Latest / The Touch of a Mustang / Why Discomfort Makes You Feel More Alive with Thru-Rider Gillian Larson | Episode 67

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Why Discomfort Makes You Feel More Alive with Thru-Rider Gillian Larson | Episode 67 · The Touch of a Mustang

• 0:00
  I was down in Patagonia competing in the first ever
• 0:03
  edition of the Passive Tears, which is a race that was put on.
• 0:08
  It's about 220 ish miles. The weather was very hard
• 0:13
  challenge to it. It was very, very cold
• 0:15
  conditions and that was my biggest worry going into it.
• 0:19
  Sometimes the bogs are easy to see and sometimes they're not.
• 0:22
  Sometimes it's just looks normal and then you step on it and it's
• 0:24
  like quicksand. You know, thing that we always
• 0:27
  learned about as kids that, you know, oh, you're going to run
• 0:29
  into some expand and just be eaten by the earth.
• 0:31
  There were clearly some people who came into this very much
• 0:34
  with the sense of entitlement to cross the finish line first.
• 0:38
  There was just the sense that they deserved at any cost to
• 0:42
  cross the finish line first. It's mostly a rider thing in
• 0:47
  terms of understanding the terrain, understanding your
• 0:50
  horse, what you can do with it. It's really an US thing, and if
• 0:54
  you know your horse's limitations and you work around
• 0:57
  their strength, it's amazing what you can accomplish with
• 1:00
  them. The hardest part is getting
• 1:01
  started. The first step is get a horse,
• 1:04
  get comfortable with it, really invest in your horsemanship.
• 1:06
  Get to the point where you can trailer your horse and you can
• 1:10
  go out on rides. And once you're at that level,
• 1:13
  then looking into the overnight rides, find the right clinician
• 1:17
  for your goals. Look at what does that person do
• 1:19
  in the Backcountry and does that align with my goals.
• 1:23
  There's now more than ever resources available.
• 1:25
  I always advocate for making sure that what you want to do in
• 1:29
  the Backcountry is what that person does in the Backcountry.
• 1:33
  There are healers on this planet with the power to soften the
• 1:36
  suffering of mankind if they have remained in the recesses of
• 1:39
  the world, abused, discarded and labeled as trash.
• 1:43
  This is the touch of a Mustang. I am your host, Shalise Clough,
• 1:48
  and I'm here to tell the story of wild horses, Mustangs, and
• 1:52
  the humans who are discovering and sharing their gifts while
• 1:55
  working to protect their well-being and preserve their
• 1:58
  spirit so this divine power won't be lost.
• 2:02
  Join us on this quest with the Wild Mustang.
• 2:11
  Gillian, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the
• 2:14
  Touch of a Mustang Podcast. Thank you so much for having me.
• 2:17
  I'm really excited to be here. To begin, can you give everybody
• 2:20
  who might not be familiar with you a quick introduction of who
• 2:23
  you are and a little bit about what you do?
• 2:25
  Sure. So my name is Gillian Larson and
• 2:28
  I live in the Central California area.
• 2:32
  And I really, I've been with obviously like a lot of people
• 2:35
  involved with horses like from a young age.
• 2:38
  But in my early 20s I did a Mexico to Canada ride along the
• 2:43
  Pacific Crest Trail. And that kind of kick started a
• 2:46
  different course in my life of really pursuing Backcountry
• 2:52
  travel with my horses. So I did two more trips for a
• 2:56
  total of three on the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to
• 2:59
  Canada. And I also did a trip on the
• 3:01
  Continental Divide from Mexico to Canada.
• 3:04
  And then I've also done several other, you know, shorter but
• 3:08
  still long distance routes like crossing Colorado and crossing
• 3:12
  Arizona and Utah. See, I've spent a lot of my, I
• 3:17
  guess all of my 20s and now we're getting into my ease of
• 3:20
  just really exploring the Western US in the Backcountry
• 3:24
  with, with my horses and that being a big passion of mine.
• 3:27
  Yeah, that's awesome. I don't even know where to
• 3:29
  start. I feel like I have so many
• 3:31
  things I want to know about everything you've done.
• 3:33
  But let's maybe start with your latest adventure, just because I
• 3:36
  want to make sure we hit everything from that.
• 3:39
  So you just participated in a race in Patagonia.
• 3:42
  Can you tell us a little bit about the race and then I want
• 3:45
  to hear all about your experience doing that?
• 3:47
  Yeah, so I just got back literally like Saturday early
• 3:51
  Saturday morning and it's it's Tuesday now.
• 3:53
  So yeah, very freshly back in the States.
• 3:56
  But I was down in Patagonia competing in the first ever
• 4:00
  edition of the Passive Tears, which is a race that was put on.
• 4:05
  It's about 220 ish miles I think is kind of what it came out to
• 4:10
  being. But approximately 400 kilometers
• 4:12
  is kind of like how they were marketing it.
• 4:14
  And you go basically it's like a circular course and you're
• 4:18
  racing, You have two horses that you kind of alternate between to
• 4:23
  compete the, the whole circuit. And there's series of vet checks
• 4:27
  along the way to make sure that like the horses are symbolically
• 4:32
  and heart rates and checking for sores and their lameness, making
• 4:37
  sure they're not, you know, getting sore from the, the trip.
• 4:39
  So you have a series of vet checks along the way as you're
• 4:42
  doing this trip. But it's it's pretty remote and
• 4:45
  so you carry all of your camping gear with you and you have to be
• 4:49
  under a certain weight limit. So you have to be pretty
• 4:51
  lightweight, which is a little tricky in Patagonia with like
• 4:54
  how intense the elements are. You do need some good equipment
• 4:59
  because it's quite cold and quite rainy.
• 5:02
  And so you have to have the right kind of kit to withstand
• 5:06
  all that, but also not overburden your horror.
• 5:09
  So it's definitely was a tricky line even for me to walk with
• 5:12
  all of my experience with Backcountry travel.
• 5:15
  I spent a lot of time dialing in my kit for this because it was
• 5:19
  it was hard to keep everything under the weight limit, but
• 5:23
  still feel like I had everything I needed.
• 5:25
  So yeah, it was tricky on that side.
• 5:27
  And then just the competition side of it, you're you're racing
• 5:30
  against other riders. You don't really know what their
• 5:33
  experiences are. Some were owner riders where
• 5:37
  they were like local Argentinians and they were
• 5:40
  competing with their own horses. You had some who were competing
• 5:45
  on behalf of like an estancia. So they kind of like had an
• 5:49
  arrangement where they were representing a certain estancia.
• 5:52
  And then you had some riders. Most of us were like myself,
• 5:55
  where we went into like basically a like, you know,
• 5:59
  almost like a, a draft for like a football team where they pull
• 6:03
  randomly a group of owners out of like a hat their names.
• 6:06
  And so you have a set list of owners and then depending on
• 6:10
  what order those owners were drawn in, then they get their
• 6:13
  first choice of riders who are, you know, just like basically up
• 6:17
  for grabs who aren't paired up with an owner or don't have
• 6:21
  their own horses that they're bringing to the race.
• 6:23
  And so then you kind of get matched up that way with the
• 6:26
  with your horse. So that's how I got matched up
• 6:29
  with my two horses was from this draft.
• 6:31
  And yeah, it was, you know, you never really know what kind of
• 6:34
  horses you're going to get somewhere from the local area
• 6:38
  and local estancias. Some are from as far away as
• 6:41
  Buenos Aires, which is a very long ways.
• 6:45
  It's like just shy of 2000 miles or something away.
• 6:48
  So it'd be like the equivalent of hauling your horses from like
• 6:52
  the East Coast over to the West Coast.
• 6:54
  So yeah, some of those horses made a very, very long trip for
• 6:58
  this competition. And, you know, being in this
• 7:01
  kind of environment is like a whole new deal for them.
• 7:05
  So that was kind of like an element that you saw a lot at
• 7:07
  play was people either like being really excited that they
• 7:11
  got horses that were from the mountains or who were had been,
• 7:16
  you know, from certain owners that they knew took them to the
• 7:19
  mountains a lot versus like owners who were just in Buenos
• 7:24
  Aires and only did conditioning in Buenos Aires.
• 7:26
  And people being like, I don't know if my horse is going to
• 7:29
  like do that well in the mountains and and that side of
• 7:32
  things. So that was kind of an element.
• 7:34
  My horses are personally from Buenos Aires.
• 7:37
  And honestly, I thought they did a really good job.
• 7:40
  Like they were on the younger side and they kind of just
• 7:42
  reminded me of when I've taken my own horses on like their
• 7:46
  rookie year into the mountains. And they've done stuff here in
• 7:50
  California, but they've haven't done like the really hard
• 7:54
  mountain stuff. And they just kind of need a
• 7:56
  little bit, you know, you can't turn them off on autopilot.
• 7:59
  You kind of have to be a bit more of like an avid rider and
• 8:03
  be like helping them make the decisions and just be a bit more
• 8:07
  like hands on. But but overall, I thought they
• 8:10
  did really well. They were in really good shape.
• 8:12
  So my owner definitely did right by me on that with having the
• 8:16
  horses in great shape. And they did really well with
• 8:18
  like their heart rates and everything at the vet check.
• 8:21
  So so yeah. And I think that's about all
• 8:23
  that owners really can do in a situation like that if they
• 8:26
  don't live near the mountains is just make sure that they're
• 8:29
  giving you horses in really good condition.
• 8:31
  It was. It was an invention.
• 8:33
  What were some of the most challenging aspects to it?
• 8:36
  You're going in riding horses you've never met before, and I
• 8:41
  kind of talked a little bit beforehand.
• 8:42
  Cold, challenging country. Yeah, yeah.
• 8:46
  I would say the weather was very hard challenge to it.
• 8:50
  It was very, very cold conditions.
• 8:52
  And I was that was kind of like my biggest worry going into it
• 8:56
  with it being mid to late March was the time that the race was
• 9:00
  occurring. And that's kind of getting in
• 9:01
  towards fall and, and even in the US flirting with fall in the
• 9:07
  high mountains, you know, all it takes is a really bad storm and
• 9:10
  you know, have a very, very not fun time.
• 9:13
  And there had been another competition called the Gaucho
• 9:16
  Derby, which is very similar to the passive tears.
• 9:19
  It's just a kind of slightly different, worse in a slightly
• 9:22
  different format, but it's like the same general idea.
• 9:24
  Big long horse race in Patagonia and they had started off with it
• 9:28
  being in like mid to late March and then they have moved the
• 9:33
  timing of their race more towards February because of the
• 9:36
  unpredictability of the weather. So of course, I'm like they,
• 9:40
  they moved their race because of the weather.
• 9:42
  So here we are racing in March, like how's that going to work
• 9:45
  out for us? So I felt like it was going to.
• 9:47
  Change. Yeah, Yeah.
• 9:49
  So I was very, I was a little concerned like obviously because
• 9:51
  there's this other race in February, they kind of have to
• 9:54
  have it being closer towards March too.
• 9:57
  So I could see because we, we raced both out of the same
• 10:01
  starting estancia, at least from like my understanding, because
• 10:04
  we both had the exact same start point for our races.
• 10:07
  So that start estancia can't host everyone.
• 10:10
  They need like also a little time to read provision all
• 10:13
  because they're way out in the middle of nowhere.
• 10:15
  It was like a 10 hour bus ride to get out to this estancia from
• 10:18
  the nearest town. So it was it was a long haul.
• 10:22
  So I'm sure they need like a certain amount of wiggle room to
• 10:26
  replenish all their supplies and everything.
• 10:28
  So there's a lot of logistics absolutely into putting these
• 10:31
  kinds of things on. So I could see why with the
• 10:34
  other race, they're also then kind of like working around that
• 10:38
  and having us, you know, come out in March.
• 10:41
  But it we got lucky for the most part for our weather window.
