What
were you wearing when you were born?” Wendy asked. “I
wasn’t very old then. I don’t remember,”
Jessica replied. “Think about it!” Wendy said.
“Nothing! That’s your birthday suit.” They
went swimming.
During our visit to Willmore we saw 4 grizzly bears, 2 black
bears, 1 moose, 48 elk, 9 caribou, 3 mule deer, 50 big-horn
sheep and 22 mountain goats. We encountered majestic wildlife
every day of the trip. Space doesn’t permit me to describe
the animal encounters in more detail here, but I will in my
forthcoming “Adventures with Grandchildren” book.
The weather remained sunny for the most part, with only a
few hours of light rain during the day. Marilyn, our chief
cook, directed the kitchen staff as they prepared gourmet
meals in a wilderness camp environment. We ate charcoal-grilled
steak, pork chops, lasagna, shepard’s pie and salmon
with a different type of fresh salad every night and our choice
of red and white wine for supper. After a hard day on the
trail, I enjoyed sitting in the cook tent after a delicious
supper, drinking a hot cup of peppermint tea and swapping
stories with the hikers and wranglers about the day’s
events. For breakfast we enjoyed lacy French crepe smothered
in homemade blueberry jam and cottage cheese topping, creamy
eggs benedict with Black Forest ham, western omelets or potato
pancakes. The kitchen staff baked fresh pies, cakes, cookies
and biscuits everyday. When Emily and Jessica weren’t
on the trail they were wading in the creek, chasing butterflies,
shooting rocks from their sling-shots at tin cans, learning
to spin a rope, feeding the horses apples, dancing on the
horses backs, fishing, roasting marshmallows, reading stories,
braiding horse hair, making dream catchers, looking for fossils
or begging Dave to play the “Pickle” song on his
guitar so they could sing along.
Emily and Jessica never slowed down or sat still from the
time they opened their eyes in the morning until they closed
them at bed time. They put in 16 hard days in the saddle and
never complained. That’s pretty impressive for a couple
of nine-year-olds who never spent more than an hour a week
on a horse in their life.
Newsletter Archive:
Setting
Goals—The Ironman
Walking
Hadrian's Wall — Part 1
Walking
Hadrian's Wall — Part 2
Walking
Hadrian's Wall — Part 3
Canadian
Rocky Mountain Horseback Adventure |