• 10:44
  Like I said, the very end of our race, it really took like a
• 10:47
  nosedive in terms of temperatures and we got like
• 10:50
  fresh snowfall, the Stancia and everything.
• 10:53
  And I was very relieved that I was not out there for that.
• 10:56
  Like that was like the day that the last group with the tail end
• 11:00
  group of the riders were coming in after they had some fresh
• 11:03
  snowfall out on on the course. And we had a couple of days of
• 11:07
  fresh snowfall. But you're like a much higher
• 11:09
  elevation versus when we're coming into the estancia and
• 11:12
  you're getting fresh snowfall 6 miles, 8 miles away from the
• 11:17
  estancia. You're like, okay, we're a much
• 11:19
  lower elevation. It's very cold outside, the wind
• 11:22
  kicked up. So yeah, the wind in Patagonia
• 11:25
  is infamous and it lives up to its infamy.
• 11:28
  So the weather was definitely a big, a big factor.
• 11:33
  So that was a big challenge. Overall, I think I got really
• 11:36
  lucky with the weather window, seeing what it turned into at
• 11:39
  the end. I'm like, Oh my gosh, it could
• 11:41
  have been so much worse. So we started out on like the
• 11:43
  15th of March and when you're leaving the Estancia, you're
• 11:46
  kind of heading north, north be northwest, and you have this big
• 11:52
  mountain range right in front of you that you're basically like
• 11:55
  aiming at when you're leaving. And like those mountains, they
• 11:59
  had glacier snow on them, but there was still a lot of like
• 12:03
  unsnowed covered. And you could tell the snow that
• 12:05
  was on there was mostly glacier snow, year round snow.
• 12:08
  And so that's what we saw when we were riding out.
• 12:10
  And then when we were coming in now the mountains were like off
• 12:13
  to our left, but you could see the mountains and they all were
• 12:17
  now all white and had all been covered in fresh snowfall from,
• 12:21
  you know, the week that we were out on this course.
• 12:24
  And it's just like, I am so glad that we are not starting like
• 12:27
  right now and like heading into all this fresh snowfall.
• 12:31
  So we had a couple days where like especially on the plateau
• 12:35
  of death, which I traversed that on day six of the race that had
• 12:41
  like all fresh snow on it from a storm that had come through like
• 12:44
  a couple days before. So we definitely did go through
• 12:47
  some fresh snow, but it was only a couple inches.
• 12:50
  It wasn't like an anything too bad, but I was just, I remember
• 12:52
  coming into the estancia and seeing how much fresh snow and
• 12:55
  how much the mountains had changed from when we had left.
• 12:58
  And I was like, winter is coming.
• 12:59
  It is definitely coming. And like I'm so glad that it is
• 13:03
  that we got the weather window that we did get because it could
• 13:06
  have been so much more uncomfortable.
• 13:08
  So the weather was very much a factor in the competition.
• 13:12
  And then I think, at least for me, I don't think this was the
• 13:14
  experience of most other riders. I think most of the riders is
• 13:18
  this was like their first time really camping out with horses.
• 13:21
  Like not everyone, but there were definitely a variety of
• 13:23
  riders where this was like their first ever camping out with
• 13:26
  horses. This is their first ever real
• 13:29
  test of like navigating of reading terrain.
• 13:32
  And so for them, I'm sure that was like that was the big, the
• 13:36
  big obstacle. That's something I have a lot of
• 13:38
  experience with. So that was not so much it for
• 13:41
  me, but for me the competition and like feeling like I was
• 13:44
  competing against another set of riders was a super strange like
• 13:51
  element to have in it. Like I'm used to competing
• 13:54
  against kind of like myself. And like on my Mexico to Canada
• 13:57
  rides, I have a pretty strict timeline because even though I
• 14:02
  have like 5 or 6 months to complete this distance, it's
• 14:06
  such a big distance And you kind of have so many random hurdles
• 14:09
  that you really kind of have to have like a timeline that you're
• 14:12
  trying to stick to. And you can build in like these
• 14:15
  little breaks that let you kind of like catch up is usually what
• 14:18
  I'll do. But for the most part, I plan
• 14:21
  out my whole Mexico to Canada rides at home.
• 14:23
  And like day by day, I have like a schedule that I try to adhere
• 14:26
  to. And so it kind of feels
• 14:27
  sometimes like you're competing with yourself and these like
• 14:31
  mileage goals that you've set and your overall competitor is
• 14:35
  like the impending winter that's coming.
• 14:38
  So that is like the dynamic that I'm kind of used to working
• 14:42
  with. And this time my competitor was
• 14:45
  other riders and it was felt a lot more adversarial than like
• 14:50
  the usual trips that I'm used to where it's more like a personal,
• 14:54
  you know, test. And this was a very much a like
• 14:57
  more adversarial feeling to it. So that was a strange dynamic
• 15:01
  and it was kind of of constantly this like decision of do I want
• 15:06
  to stay close enough to the front group to be competitive to
• 15:11
  like finish as high up in the in the podium as I can?
• 15:14
  Or do I want to just like scrap it and like hang back by a
• 15:20
  couple hours and just like let the front group have it and then
• 15:24
  have a more enjoyable ride in a sense to where I'm taking the
• 15:28
  competitive element out and can just kind of like enjoy
• 15:31
  Patagonia and the horses. And since I'm good at navigation
• 15:35
  and have good gear, you know, that's at least not been a big
• 15:39
  thing and I can just have more of like a vacation.
• 15:42
  There was definitely like part of that in me of like I could
• 15:46
  definitely choose a different way to experience this race.
• 15:49
  But I went into it wanting it to be kind of a test because it's
• 15:53
  been a long time since I've had something that felt like a test.
• 15:56
  My Mexico to Canada rides used to feel like a test.
• 15:59
  I used to feel a huge amount of accomplishment completing it.
• 16:03
  And by the time I did the 4th one, that feeling of like a huge
• 16:08
  sense of accomplishment had just kind of dwindled a little bit.
• 16:11
  It didn't have the same level of reward that it used to.
• 16:14
  And now for the last couple years I've had, I've been going
• 16:17
  out and it's really been more about like just having a really
• 16:20
  positive experience with the horses and seeing new beautiful
• 16:24
  places. Like this whole idea of it being
• 16:27
  challenge and like a personal test has really kind of been a
• 16:32
  aspect that's been like slowly removed from what I do and why I
• 16:37
  do it. And this trip to Patagonia was
• 16:39
  really kind of a like a little bit a way to kind of bring that
• 16:43
  element back into my experience that was so fundamental early on
• 16:49
  and what I was doing. And so I decided, you know, I
• 16:52
  really was kind of in it to win it and to give it my best shot
• 16:55
  into like prove that these skills that I've acquired over
• 16:59
  the last 12 years, 13 years, however long it's been now were
• 17:05
  like, you know, strong assets in me performing well.
• 17:09
  So I really was trying to to give it my all in the end.
• 17:12
  But yes, there was times where I was like, this really isn't fun
• 17:15
  when you're when you're in it to win it.
• 17:18
  Like, Dang, this would be a lot funner if I was just deciding to
• 17:21
  like not try to win it. So, so yeah, there was
• 17:25
  definitely like that mental aspect always going on and it
• 17:28
  made for a kind of like an emotional roller coaster on like
• 17:31
  a regular basis. And I know other riders were
• 17:34
  experiencing an emotional roller coaster, but more from the like
• 17:39
  just the hardship of the trip and trying to adapt and grow in
• 17:43
  such a like intense situation that was full of new
• 17:47
  experiences. That's how I felt on like my
• 17:49
  first Mexico to Canada ride. I easily cried like every single
• 17:54
  day because there'd be something that would just feel
• 17:57
  overwhelming or so hard or so outside of my skill set that it
• 18:02
  would be like, I don't know if I can do this and like it really,
• 18:05
  you know, makes you feel inferior and insignificant and
• 18:09
  you doubt yourself and you feel like a failure to your horses.
• 18:13
  Like you go through that every single day.
• 18:15
  I feel like that you're out there in that kind of new
• 18:17
  situation. And so I'm sure a lot of the
• 18:19
  riders who this was their first time, they were going through a
• 18:23
  very concentrated version of that on this race.
• 18:27
  And I had a lot of empathy for them because I was like, yeah,
• 18:29
  that was totally how my first like Mexico to Canada for five
• 18:33
  months was going. Yeah, daily crying.
• 18:35
  But then I would also, you know, I don't know if I would have
• 18:38
  learned that lesson in in just a week, but or 10 days.
• 18:42
  But over the course of months on the trail, I did start to
• 18:45
  realize that there were. So there was also great highs,
• 18:48
  like you'd have these amazing highs.
• 18:50
  You'd also have this moments of doubt and crying and, and it
• 18:53
  kind of became this realization of you're so new at it.
• 18:57
  And there's so many things that you don't have control over the
• 19:00
  weather, your horse's health, Like there's so many elements
• 19:04
  that might prevent you from completion of this goal that
• 19:08
  you've set. That the kind of the last thing
• 19:10
  you need to like add to that list is your own like self doubt
• 19:15
  and, and quitting on yourself. And you kind of like, you know,
• 19:18
  there's enough, there's enough going on.
• 19:20
  You don't need to be your own enemy.
• 19:22
  I think I, I think it took me about a month in to kind of like
• 19:26
  come to that realization on the Mexico to Canada ride that like,
• 19:29
  you know, there's so many variables that might make me
• 19:31
  quit. I should probably not be one of
• 19:33
  them, and I should just still get up and try my hardest every
• 19:37
  day, even if I feel low. And so I do think that probably
• 19:41
  that's also a similar mindset that goes on for a lot of riders
• 19:45
  on this Patagonia race of like, oh, my God, I don't know if I
• 19:48
  can do this. And it's such a steep learning
• 19:51
  curve, especially when you also feel like you're in a race and
• 19:55
  you're having to like, you know, the navigation out there is kind
• 19:59
  of crazy. Like in the US, you have a trail
• 20:01
  that you follow in Patagonia. All the courses on private land,
• 20:06
  it's not trail network that you're following, so it's mostly
• 20:09
  cross country, just open navigation and you have all
• 20:14
  these bogs that you can't. Sometimes the bogs are easy to
• 20:17
  see and sometimes they're not. Sometimes it's just looks like
• 20:21
  normal footing and it'll just be kind of like a flatter area of
• 20:25
  the terrain where water collects.
• 20:27
  And those ground is super saturated.
• 20:29
  So from, like, our eyes, it just, it looks fine.
• 20:33
  And then you step on it and it's like, it's like, you know, that
• 20:36
  whole, like, quicksand, you know, thing that we always learn
• 20:39
  about as kids that, you know, oh, you're going to run into
• 20:41
  some quicksand and just be eaten by the earth.
• 20:43
  That's kind of how it feels about it going.
• 20:45
  Yeah. It's like our worst childhood
• 20:47
  fears come to life. Did you end up hitting any or
• 20:49
  having trouble with any of them? They they were definitely like
• 20:53
  present. I never had like horrible
• 20:56
  trouble with them. Like there were some horses that
• 20:59
  it's and it's kind of like depends a lot on how the horse
• 21:02
  sometimes reacts. Like obviously hitting a bog can
• 21:06
  be very much like a rider error. And sometimes the bogs look like
• 21:11
  it's not too bad. And like sometimes it's so hard
• 21:15
  when you can see where you're trying to go is like right on
• 21:18
  the other side and it's not that long and you're just like, if we
• 21:22
  just go like 20 feet through this bog, like we'll be good
• 21:26
  especially too. And sometimes these big forests,
• 21:28
  the vegetation was so thick that you couldn't like, get through
• 21:33
  stuff very easily. And the big, the only real
• 21:36
  clearings were these bogs. And it would be so tempting to
• 21:40
  just be like, just take the path of what seems like least
• 21:43
  resistance through the bogs. And sometimes the bogs were not
• 21:47
  so bad. And it was kind of like, you
• 21:48
  know, you just, it was almost like waiting in like, you know,
• 21:51
  swampy water where you'd like sink into, you know, like maybe
• 21:56
  a foot deep and you could kind of like walk through it.
• 21:59
  And so there'd be like these temptations of like, OK, this
• 22:02
  isn't too bad. We can just go through it.
• 22:04
  But all of a sudden you get like a really something that's more
• 22:07
  sticky. I don't know if sometimes people
• 22:09
  who got stuck, they were hopeful that it was going to not be too
• 22:13
  bad all the way through. And then they got stuck in
• 22:15
  something deep out there or what at least would have been more
• 22:20
  applicable. And like my situation is
• 22:22
  depending on how the horse handles when they step into
• 22:25
  something like that, some will panic.
• 22:27
  And no matter how much you try to like turn them around,
• 22:30
  they'll just like go go deeper into it in an effort to get out.
• 22:35
  But they get themselves in a bad spot And usually you're bailing
• 22:38
  off as quickly as you can because your weight obviously
• 22:41
  doesn't help them. So you're trying to get off
• 22:43
  their backs while they're panicking and like sometimes
• 22:46
  going deeper. You had other horses where it's
• 22:49
  they kind of felt themselves sinking.
• 22:50
  They kind of just like stopped and we're like, all right, well,
• 22:53
  this isn't going very well. How about you, you pop off and
• 22:57
  and we fix this. And so those were obviously
• 22:59
  great horses to have who like kept their cool and stayed calm
• 23:03
  and never really got themselves in a predicament.
• 23:07
  And then you had some other horses that was a very always
• 23:10
  strange reaction where they would like get barely, barely in
• 23:15
  there and basically immediately just lay down.
• 23:18
  And like, it's like they gave up on life.
• 23:20
  Like they weren't even really stuck.
• 23:21
  Like you could get out of there, my dear, but they just like lay
• 23:25
  down and are like, I'm done. This is where I die.
• 23:27
  And you're like, what is happening?
• 23:30
  And so those horses were never stuck, but they sometimes took a
• 23:34
  while to like motivate to get out.
• 23:37
  Like usually, you know, like the guy I rode with in the race a
• 23:41
  lot and we weren't official partners, but we basically were
• 23:45
  unofficial partners because we rode together.
• 23:47
  But he had a replacement horse that he got because one of his
• 23:50
  horses got like a cut in his leg.
• 23:51
  And so we got a replacement horse.
• 23:53
  And his replacement horse is one of these ones that just would
• 23:56
  lay down and be like, Nope, Nope, I'm stuck.
• 23:59
  I should just lay here. And and he did it like one time.
• 24:02
  And we learned very quickly, OK, we can't, we cannot trust this
• 24:05
  horse to walk on stuff. But yeah, he was right by the
• 24:08
  edge and he had just laid down and resigned himself.
• 24:12
  And, you know, and I could kind of just tell by his like,
• 24:14
  mindset, I was like, there's no point in, in like being logical
• 24:18
  about this. Like that ship sailed.
• 24:20
  So we're just going to we're going to take off all his tack
• 24:23
  and we're going to, you know, like I got underneath him to
• 24:27
  kind of like prop him up against my legs so he could be more in a
• 24:31
  sitting up position and not just lay flat because he just wanted
• 24:33
  to lay flat. And then his rider was basically
• 24:37
  like positioning his legs for him to be perfectly so he could
• 24:40
  just like pop up. And so, you know, we were kind
• 24:42
  of just taking our time of like, OK, you have no way to live,
• 24:46
  which is very strange. But we'll just do all the work
• 24:50
  for you and we'll get you all set up.
• 24:52
  So that way when then we ask you to put in some effort just it's
• 24:56
  it's all there for you. So so yeah, that took a minute
• 25:00
  just because of that horses like strange mentality about being
• 25:04
  stuck. And it was just kind of like,
• 25:05
  OK, so that one took us the longest and it was mostly
• 25:09
  personality thing. So I think variety of riders
• 25:11
  kind of like ran into that where they had horses that especially
• 25:14
  the ones who got truly, truly stuck where they had to call in
• 25:17
  people to get the horse out of the bog.
• 25:20
  There was a couple of those. I think it's probably a
• 25:22
  situation where they got the little stuff and the horse
• 25:25
  panicked and went like deeper in.
• 25:29
  I thankfully didn't have any horses like that and my partner
• 25:32
  didn't have any horses like that, but he did have one horse
• 25:35
  who was a total like give a bomb lifer and it was just like I
• 25:38
  died here. So I'm not gonna have that same
• 25:40
  drive for survival that so many of them have.
• 25:44
  Yeah, yeah. So not great, but definitely
• 25:46
  still better than having a horse who completely panics and like
• 25:49
  goes the total wrong direction into the bog.
• 25:52
  But yeah, so you have the bogs, which are definitely an element
• 25:55
  I'm so glad we do not have in the US I'm so glad I don't have
• 25:58
  to contend with those on a regular basis.
• 26:00
  And you don't have trails that you're following.
• 26:02
  You're completely dependent on following topographic maps and
• 26:06
  having a really, really strong understanding of topographic
• 26:10
  maps. If you were really smart, you
• 26:12
  also looked at a lot of satellite images and had
• 26:14
  satellite images overlaying your topographic maps.
• 26:17
  So you could kind of see things you know that you can't always
• 26:20
  see on topographic maps like bogs.
• 26:23
  Sometimes you could see them on the maps.
• 26:24
  You could kind of like avoid them, or you could see if it was
• 26:27
  a really well used cattle trail, sometimes you could see those on
• 26:30
  the satellite images. So having really good satellite
• 26:33
  images was an advantage. But if you couldn't read topo
• 26:36
  and you didn't understand like the lines and what was kind of
• 26:39
  like too steep of country to like reasonably set your core
• 26:44
  horse for, you could get yourself in like a real jam.
• 26:47
  So that was helpful. I've spent so much time looking
• 26:49
  at topographic maps. I kind of knew what was too
• 26:52
  steep and what was, you know, not going to be reasonable,
• 26:56
  especially if you're going uphill.
• 26:57
  Horses really can't go uphill up a certain steepness.
• 27:02
  They can go downhill better because they can kind of like
• 27:04
  sit on their butts and kind of like shuffle down.
• 27:06
  But going uphill you can, you really have to be mindful of
• 27:10
  like how steep of a course you're charting.
• 27:12
  So, so I think that was helpful having just that innate
• 27:16
  knowledge of topos and what I could kind of like reasonably
• 27:21
  plan a course. So I spent a lot of hours
• 27:24
  planning my course ahead of time and, and had a pretty strong
• 27:28
  sense of where we'd go. There's times where you're under
• 27:32
  a bunch of tree cover and you're just kind of like, well, once we
• 27:34
  get to this tree cover, then your topo is kind of like
• 27:38
  useless and you're really just having to deal with like the
• 27:40
  limitations of what's in front of you.
• 27:42
  So there's times for sure where you're just, you're trying to
• 27:46
  just push whack and find cattle trails in front of you.
• 27:49
  But it was very good to have a strong sense of map reading
• 27:54
  because then you at least you kind of like set yourself for a
• 27:58
  certain trajectory that you knew would be overall more successful
• 28:02
  than like following a cattle trail that was going to
• 28:05
  inevitably take you on the wrong trajectory.
• 28:08
  So you kind of needed like a combo of both.
• 28:10
  But yeah, yeah, it was a very interesting.
• 28:12
  But I liked that part. I liked that side of it that
• 28:14
  kind of like new challenges, new test of skills, feeling like I
• 28:18
  was getting to reap the rewards of all those hours I put into
• 28:23
  these developing these other skills in that moment like the
• 28:27
  gear and like, you know, camping out with the horses was
• 28:29
  obviously perfectly comfortable for me and taking care of them
• 28:33
  and camp. I was almost lucky my horses had
• 28:36
  not been hobbled before and that meant that they didn't wander
• 28:40
  very far. So, so that was nice.
• 28:42
  I got to have my horses out on hobbles a lot because they
• 28:44
  didn't go anywhere because they were not super confident in
• 28:48
  them. Whereas certain horses, if
• 28:50
  you're really confident in hobbles, you have to keep much
• 28:52
  closer eye on them. Otherwise they they go too far.
• 28:55
  So my horses, we'll have plenty of grazing time because I didn't
• 28:58
  have to worry about, you know, if I turn my back for 30
• 29:01
  minutes, are they going to like be gone?
• 29:03
  So, so that was like nice too was I was actually relieved that
• 29:07
  I had kind of like younger, less experienced horses when it came
• 29:10
  to that because I was like, oh, good, you guys can't really go
• 29:13
  anywhere. Fantastic.
• 29:14
  I can like go back into my tent and like chill for a couple
• 29:18
  hours and you guys will still be here when I come outside.
• 29:21
  So. So yeah, there was, you know,
• 29:23
  didn't lose our horses, which is so it's always a nice thing.
• 29:26
  I think for most part, most riders were pretty good about
• 29:29
  not losing their horses. I think that it's like the big
• 29:32
  fear for a lot of people is their horse.
• 29:36
  And that would probably be like the worst thing to happen.
• 29:38
  Like one of the rider who I was riding with, his horse got out
• 29:42
  of his hobbles. And so that was the only time
• 29:45
  where I popped out of my tent and our horses were gone.
• 29:48
  And I definitely had a moment, moment of panic of like, Oh my
• 29:50
  gosh, where are horses? But thankfully, my horse being
• 29:54
  so terrible in hobbles, they hadn't gone very far.
• 29:57
  They just gone up the hill above us.
• 29:59
  And so as soon as I got up that hill, they were right there.
• 30:02
  And I was like, thank goodness. But yeah, if my horse hadn't
• 30:05
  been in hobbles and bad hobbles, the other horse would have, you
• 30:09
  know, he only stuck around because he didn't want to go out
• 30:12
  alone. And my horse being terrible
• 30:14
  hobbles, kind of like, you know, Tim from taking full advantage
• 30:20
  of the fact that he'd escaped his hobbles.
• 30:22
  So I was like. Thank yes, saved everyone from a
• 30:24
  adventure they didn't want to go on probably.
• 30:27
  Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, so the race was an
• 30:30
  interesting experience especially too there was, I
• 30:33
  think this was obviously part of it being like the first ever
• 30:37
  edition of it. Like I think the race organizers
• 30:40
  did a very good job of putting it together and of really trying
• 30:44
  to create like despite all the different variables as like fair
• 30:49
  of a playing field as they could.
• 30:51
  But there were clearly some people who came into this very
• 30:54
  much with the sense of entitlement to cross the finish
• 30:58
  line 1st. And they had like some media
• 31:00
  teams with them and some brand endorsements.
• 31:04
  One had a documentary crew. And there was just this sense of
• 31:08
  like, because they had eyeballs on them that they deserved at
• 31:13
  any cost to kind of like cross the finish line 1st.
• 31:16
  And you definitely felt like they were not always playing
• 31:19
  with like the spirit of the competition of like putting the
• 31:22
  horse first. Like that was much more for a
• 31:25
  business move of I'm going to cross the finish line first
• 31:29
  because that's going to have a certain look to it rather than,
• 31:33
  you know. And it's like when they'd go to
• 31:34
  vet checks, they would enter the vet checks with a different kind
• 31:39
  of like set of, you know, seemingly caring about the
• 31:42
  horses. But then the way they would ride
• 31:45
  on course when there wasn't like an imminent vet check coming was
• 31:48
  definitely pushing the horses at a much more aggressive pace.
• 31:52
  And, you know, but they just knew, oh, well, the horse will
• 31:54
  recover overnight. It's not going to have a heart
• 31:56
  rate check. You know, at this moment in
• 31:58
  time, we don't want to get a time penalty, you know, for
• 32:01
  coming into camp late. So let's just like really push
• 32:04
  the horses like they, you know, those things were more of the
• 32:07
  priority than like the horse necessarily in those moments.
• 32:10
  And so that I was like upsetting with sometimes trying to keep up
• 32:13
  with like the front group and be competitive because the way the
• 32:18
  course was lined out with special so few vet checks.
• 32:21
  If the lead group gets you know, more than just like a couple
• 32:26
  hours lead on you, you really can't catch them again.
• 32:29
  There's not enough like roadblocks to slow them down.
• 32:33
  So you have to stay very close to like front pack if you are
• 32:39
  also going to finish in like the front pack.
• 32:42
  So there was like that whole element of, you know, trying to
• 32:46
  keep up while still also racing a little differently.
• 32:51
  Like there were times where we would be right on their tails
• 32:53
  and then just something would come up where it was just like
• 32:56
  the way they were going over certain terrain.
• 32:59
  It's just like, Nope, we are breaking it right here.
• 33:02
  And we would like lose them because we would slow down.
• 33:05
  And there were multiple times where I thought, but like the
• 33:08
  race was totally over. Like I remember especially would
• 33:11
  have been day three, the end of day three when the guy I was
• 33:15
  riding with his horse got like a cut in his leg and it lost some
• 33:18
  shoes. I was and I had had hoof boots
• 33:20
  with me. So we put like my hoof boots on
• 33:23
  his horse to like let that not be at least a factor.
• 33:26
  But then we got the cut at the very end of the day.
• 33:28
  It was just like, and they kept going at like an incredible high
• 33:32
  rate of speed to try to like avoid some time penalties to get
• 33:36
  to camp faster and on crazy terrain.
• 33:39
  And I remember just like we pulled up and it was just like
• 33:43
  here we have a hurt horse. We are going to be going very
• 33:46
  slow all of the next day. They've just taken off like, you
• 33:51
  know, I totally thought the race was like over at that moment in
• 33:54
  time. And it was just like, well,
• 33:55
  that's it for us. Like no more competition.
• 33:58
  We cannot keep up with them. And just as luck would have it,
• 34:02
  like the next day they there was a incoming storm.
• 34:06
  And so we were supposed to wait until like this, you know, they
• 34:09
  gave us a clearing for when we could start the next day.
• 34:12
  And the other competitors, I guess I don't know where the
• 34:16
  confusion happened, but somehow they just decided to still start
• 34:19
  at like the normal 8:00 AM start time.
• 34:22
  And so they started too early. So they kind of got a, they got
• 34:25
  a penalty for that. And then they also didn't read,
• 34:29
  I guess their maps that well and end up getting stuck behind some
• 34:32
  bogs for like hours and hours and hours.
• 34:37
  And so even though me and my partner had like, you know, a
• 34:40
  horse and he's just leading it and walking it and we are just a
• 34:43
  walking pace like that entire day.
• 34:46
  And we got told to when we got part way, they are bringing out
• 34:50
  a replacement horse for us. And they're like just sit at
• 34:53
  this lake for two hours. Then we sat at a lake for two
• 34:56
  hours and twiddled our thumbs, which we got to the use against,
• 35:00
  you know, a race penalty that we had gotten for taking like a
• 35:04
  different course that we didn't know we shouldn't take, but what
• 35:06
  we took. So we had a 2 hour penalty we
• 35:08
  had waiting for us. And so we just ended up waiting
• 35:11
  that penalty out at a lake for this horse to show up.
• 35:14
  So it ended up somehow Now the next day, yeah, it all worked
• 35:18
  out and we got in. And then the next day we started
• 35:20
  at the exact same time as the people who got there before us.
• 35:24
  And it was just like, I guess this race isn't over.
• 35:27
  Like, I had totally resigned ourselves to being out of it,
• 35:30
  you know, 24 hours ago. And now, Nope, here we are.
• 35:35
  We're all together again. Yeah.
• 35:37
  So there was, yeah, some funny moments like that where it was
• 35:40
  just like, Nope, I guess this is over for us.
• 35:42
  And then somehow we just, we were still in it.
• 35:45
  So, yeah, it was overall I was happy with how I did the race
• 35:50
  because there was definitely times where I felt like I was
• 35:52
  like, OK, well, I guess the race is over for us.
• 35:54
  And then luck would have it. It wasn't.
• 35:57
  We were still we were still in it.
• 35:58
  And I didn't feel like I had to compromise the horse's safety.
• 36:02
  And so I was very grateful for that.
• 36:04
  And I was grateful that kind of sometimes holds and penalties
• 36:07
  and things that were being doled out by the race course was very
• 36:11
  much trying to like recognize certain, you know, things and
• 36:15
  like real things in, but they don't have eyes everywhere.
• 36:18
  You know, you can't and you kind of have to have had certain
• 36:20
  rider integrity to do the race well in ethically.
• 36:25
  And so that was just upsetting that there were people that had
• 36:28
  had obviously very strong motives for finishing first
• 36:32
  because of the level of investment in documentary crews
• 36:36
  or brand endorsements that they had riding on this.
• 36:40
  But I think was just putting a little bit too much like
• 36:44
  leverage on, you know, them for why they should be finishing and
• 36:49
  how they should be finishing. Yeah.
• 36:52
  So I think and then going into the race without those extra
• 36:55
  noise of like who I have this brand I need to impress or who I
• 36:59
  need to do, you know, for my business, I need to finish in
• 37:02
  this position. I think that is a kind of like
• 37:05
  almost an important element for the sake of the horse.
• 37:07
  So that way you don't have those extra just personal investments
• 37:12
  for how you need to finish it. And you can really just like
• 37:16
  play the race by what's, you know, dealt to you in that
• 37:19
  moment and what your horse really needs.
• 37:21
  So so yeah, that that whole thing.
• 37:23
  And you ended up finishing second, which is amazing.
• 37:27
  I did, yeah. I finished second, which I was
• 37:29
  kind of like surprised about in the end.
• 37:31
  Yeah, the front five, they were three different teams
• 37:34
  technically and they kind of decided to like pool their
• 37:39
  strengths together and finish as like Uncore Hort.
• 37:45
  And that definitely was also an element to like me and my, my
• 37:48
  like unofficial partner. He and I weren't ever planning
• 37:51
  planning to like finish as as A and share the win.
• 37:55
  The way he and I worked it out was if we cross the finish line
• 37:58
  at the same time, since the true winner of the race is the horse
• 38:02
  owners, like they're the ones who get a cash prize.
• 38:04
  Me and my partner had kind of decided we'll finish together
• 38:08
  and then we'll just let the vets basically decide who wins.
• 38:11
  You know, who's ever whose heart rates drop the fastest, who's
• 38:14
  ever horses clear vet check the fastest.
• 38:17
  Like that'll then be like the tiebreaker between us writing
• 38:20
  partner had like, you know, decided that we would determine
• 38:25
  a winner out of the two of us. But I guess they did it
• 38:27
  differently with the front group.
• 38:29
  They decided just to split the winnings amongst them.
• 38:32
  And so they were very much working together and it
• 38:35
  definitely the last day became a like group of five versus group
• 38:39
  of two scenario. And just having that many people
• 38:43
  working against you on the very last day of the race.
• 38:46
  It was just like, OK, like I, I, I, it's, it's too much of A
• 38:50
  David versus Goliath thing. Like I couldn't the overcome
• 38:55
  that kind of dynamic. So the last day was hard because
• 38:59
  I kind of very much realized, like, I couldn't finish, you
• 39:03
  know, first I couldn't finish with them.
• 39:06
  And I felt like I could finish with them.
• 39:08
  I had a chance of winning because my horses were in good
• 39:11
  condition. And they'd kind of like said
• 39:13
  that at the final vet check that, you know, Gillian finishes
• 39:17
  with the front group, she'll win because her horses are in better
• 39:20
  condition. And we have to recognize that.
• 39:23
  And that was nice to hear at the time, but probably put like a
• 39:27
  good target on my back because then the front group's like, OK,
• 39:31
  well, what can we do to make that not happen?
• 39:33
  Yeah, yeah. So so that was.
• 39:36
  Was nice to here, but then yeah, we probably snuffed any chance I
• 39:39
  had of finishing like hot on their tails because that was
• 39:43
  kind of my game plan was keep them in eyesight, you know, for
• 39:46
  the last day, let them cross the finish line ahead of me by
• 39:51
  couple minutes. And and then my horses were such
• 39:54
  fast vet checkers I was like, we can probably come in heart rate
• 39:59
  wise and like slide in under them.
• 40:01
  So that was like my whole little strategy.
• 40:04
  Was stay close enough, let them cross the finish line 1st and
• 40:08
  then hopefully we just vet faster or have cleaner vets and
• 40:11
  like and then the end take the win that way.
• 40:14
  That was like my whole little strategy.
• 40:16
  But once the vet had kind of like verbalized so clearly that
• 40:20
  that was a possibility, then they were very much obviously
• 40:24
  going to want there to be a much bigger distance between me and
• 40:27
  them. So I ended up finishing like 40
• 40:29
  minutes behind them on the morning of Day 8.
• 40:32
  Then amongst the five of them, one of the teams had like enough
• 40:37
  vet penalties that they got pushed to 3rd.
• 40:40
  So three of the five who finished ahead of me, they split
• 40:45
  the winning. So it was between a pair and a
• 40:47
  single. So they shared the winnings and
• 40:50
  then I came in second and then one team, a team of two who
• 40:54
  finished ahead of me, they ended up getting placed in 3rd place
• 40:58
  behind me. So that was at least nice.
• 41:01
  Like I liked too that they were obviously being critical of like
• 41:06
  the horses conditions and really factoring that into like final
• 41:10
  placements and and everything. Because you know, it's
• 41:13
  definitely felt sometimes like, you know, it was a hard race
• 41:16
  when you know, you feel like you're like the little fish in a
• 41:18
  big pond against like some really big players who just have
• 41:23
  more more money more invested into it.
• 41:26
  And, and it was just nice to feel like, OK, you know, like
• 41:29
  the race itself is, is trying to make it as fair of a playing
• 41:33
  field as possible. So I liked the race overall.
• 41:35
  Fantastic challenge. I definitely think it's, it's
• 41:39
  not as fun sometimes based on who the competitors are to be
• 41:43
  racing with certain kinds of people at play.
• 41:46
  But hopefully that's more of like just a my year thing
• 41:50
  because it was the first ever edition of it.
• 41:52
  And hopefully for for future riders, like there's not that of
• 41:57
  all. That's also kind of the real
• 41:58
  world. You know, it's not it's not
• 41:59
  always fair there. You have all sorts of different
• 42:01
  people deal with and you have to find value in in your own
• 42:07
  journey and in your own race and be proud and comfortable of like
• 42:11
  the race that you ride and the journey that you decide to like
• 42:15
  stick with. So that's also I think has its
• 42:18
  own set of like, reward and value that we y'all, Yeah, life
• 42:23
  constantly tries to remind us of.
• 42:25
  So even if, you know, future riders have a similar dynamic
• 42:29
  that that I had, probably they'll just have to like, learn
• 42:32
  the same lessons that I was of like, OK, I'm going to stick to
• 42:36
  like what I believe in and stand for, even if it doesn't give me
• 42:40
  the same level of recognition that I wish I was getting.
• 42:43
  Yeah. What are some of the things you
• 42:44
  did to? Just ensure your horses were
• 42:46
  well taken care of and prioritized over the
• 42:48
  competition. And maybe even compared to other
• 42:52
  writers, but like even just the values you had in place and
• 42:55
  things like that. I I definitely like walking the
• 42:57
  downhills. And it kind of just depends how
• 42:59
  your tack fits like so I brought all my own tack out there and I
• 43:02
  do, I do think that that worked well.
• 43:05
  The horses all have different builds and you know, they kind
• 43:09
  of supply the same kind of saddle for a variety of horses.
• 43:13
  And at least what I was surprised about with some of the
• 43:15
  creolos is I feel like sometimes it's so hard to tell in pictures
• 43:19
  like a horse's physical body type.
• 43:23
  I do a lot of saddle fitting for a company that's one of my
• 43:26
  sources of income. And even I've been so surprised
• 43:30
  in that line of work how you'll get pictures of horses and you
• 43:35
  think one thing in your head or the owner tells you certain
• 43:38
  things about how their horse is built.
• 43:39
  And then you get out there and as soon as you lay eyes on them,
• 43:43
  you're like, no, this is actually very different than how
• 43:47
  it was like presented to me or how I thought it was going to
• 43:49
  be. And it was a little bit like
• 43:51
  that going into this race, you know, I had this assumption that
• 43:55
  a lot of the horses were going to be like really big, stocky,
• 43:59
  filled out horses. And that was like, not
• 44:03
  necessarily the case. Some were very high withered and
• 44:07
  not very broad. And obviously when I was going
• 44:10
  into this and thinking about bringing my own saddle, you
• 44:13
  know, you can't you can't do anything to make too small of a
• 44:16
  saddle fit a bigger horse, but you can sometimes play around a
• 44:20
  little bit with too big of a saddle.
• 44:23
  So I brought my wide treed saddle and the horses I ended up
• 44:27
  having were quite petite. And so especially on the
• 44:30
  downhills, like my saddle would just want to go sliding forward.
• 44:34
  And so I always just based on my tack, I was always getting off
• 44:38
  and walking the downhills. I think in general that's a good
• 44:42
  plan and I think in general for the way a lot of tack that's not
• 44:46
  a perfect fit for your horse and getting off and walking
• 44:49
  downhills goes a long ways to preventing problems from coming
• 44:54
  up. So I think that's usually a good
• 44:56
  strategy is to have that in your head of, you know, my tacks
• 45:01
  probably not going to fit perfectly.
• 45:04
  So I should do things to, you know, prevent too much shifting
• 45:08
  in the wrong ways that's going to put too much pressure in
• 45:11
  certain places. So getting off and walking,
• 45:13
  especially on the downhills, I think is a is a good a good go
• 45:17
  to strategy. Also coming into it with maybe
• 45:21
  some extra goodies in your in your luggage that might help you
• 45:25
  like pads that you don't mind like cutting up, like if you
• 45:29
  feel like you need to cut holes to relieve pressure.
• 45:33
  Or I remember for like my smaller of my two horses, like I
• 45:37
  was taking some of my sweaters and I was making shims out of
• 45:40
  them and putting them like on top of my pad just to like give
• 45:43
  him just so my saddle wouldn't nose dive on him is so much and
• 45:47
  it would lift it up a little bit.
• 45:49
  So I was just using my sweaters to like, you know, create a
• 45:53
  little bit extra bulb where I needed it.
• 45:55
  But having like a Shim pad would have been cool for that.
• 45:59
  So yeah, little things like that I think can be like cool things
• 46:02
  to add into your luggage, even if you're going to use their
• 46:05
  saddles. I think bringing along a Shim
• 46:08
  pad could go a long ways if you're comfortable with doing
• 46:11
  your own kind of like saddle fitting or playing around with
• 46:15
  it. I think that goes a long ways.
• 46:17
  So yeah, certain things like that, I was like, OK, you know,
• 46:20
  could have brought in even more stuff, but I'm glad I was a
• 46:24
  little bit on the crazy side and I brought like my own pad and I
• 46:27
  brought my own saddle and I brought my own bridle and bit A
• 46:30
  lot of the horses there are very used to, you know, just neck
• 46:34
  raining. And so I did see two riders who
• 46:37
  come from like English backgrounds sometimes having
• 46:39
  like a hard time with initially, like they see all seemed
• 46:43
  eventually like the horses are so adaptable.
• 46:46
  The horses will kind of adapt to their riders cues after enough
• 46:49
  time and riders too will figure out their horses.
• 46:52
  But I remember watching when we've initially got paired up
• 46:55
  with our horses and seeing a lot of riders on their horses.
• 46:58
  A lot of the horses were sometimes having a hard time
• 47:00
  because they were feeling too much like pressure on their
• 47:04
  mouths because they have these like Shank bits in there and
• 47:07
  they're very used to just neck rain pressure.
• 47:09
  And sometimes the riders who were on them were used to riding
• 47:13
  in something, you know, that has like a snaffle or direct rain.
• 47:17
  And they really weren't as cognizant of like just using
• 47:21
  neck rain. And so you kind of see that
• 47:23
  sometimes with some communication between horse and
• 47:25
  riders during those initial, like, pairing up because the
• 47:28
  horses were very used to like, not having their face touched
• 47:32
  and just going off of like, very light queues.
• 47:35
  And when I was riding mine, you know, that was even something
• 47:38
  initially to that. Like, I was like, OK, I really
• 47:40
  got to like be extra careful with my hands.
• 47:43
  I remember one of my horses, he hadn't really never obviously
• 47:47
  posted much with a rider. Like anytime I tried to post the
• 47:51
  trot, he would immediately try to canter.
• 47:54
  And I was feeling like he and I were having like quite a bit of
• 47:57
  miscommunication over, you know, me then wanting him to slow down
• 48:02
  and like, transition down to a trot.
• 48:04
  And so I'm like trying to cue him for that and feeling bad
• 48:08
  that I'm like messing with his face when he's a very light
• 48:11
  sensitive horse and doesn't want me messing with his face.
• 48:14
  And then me then trying to post the trot.
• 48:17
  He's reading that as my body, you know, asking him to go more
• 48:21
  forward and to Cantor or he thinks I'm a really shitty
• 48:23
  writer and don't know how to sit the trot.
• 48:25
  And he was like, OK, I'll make this easy for you, lady, and
• 48:28
  we'll just Cantor. And so that was, it was like a
• 48:31
  funny, like miscommunication that he and I were having.
• 48:34
  Yeah. And and that was partly why I
• 48:36
  decided to put in a snaffle bit because I felt like he and I
• 48:40
  would eventually figure out a trot.
• 48:43
  Like we, I have to post the trot.
• 48:44
  I cannot sit a trot for as much trotting as we were going to do.
• 48:48
  And energetically, I couldn't have him just be cantering
• 48:52
  everywhere. He needed to figure out how to
• 48:54
  trot and, and tolerate me posting it.
• 48:57
  But I felt like having the Shank bit was just a little unfair for
• 49:02
  me to be communicating constantly with him to like slow
• 49:05
  down. And so I ended up going with a
• 49:07
  snaffle bit for my competition just because I felt like it lit
• 49:11
  me, you know, regulate them a little bit more hands on without
• 49:16
  it being just kind of like an unfair level of communication.
• 49:19
  Yeah, so I was talking about how that worked out.
• 49:23
  Like, you know, they still were so sensitive that I was
• 49:25
  basically still neck raining them a lot with my snaffle bit
• 49:30
  because that's what they they knew.
• 49:31
  But it was very helpful for my horse who did not want to trot
• 49:36
  with me posting for being able to like, you know, just give him
• 49:39
  a little half halts and be like, just kidding, you need to trot.
• 49:43
  And we figured it out within like a day or two.
• 49:45
  Like he had kind of like figured out the trot.
• 49:47
  But I was just happy that having a slightly different bit for
• 49:51
  that miscommunication he and I were having was just a little
• 49:54
  kinder of a way for us to, like, get from point A to point B be
• 49:58
  and kind of like get over this miscommunication hump that we
• 50:01
  were having over like, a rising through.
• 50:04
  But yeah, it was just funny little things like that, that,
• 50:06
  you know, you don't think about riding a horse that, you know,
• 50:10
  was trained in a very culturally specific way that's different
• 50:14
  than how you ride. Like, all my horses will happily
• 50:17
  let you post the trot. But like, this horse had clearly
• 50:20
  he was a cow horse and he was clearly not used to having
• 50:23
  anyone post the trot. And he was just like, what are
• 50:25
  you doing up there? It's trying to fix you.
• 50:30
  Yeah. Yeah, I think he.
• 50:31
  Literally was trying to take care of me and he's just like,
• 50:33
  wow, you bounce around a lot up there, lady.
• 50:35
  Like I'll make this easy for you, We'll just can't do places.
• 50:39
  So yeah, they were great horses, super safe.
• 50:43
  I did like that a lot about I felt like most of horses in the
• 50:46
  competition were really like, you know, super safe.
• 50:51
  Like clearly had had lots of riding and training done on
• 50:54
  them, so they were going to take good care of their riders.
• 50:57
  But sometimes just simple like riding differences between, you
• 51:02
  know, the jobs that they've done historically versus we need to
• 51:06
  travel 200 plus miles and we're going to be doing a lot of
• 51:09
  trotting was, you know, outside of their realm of typical
• 51:13
  training. And so you as a rider, part of
• 51:16
  the challenge and part of the race, you have to kind of like
• 51:19
  adapt to your horse and also find quick and efficient ways to
• 51:23
  help your horse adapt to this new challenge that they've never
• 51:27
  been asked to do before in their little lives.
• 51:30
  And you know, you're just like, here's how it's going to.
• 51:33
  So so yeah, that's that was helpful.
• 51:36
  I think to going into it from like my perspective was being
• 51:41
  very attuned to the horses and how can we find common ground in
• 51:46
  our communication? I spent a lot of time with my
• 51:48
  horses, but like for the one day we were paired up like some some
• 51:52
  riders kind of like went out and just we're like, is my horse
• 51:55
  safe? OK, cool, we're good to go.
• 51:57
  I spent, I spent, I didn't have lunch.
• 52:00
  I spent like as much time with my horses on day one because I
• 52:04
  was really the only day I got to get to know both of them.
• 52:06
  I had a second day with one horse, but they have to
• 52:10
  transport the horses to another location.
• 52:12
  So your second horse gets taken from you after that first day.
• 52:17
  So your only day to get to know both horses is like day one.
• 52:20
  So I spent a lot of time, I practiced ponying them.
• 52:23
  I brought like a little flag with me to try to like in case
• 52:26
  my horseshoe I needed to pony didn't really pony well and most
• 52:31
  horses don't pony well. It's not always a typical part
• 52:34
  of their training. So having like a long
• 52:37
  horsemanship flag to help just like encourage the horse to like
• 52:41
  keep pace with your riding horse.
• 52:43
  This is helpful. Of course, I had to 1st also
• 52:45
  make sure that my riding horse wasn't going to freak out about
• 52:48
  the flag because I don't know if he had really ever seen flags in
• 52:50
  his life. And he was definitely like
• 52:53
  pretty blowy about it. But he was so well minded that
• 52:56
  when I was on him and flapping around this flag, he was just
• 53:00
  like focused on his job. So I was grateful.
• 53:03
  I was like, you're really well minded for especially I had two
• 53:05
  five year olds. So for two five year olds, they
• 53:08
  were, they were very well minded for all this like nonsense that
• 53:12
  I was like throwing at them. Yeah, they're like, I don't know
• 53:15
  what you're doing. Here.
• 53:16
  But yeah, like I put, I put my. Saddlebags on them cuz some
• 53:21
  horses too, if they haven't ridden with like saddlebags, you
• 53:24
  know, that's a new experience. And, and even for me, I ride
• 53:28
  with my I know my saddlebags very well.
• 53:31
  Like that's that's common for me to ride with this kit, but I'm
• 53:35
  usually in a wah. I'm not normally cantering and
• 53:38
  trotting with my saddlebags. So I did want to put my loads on
• 53:44
  the horse and and ride them at all gates and also see if I
• 53:49
  needed to alter, like how I was securing things to make things
• 53:54
  less bouncy or, you know, alter things around.
• 53:57
  So that was part of it. And I think that was something
• 54:00
  that maybe some riders didn't, didn't do and as promptly as
• 54:04
  they should off the start line. Some riders you could, you know,
• 54:08
  had their gear quite well strapped down and attached.
• 54:11
  And then you'd have some other riders where you take off down
• 54:13
  the start line. And then the first few 100 feet,
• 54:16
  you're just seeing like things flying off the backs of these
• 54:20
  horses and sleeping bags. And, and you know, there's
• 54:23
  definitely a certain, certain lack of preparation that was
• 54:27
  necessarily fully understood. So I was definitely trying, even
• 54:31
  though I knew how my saddlebags attached because I've used them,
• 54:35
  even I was still like, this is still different than what I
• 54:38
  normally do. I'm not cantering for 20 miles
• 54:42
  in my saddlebags on day one. Like that was kind of our day
• 54:44
  one experience was from the start line to checkpoint one,
• 54:47
  you're just going down a dirt road and so you're trotting and
• 54:50
  cantering like the 1st 20 miles. And I was like, Yep, that's
• 54:53
  different. Never done that before with my
• 54:55
  saddlebags. So they really need to be
• 54:58
  working and even my knees really started to give out on me and I
• 55:03
  don't know if I think it was from just riding with shorter
• 55:06
  stirrups and I'm used to and and posting so much.
• 55:09
  I think that's where the pain was.
• 55:11
  But also my front saddlebags would sometimes like hit the
• 55:15
  fronts of my knees. And I don't know if that's like
• 55:17
  where the inflammation started, but I would say like after day
• 55:21
  one, you know, I had a lot of bruising on my front knees and,
• 55:25
  and I had a backpack with me just it was basically empty.
• 55:29
  I would, I brought it with the idea of if I was close to a
• 55:32
  checkpoint and wanting to camp out, I could stuff a bunch of
• 55:36
  hay in there and then give the horse some like alfalfa because
• 55:39
  I had hay at the checkpoints. So I brought it with me and it
• 55:42
  was basically empty. But it ended up being useful not
• 55:45
  only for carrying hay at those times, but also if we were doing
• 55:49
  a bunch of running, I would take my front saddlebags and I would
• 55:53
  actually put them in my backpack and run with them in my backpack
• 55:57
  so that way my knees would not get so much abuse.
• 56:00
  So that was something that like I hadn't anticipated, but I was
• 56:04
  like, OK, well, I'm glad I have the backpack because my knees
• 56:07
  are absolutely shot. And, you know, and they're still
• 56:11
  even now, like they feel fine walking around, like touching
• 56:15
  them, touching like on the actual kneecap.
• 56:18
  They're like, it's like, you know, in that game operation
• 56:21
  where like the little buzzer, you know, it's like, that's how
• 56:23
  I feel. Like when my knees get touched,
• 56:25
  it's like this is like a little electric shock.
• 56:27
  So yeah, I was, I was grateful that I had the backpack to just
• 56:31
  toss my front saddlebags into if I knew we were going to be doing
• 56:35
  a lot of like trotting or cantering and just like remove
• 56:38
  that that element of like my knees just getting more backed
• 56:41
  up. So yeah, there was a couple
• 56:43
  things where, you know, you tried to plan for all the
• 56:47
  variables and then some surprise you.
• 56:49
  Like my knees very much surprised me, but at least I had
• 56:52
  a backpack that I could do some some adapting with.
• 56:57
  So yeah, it was that's a big part of it was kind of like the
• 57:00
  planning for it is know your kit really well and then when you
• 57:04
  get your horses, put everything on them.
• 57:07
  Play around with everything. Figure out what your run around
• 57:11
  a little bit before you're out there.
• 57:12
  Yeah, yeah. Figure out what your horses.
• 57:14
  Are good and not good at in terms of like the ponying, you
• 57:18
  know, if one horse isn't good at ponying or if like someone
• 57:21
  doesn't like a rising trot. My horses were very hard to
• 57:24
  catch too initially. They were, you know, not, not
• 57:29
  easy to catch. And so when, you know, I knew
• 57:32
  that they were going to have to be like 1 was going to have to
• 57:35
  go out in a truck like I was like to make sure my horse
• 57:37
  didn't miss his shipment out. I spent a lot of time beforehand
• 57:42
  catching him. And I had a little bucket that I
• 57:44
  would bring for water. I spent time neither of them
• 57:48
  knew what the bucket was about. They were like, what is that
• 57:51
  freakish creature? So I had to spend some time
• 57:54
  getting them a little acclimated to like my collapsible bucket.
• 57:57
  I was like, this is might be how I get you water.
• 57:59
  So I need you to understand that this is a good thing.
• 58:02
  So little things like that. I like really let them see my
• 58:05
  gear and and tried to play around.
• 58:08
  The only thing I didn't do with them, which I don't think is a
• 58:10
  bad thing to do, is like put your hobbles on them and see how
• 58:14
  hobble broke they are. I was pretty confident that we,
• 58:18
  because I had picked up their feet and everything and they
• 58:20
  were really good with their feet and they just the way they
• 58:22
  responded to pressure in every situation let me know that they
• 58:27
  didn't, they weren't panickers. They, they really thought things
• 58:31
  through. And so because of all of that
• 58:34
  indications and how they were responding to me handling their
• 58:37
  feet, I just was going off of experience of like, yeah, you
• 58:41
  guys will be fine when I put hobbles on you.
• 58:43
  But having like a horse who isn't used to thinking through
• 58:47
  problems or isn't used to, and they may have been hobbled and
• 58:50
  just told to stand, like that's typically how horses are hobble
• 58:54
  broke in like more cowboy cultures is they're hobble
• 58:58
  broke, but they just stand still, which is a good thing in
• 59:02
  terms of your horse not running away.
• 59:03
  But you just definitely don't want a horse who's never been
• 59:05
  hobbled before and who has like a more claustrophobic
• 59:09
  relationship with pressure who's going to panic.
• 59:11
  You don't want that. So if I was getting that type of
• 59:14
  vibe from my horse about pressure, that would have then
• 59:18
  been something I would have wanted to understand about my
• 59:22
  horse going into the race. So there's certain things where
• 59:25
  like that was one of the things with that I just kind of like
• 59:28
  skipped over, but I was paying attention to how do they respond
• 59:32
  to pressure? How are they feeling about being
• 59:35
  restricted? How are they thinking about me
• 59:37
  picking up their feet? Are they are they trying to take
• 59:39
  it away from me? Do they feel like protective of
• 59:42
  it? Or are they very much just like
• 59:44
  okey dokey, it's yours like and you know, so there was, there
• 59:48
  was cues that I was picking up. But I really did try very hard
• 59:52
  to understand my horses as well as I could within the 24 hours
• 59:57
  that I had with them. And trying to figure out their
• 59:59
  strengths and their weaknesses and where I needed to make
• 1:00:02
  adjustments in our tack, on our saddle fit on our bags, on the
• 1:00:06
  equipment that I was using and just be, as you know, on the
• 1:00:12
  same page with them as humanly possible going into it.
• 1:00:16
  So. And I think that was that was a
• 1:00:19
  big, a big part of the prep for me was knowing that I didn't
• 1:00:24
  know who my horses were going to be and trying to arm myself with
• 1:00:29
  as many tools as possible so that when I did have the
• 1:00:32
  opportunity to get to know them, we could get to know each other
• 1:00:35
  and adapt it. Like I thought I was going to
• 1:00:38
  ride the race alone, ended up not happening very much, but I
• 1:00:41
  was worried that like one of my horses was very little buddy
• 1:00:46
  sour didn't want to go out alone.
• 1:00:48
  And so I was like, how big of an issue is this going to be?
• 1:00:50
  So I was spent time taking him out alone and really trying to
• 1:00:53
  work through that with him. And he ended up doing fine by
• 1:00:57
  like after 30 minutes. But that was also something that
• 1:01:00
  was in my brain of like, are you going to be a horse who we can
• 1:01:04
  actually do this race solo or are you, am I going to need to
• 1:01:08
  partner up with someone? And just fortunately for
• 1:01:11
  probably that horse, I did end up like meeting someone at the
• 1:01:15
  airport on our way to Patagonia that I just clicked with and who
• 1:01:19
  had the same kind of skills that I had.
• 1:01:22
  And so we ended up being a good team.
• 1:01:24
  I went into it thinking, you know, given all the experience I
• 1:01:28
  have with maps and navigation, I knew it was on the high end of
• 1:01:33
  that skill set and I just didn't want to feel like I was going to
• 1:01:36
  babysit someone who didn't have the skills.
• 1:01:39
  And so I've thought for me, it would be beneficial just to ride
• 1:01:43
  the race alone and not feel like I was responsible for someone.
• 1:01:46
  So when I got to meet someone who was also equally independent
• 1:01:50
  and had the exact same strong set of skills, and then it was
• 1:01:53
  much more of a, OK, if this doesn't work for one of us or
• 1:01:57
  both of us, we can part ways. But it seems like we both have
• 1:02:01
  enough skills that we can run our own race.
• 1:02:04
  And as long as it's both serving us, then we can run it together.
• 1:02:07
  So ended up working out in that regard.
• 1:02:09
  And that was that was helpful too for the horses love being
• 1:02:13
  together. I think it's, it's hard on some
• 1:02:15
  horses to be solo. So it is nice for the sake of
• 1:02:19
  the horse and in like camp and things to have a buddy.
• 1:02:23
  It's not a natural thing them to graze on their own or to camp
• 1:02:27
  alone overnight, right? And it can be hard if a horse
• 1:02:31
  doesn't have a relationship with you.
• 1:02:33
  Like a lot of my personal horses, they're very human
• 1:02:36
  centric and you know, you're not a perfect by any means
• 1:02:40
  replacement for a herd member, but at least if they associate
• 1:02:44
  you with safety and a relationship, they're a lot more
• 1:02:49
  comfortable staying out solo overnight with you.
• 1:02:53
  Whereas a lot of these new horses like they didn't have
• 1:02:55
  that human centric focus. They were much more, you know,
• 1:03:00
  associated humans with like, OK, we go and we do a job, but not
• 1:03:03
  really like a super personal relationship.
• 1:03:05
  And asking that type of horse to then, you know, go out alone
• 1:03:10
  overnight and be alone in a camp is is a pretty hard ask.
• 1:03:15
  So I was grateful that I did find a partner that I liked
• 1:03:19
  riding with because I do think it made the experience for the
• 1:03:22
  horses like way, way more enjoyable for them to have other
• 1:03:27
  horses to ride with. I do think that that's a mostly
• 1:03:31
  human, like, selfish thing to want to ride alone.
• 1:03:37
  Like I can understand if it's like there's not good strategy
• 1:03:41
  available to you to ride with someone.
• 1:03:43
  Like I didn't want to feel like I was going to babysit someone.
• 1:03:45
  So that was kind of like my go to.
• 1:03:47
  But when the opportunity came up that like, OK, I can ride with
• 1:03:50
  this person and we're going to be compatible, That's a very
• 1:03:54
  clear good thing to do for my horses because, yeah, the horses
• 1:03:57
  for sure appreciate that. Riding in a group.
• 1:04:00
  Yeah. Do you feel like I know you
• 1:04:02
  talked? About like your trips with your
• 1:04:03
  personal horses, it kind of helps with that bond and maybe
• 1:04:06
  talk more about that. And do you also fill that with
• 1:04:08
  these horses that were brand new to you and this whole
• 1:04:10
  experience, It sounds like. Yeah, I think, I think I.
• 1:04:14
  Do really love getting to know horses and I, I spent so long in
• 1:04:19
  my first, like early on, like the horses I took on my first
• 1:04:22
  Mexico to Canada ride were horses I'd had since I was like
• 1:04:26
  a, you know, a teen. I got my mare Shiloh when I was
• 1:04:30
  13 and then she had her only foal when she was when I was 15.
• 1:04:36
  And that was Dakota. So I'd had those horses for a
• 1:04:39
  number of years when then I did my first Mexico to Canada ride
• 1:04:42
  at 22. So I'd had Shiloh for nine years
• 1:04:45
  and I'd had Dakota for seven years when I did my first Mexico
• 1:04:48
  to Canada. And I felt like that was the
• 1:04:51
  only thing I had going for me was that I'd had these two
• 1:04:56
  horses for a lengthy amount of time, especially for someone
• 1:05:02
  that's 22 years old. And I knew them very well.
• 1:05:06
  Like I had started to code under saddle and I had learned a lot
• 1:05:10
  from that experience. I had grown a lot in my
• 1:05:14
  horsemanship, grew a lot more afterwards, but at least I had
• 1:05:18
  had enough challenges in my relationship with both horses
• 1:05:23
  that we had really kind of built on that.
• 1:05:25
  And so I felt like I had a very strong foundation with them and
• 1:05:29
  I knew them very well and they were super safe and they, we had
• 1:05:34
  great communication that was about it.
• 1:05:37
  Everything else I was wildly inept at like navigating my
• 1:05:42
  gear, setting up camp stock containment.
• 1:05:46
  I've never been in the mountains before.
• 1:05:48
  So everything else was like a very steep learning curve and
• 1:05:53
  you know, was hard, hard lessons.
• 1:05:56
  So I was, I was grateful that I had at least one thing going for
• 1:06:00
  me, which was my relationship with the horses and how strong I
• 1:06:04
  felt. I have felt, as you know, I've
• 1:06:07
  done these trips and as I've gotten better in those areas
• 1:06:10
  that I start out being very weakened, then it allows me to
• 1:06:14
  have less of a strong foundation with my horses and then that can
• 1:06:19
  be more of my weakness and I can still be successful.
• 1:06:22
  You know, I did my first three Mexico to Canada rides with just
• 1:06:25
  those two horses and really was able to gain a lot of skills on
• 1:06:30
  like just the navigating and the camping in the mountainside.
• 1:06:33
  And then when I lost Shyla, and then six weeks after Dakota
• 1:06:37
  suffered a really severe injury and he was unrideable for over a
• 1:06:41
  year, I almost felt like I started zero.
• 1:06:45
  I felt like somehow I started from below where when I was 22
• 1:06:49
  and I had to get some new horses and some horses who were not
• 1:06:53
  naturally gifted the way Shyla and Dakota were.
• 1:06:56
  And I really had to babysit them and focus a lot more on, OK, I
• 1:07:03
  have a horse that's not, this is not their gift in life.
• 1:07:06
  But I I'm going to do the best I can.
• 1:07:08
  I'm going to be aware of what their limitations are and work
• 1:07:12
  with that. And I still was able to do like
• 1:07:14
  another Mexico to Canada ride even with some horses that were
• 1:07:19
  not very naturally gifted at that line of work.
• 1:07:23
  And I've switched out a lot of my horses and I saved like my
• 1:07:27
  really naturally good mountain horses, Dakota for the really
• 1:07:31
  tricky parts to make sure that, you know, he didn't get some
• 1:07:34
  minor injury early on. So it's like, I'm going to need
• 1:07:38
  you buddy, for like this section of the, of the, of the trail
• 1:07:41
  because no one else can do it. Like you are my only one with
• 1:07:45
  the skills to do this section. So I'm not going to risk you
• 1:07:49
  getting some minor injury in this easy area where I can take
• 1:07:54
  one of the other horses. I'm going to like preserve you.
• 1:07:56
  So I was, I was a little more strategic and how I utilized my
• 1:08:00
  horses on my last Mexico to Canada ride, I had more of them.
• 1:08:03
  I had five horses and only Dakota was really my only good
• 1:08:08
  mountain horse, my mule, she's very Hardy so she can do a lot
• 1:08:12
  too, but I can't ride her out solo.
• 1:08:14
  So, so I can utilize her as my Packer just wonderfully.
• 1:08:18
  But as a like riding animal, I really was limited to Dakota.
• 1:08:22
  And so I felt like I had to be very judicious with how I was,
• 1:08:27
  you know, riding horses and wear.
• 1:08:29
  And my strategy was just instead of having two incredible horses
• 1:08:34
  that I was doing the whole trip with, I now had like one
• 1:08:37
  incredible horse who I really needed to like preserve.
• 1:08:40
  But I now had four other horses that I could kind of like spread
• 1:08:45
  the load over and just like use them appropriately.
• 1:08:49
  So it was it was kind of a different strategy, my most
• 1:08:52
  recent Mexico to Canada ride, but it lit me also have a good
• 1:08:57
  understanding that like my forestmanship has grown enough
• 1:09:00
  that I can take horses who are not perfect and I can be a good
• 1:09:06
  partner to them. I felt like on my first Mexico
• 1:09:08
  to Canada ride, like I didn't feel like a very good partner to
• 1:09:12
  my horses. I really felt like they carried
• 1:09:14
  more of the partnership than me. Like I made these bad decisions.
• 1:09:19
  I wasn't making good choices and I was like relying on my horses
• 1:09:24
  incredible skills to like get us through my taps.
• 1:09:27
  And like that had very much flipped by the time I was doing
• 1:09:30
  like my 4th Mexico to Canada ride where now I have forces who
• 1:09:34
  are not very naturally talented. And I'm like piloting them
• 1:09:39
  through the same nonsense that I did, you know, 10 years prior.
• 1:09:44
  And we're doing it successfully and like with less craziness as
• 1:09:48
  the first ride just because I'm a better rider and better
• 1:09:53
  mountain person and better horsemen to my horses.
• 1:09:56
  So I you can really, it really makes a difference.
• 1:09:59
  Like people want to put sometimes a lot of weight on the
• 1:10:02
  horse and how good the horse is in the mountains.
• 1:10:04
  But for my own personal experiences, it's mostly a rider
• 1:10:10
  thing in terms of understanding the terrain, understanding your
• 1:10:15
  horse, what you can do with it. Like a lot of it is
• 1:10:19
  unfortunately on us, it's really, it's really an US thing.
• 1:10:22
  And if you know your horses limitations and you work around
• 1:10:26
  their strengths, it's amazing what you can accomplish with
• 1:10:29
  them. So, so yeah, I would say my
• 1:10:32
  relationship with my horses in my in the Backcountry has like
• 1:10:35
  gone the full spectrum from being all about them and heavily
• 1:10:40
  relying on them to be successful to now I feel like I can be a
• 1:10:46
  good mentor to a variety of horses and get them successfully
• 1:10:52
  from point A to point B. And then it kind of just comes
• 1:10:54
  down to a like, what do I want out of the experience?
• 1:10:59
  So I still prefer certain horses, you know, long term,
• 1:11:04
  Like some horses, they just don't thrive in that
• 1:11:07
  environment. Again, they're a little
• 1:11:08
  claustrophobic and they make poor decisions.
• 1:11:11
  And you feel like you're kind of constantly trying to keep you
• 1:11:14
  both alive versus other horses that are naturally thriving in
• 1:11:19
  that environment. And you feel like you were like
• 1:11:22
  on the same page, the same goal and just very like symbiotic
• 1:11:27
  relationship, whereas other ones, you know, you feel like,
• 1:11:30
  OK, I'm, I'm constantly trying to keep you from killing us
• 1:11:32
  both. This is, this is not very
• 1:11:34
  enjoyable. So I've also learned like the
• 1:11:37
  hard way through those relationships that like, OK, I
• 1:11:41
  can do a lot even if the horses making very poor decisions.
• 1:11:44
  But it's, it's just not worth it.
• 1:11:46
  You know, it's, it's much better to find like this happy medium
• 1:11:50
  of we're both enjoying the job that we're doing together rather
• 1:11:54
  than, you know, working against like the grain.
• 1:11:57
  Yeah. What are some of the hardest
• 1:11:59
  experiences? You've had throughout just all
• 1:12:01
  the rides that you've done or the most challenging maybe times
• 1:12:05
  you felt unsure. There's just.
• 1:12:08
  Like so many. And it's always like different,
• 1:12:10
  different things. Like, yeah, like the common, the
• 1:12:13
  common variables are sometimes like, you know, you have like
• 1:12:17
  different kinds of obstacles. So you have like in the
• 1:12:20
  Backcountry, you have sometimes like snow fields that, you know,
• 1:12:25
  you're trying to get through an area switch on these Mexico to
• 1:12:28
  Canada rides. You have to like make enough
• 1:12:31
  progress. So you're sometimes a little bit
• 1:12:33
  like pushing the limits of, you know, you can't just wait for
• 1:12:36
  the snow to be completely gone. You kind of have to hit it and
• 1:12:40
  it's passable. And so sometimes you feel like,
• 1:12:43
  you know, you're kind of like trying to read the snow and read
• 1:12:46
  the terrain and be like, how, how possible is this?
• 1:12:50
  And it can be frustrating if you miss calculate and you've put
• 1:12:52
  all this effort to getting in pretty deep into the Backcountry
• 1:12:56
  only to get turned around because you've misread
• 1:12:59
  conditions and the conditions are not good enough for it to be
• 1:13:02
  passable. Or you have to end up taking
• 1:13:04
  like a big long detour to get around these high elevation
• 1:13:08
  areas that the trails going, but that you just can't quite, the
• 1:13:11
  conditions aren't good enough, but you got to make progress
• 1:13:13
  somewhere. So you end up having to take
• 1:13:15
  some, you know, long, less fun detour around.
• 1:13:19
  So that that can be a very frustrating experience.
• 1:13:21
  I usually call that like the June frustrations because it's
• 1:13:24
  typically June that I'm trying to like make progress and the
• 1:13:27
  snow is not quite mounted out. And then and then there's trees.
• 1:13:32
  So fallen trees are probably probably the worst depending on
• 1:13:39
  the terrain, when it's really steep, like ravines and really
• 1:13:43
  steep slopes, having a lot of downed trees on that type of
• 1:13:47
  terrain just become so treacherous to try to navigate
• 1:13:51
  because usually they're at a certain angle to where you can't
• 1:13:53
  just jump the trees. And sometimes they're too big to
• 1:13:56
  really saw through well and then you can't just get around them
• 1:13:59
  when they're like basically on a Cliff face.
• 1:14:01
  So downed trees are probably my least favorite like obstacle to
• 1:14:06
  deal with because when you're on certain terrain, like all the
• 1:14:10
  boot times where I come on a certain kind of terrain and I'm
• 1:14:13
  like, oh, please, no downed trees, please downed trees.
• 1:14:15
  Because I can just tell if we hit a downed tree on like this
• 1:14:19
  traverse or something like, oh, it's going to be awful.
• 1:14:23
  So there'll be times where it's like I get like this knot in my
• 1:14:26
  stomach because I'm just like, oh gosh, if we hit something on
• 1:14:30
  like this type of terrain, like it is going to really throw a
• 1:14:34
  wrench into our day. And sometimes it happens, like,
• 1:14:37
  sometimes, you know, there's been days where I've had 200.
• 1:14:40
  Yeah, usually the train isn't as bad on those days.
• 1:14:43
  Or I'd probably. Yeah.
• 1:14:45
  But yeah, even if the train's not a steep slope where you're
• 1:14:48
  like, oh, we're going to die if we miscalculate, Like, that's
• 1:14:51
  not usually the situation. You're not usually going to.
• 1:14:55
  If you make one mistake, you're going to die.
• 1:14:56
  That's a rare situation. But you can have plenty of
• 1:14:59
  situations where it's just the sheer quantity of trees and
• 1:15:04
  you're just like, you reach a point of just like mental and
• 1:15:06
  physical exhaustion of like, Oh my gosh, how many more trees can
• 1:15:09
  there possibly be? And then and then the third one
• 1:15:13
  is like medical emergency for like if a horse gets sick or
• 1:15:17
  injured in the Backcountry, that's like that's always a
• 1:15:21
  horrible thing because it's easy to transport like a human or
• 1:15:26
  yourself or something small, but something that's large as a
• 1:15:28
  horse when they have an issue trying to deal with that, you
• 1:15:32
  could often feel like it's like you're very on your own, like
• 1:15:37
  you can't just press SOS, You can't just call search and
• 1:15:40
  rescue. Like, you know, you really are
• 1:15:42
  stuck with what you're able to do or like your immediate
• 1:15:46
  support persons. Like I have a satellite
• 1:15:49
  communicator and my mom is like my go to communication person to
• 1:15:53
  where if I have a problem, I sent her messages and I'm like,
• 1:15:57
  I need to like, you know, rendezvous with a vet in this
• 1:16:00
  next town. Or I remember one time I had to
• 1:16:03
  pull a horse back in the Backcountry for getting a
• 1:16:05
  laceration and I told her all about it.
• 1:16:07
  She set up a vet and everything. I get to my truck at the like
• 1:16:12
  mid afternoon probably. I get to my truck.
• 1:16:14
  Right as I get to the truck it starts pouring rain and I'm like
• 1:16:17
  oh thank goodness we're you know, we're going to beat the
• 1:16:20
  rain. I get the horses loaded up and
• 1:16:22
  get into my truck. I'm now pretty drenched and I
• 1:16:25
  like go to start it and it's just like nothing, nothing there
• 1:16:28
  trucks not starting and there's no cell service at this
• 1:16:31
  trailhead. And I go out onto the road with
• 1:16:34
  my jumper cables and like flag someone down and like the truck
• 1:16:38
  won't jump. And then I'm texting my mom
• 1:16:40
  like, OK, well somehow you need to find someone that will drive
• 1:16:45
  like 2 hours from the nearest town and come get us like with
• 1:16:49
  their truck and follow me and my horses to the vet that I'm still
• 1:16:53
  trying to meet up with. And you know, it's just like
• 1:16:55
  sometimes you think you have like this one problem for the
• 1:16:58
  day and and then they just keep stacking.
• 1:17:02
  Like, you know, it's like the world can't give you just like
• 1:17:04
  one problem to solve. It's like, how about you have
• 1:17:07
  all these other problems to solve?
• 1:17:09
  And, and it's been such a lifesaver to just have one
• 1:17:14
  person in the real world who has access to the Internet into a
• 1:17:18
  phone, who I can basically tell them what my problems are.
• 1:17:23
  And and then they figure out the solutions like having a
• 1:17:26
  competent person that you can just, you know, because you can
• 1:17:30
  only do so much when you're offload something for.
• 1:17:33
  Yeah. Yeah, it's like I'm boots on the
• 1:17:35
  ground. I'm just.
• 1:17:35
  Trying to deal with the actual hurt horse and get us out and
• 1:17:39
  have someone who then on the other end is like lining things
• 1:17:42
  up for you. It's like an immense both like
• 1:17:45
  mental relief to know that like someone else is also on it and
• 1:17:50
  helping you and then when things go a certain way, like if they
• 1:17:55
  can help solve problems simply because they have connectivity
• 1:17:59
  that you do not goes a long ways.
• 1:18:01
  But yeah, those are kind of like the really hard challenges and
• 1:18:04
  they they've all come up in so many ways and times over the
• 1:18:08
  years. Yeah.
• 1:18:09
  It's like trees, snow and medical emergencies are are like
• 1:18:13
  the the three that you just are always in the back of your mind
• 1:18:17
  and that you're kind of just like, not today, please not
• 1:18:20
  today. Like if I can just not have one
• 1:18:22
  of those problems today, it's a good day.
• 1:18:24
  Like you learn to appreciate like sometimes the boring days
• 1:18:28
  on a on trail where just like I was a that was kind of a dull.
• 1:18:31
  Like you after you've had some of the bad days, you're like, I
• 1:18:35
  love a dull day and this is great.
• 1:18:36
  Yeah, I bet would have been some of.
• 1:18:38
  The most memorable or the best experiences you've had during
• 1:18:42
  this I love. There's certain.
• 1:18:44
  Places that like you ride through and that like, you know,
• 1:18:47
  just, it's hard to even fathom that something like that exists.
• 1:18:52
  Like it's just so breathtaking. Glacier National Park has always
• 1:18:55
  been one of those places for me. I hadn't really Googled it or
• 1:19:00
  checked out pictures before I showed up there.
• 1:19:03
  And it was like my, it was my third Mexico to Canada ride.
• 1:19:06
  And so I'd seen a lot of pretty places by that point in my life
• 1:19:09
  and I just had never really looked into Glacier National
• 1:19:12
  Park super thoroughly. I knew that's where this third
• 1:19:16
  Mexico to Canada ride was ending, but I just didn't know
• 1:19:19
  much about it. And I remember, you know, I was
• 1:19:22
  at the outside of the park and from the southern like, border
• 1:19:26
  of the park, it didn't look like much.
• 1:19:28
  And I had the horses. They had like a day or two off
• 1:19:30
  and I had a truck and I had to drive into the park to go get a
• 1:19:33
  permit. And I remember as I like, drove
• 1:19:36
  in through the entrance gates to go get my permit, I was just
• 1:19:39
  like, my Lord, what is this? And it started to get incredibly
• 1:19:44
  excited by just like how beautiful it was looking.
• 1:19:47
  And then to then ride through it over the next like 4 days.
• 1:19:51
  It was like the prettiest four days of riding I'd ever
• 1:19:55
  experienced anywhere by far. And then to have that be like
• 1:19:58
  the finale of like a Mexico to Canada ride was just like all
• 1:20:02
  the more impactful. So Glacier National Park is a
• 1:20:05
  super strong place in my heart. And I tend to go back about
• 1:20:09
  every every two years. I go back because I just, I miss
• 1:20:13
  it significantly enough that I'm like, I got to go back to there
• 1:20:17
  for enough for, you know, a week or two of riding.
• 1:20:21
  So I was just there last summer and.
• 1:20:23
  Yeah. Love, love that National Park.
• 1:20:25
  There's something about it that is just it feels just absurd
• 1:20:29
  that something can exist that looks like that is sometimes
• 1:20:34
  too. It's just the way the like the
• 1:20:37
  elements all come together at a certain point in a day.
• 1:20:40
  Like usually sunset. I love sunsets and, and often to
• 1:20:44
  things sometimes go wrong early on in the day.
• 1:20:48
  And it used to be very frustrating to me because it's
• 1:20:50
  like, OK, I'm going to come into camp in the dark and this is
• 1:20:53
  going to be like not very fun. I'm going to roll into camp at
• 1:20:57
  like 9 or 10 at night. I'm going to have to set up
• 1:20:59
  everything in the dark, like I'm going to get to bed late.
• 1:21:02
  And that used to really get me down.
• 1:21:04
  And then when I started to have happen on those days that I was
• 1:21:07
  running really late for some obstacle that came up was I
• 1:21:11
  started to have really awesome sunsets in really cool places,
• 1:21:15
  like places you're not supposed to be at sunset, like on the
• 1:21:17
  very top of a pass or on a peak. You know, that's not that's not
• 1:21:21
  where you're supposed to be at sunset, but that that's where
• 1:21:24
  you are. That's just where the day took
• 1:21:25
  you. And those ended up being some of
• 1:21:27
  like my favorite like beautiful memories.
• 1:21:30
  Like the memories like when I think back and I was just like,
• 1:21:33
  you know, jaw drop off of just how beautiful it was often came
• 1:21:37
  because in the morning or earlier in the day, something
• 1:21:40
  went like way wrong and got us off course.
• 1:21:43
  But then we got to have this incredibly beautiful like sunset
• 1:21:48
  or cloud inversion with a sunset or, you know, just like
• 1:21:52
  literally feeling like you're on top of the world and watching
• 1:21:55
  like the sun go down. Like those are some of like my
• 1:21:58
  most beautiful moments. And it really did help put
• 1:22:01
  things in perspective of like, well, things went really wrong.
• 1:22:04
  But now how this memory that like I can't shake after 10
• 1:22:08
  years is because XYZ went wrong earlier.
• 1:22:11
  So it's also helped when things go wrong on trail.
• 1:22:15
  It does help put it in perspective of like OK this
• 1:22:17
  sucks but I'm not going to let it ruin my entire day.
• 1:22:21
  We might still have amazing moments in the rest of our day
• 1:22:26
  even if I'm setting up camp in the dark.
• 1:22:28
  So it's been a good perspective too that I think has made doing
• 1:22:33
  the long distance rides much more enjoyable.
• 1:22:35
  From my first experience where something would go wrong and I'd
• 1:22:38
  find myself crying to now like if something goes wrong, I don't
• 1:22:42
  immediately cry. I will still cry sometimes, but
• 1:22:45
  it's not always not it's not quite as on the surface or is
• 1:22:48
  quick to happen because I can usually have in the back of my
• 1:22:51
  head, OK, this went wrong. It's just a moment in time.
• 1:22:56
  Like it might not mean that the rest of our day is a bad day.
• 1:23:00
  So So yeah, I would say those are sometimes 2 the best moments
• 1:23:03
  I've had on trail. I've just been being kind of
• 1:23:06
  technically at the wrong place at the wrong time, but it's a
• 1:23:10
  really beautiful sunset. What are some of like the?
• 1:23:13
  What are some of the? Biggest lessons that you've
• 1:23:15
  learned challenging yourself in this way, starting from the
• 1:23:19
  beginning when you didn't really have much idea what you were
• 1:23:22
  getting yourself been to, to now doing this race that you took
• 1:23:25
  second place in. I think like being adaptable.
• 1:23:29
  Is like a really strong, a strong thing, Like really trying
• 1:23:33
  to put like your ego aside. Like I've always said, in a
• 1:23:37
  sense, being 22 and like not knowing much was obviously like
• 1:23:43
  in some ways my biggest weakness because I knew so little.
• 1:23:46
  But from a like mindset perspective, it was a, it was an
• 1:23:50
  asset because I didn't feel like I was supposed to know what I
• 1:23:54
  was doing. I didn't have this ego in the
• 1:23:57
  way of like, oh, I totally know what I'm doing.
• 1:23:59
  And like, this is how it's going to go.
• 1:24:01
  This is how it's going to be. I was very open to like
• 1:24:05
  feedback, especially from my horses.
• 1:24:07
  Like they were the primary source of my feedback where if
• 1:24:11
  like they were losing weight or if they were not thriving in
• 1:24:15
  some way, I was happy to scrap whatever game plan I was doing
• 1:24:20
  and like try something new. And sometimes I would go what I
• 1:24:24
  think, like maybe some people would consider like a little
• 1:24:26
  over the top, like I would be, you know, dumping my gear to
• 1:24:30
  bring more food for them. I would, you know, find ways to
• 1:24:34
  bring vehicles on trail so that I could, like, resupply more
• 1:24:38
  often. Like I was willing to do
• 1:24:41
  anything and drop all pretenses if it meant that my horses could
• 1:24:46
  have a more comfortable and like thriving experience.
• 1:24:50
  Like that was my priority. And they were like the feedback
• 1:24:55
  that I was most invested in and receiving.
• 1:24:57
  So I think that was a really big asset.
• 1:25:00
  And basically tied into that would be like putting the horses
• 1:25:04
  1st and having a strong investment in like your horses
• 1:25:08
  and having that tied to your feeling of success.
• 1:25:11
  Like it didn't feel like as much of A success for my first to go
• 1:25:15
  to Canada ride as I wanted it to be because I didn't feel like my
• 1:25:18
  horses were cared for the as strongly as they deserved.
• 1:25:23
  I felt like not as strong a sense of success because even
• 1:25:27
  though we did it and even though the horses were fine, I felt
• 1:25:30
  like I'd let them down. And that I internalized that
• 1:25:34
  very strongly after the first Mexico, Canada ride to the point
• 1:25:37
  where I basically wanted to do it again to prove to myself that
• 1:25:41
  I could grow enough from the experience that like I could be
• 1:25:45
  a better teammate to them. I could avoid a lot of the
• 1:25:48
  mistakes I made on the first one and have more of that like true
• 1:25:52
  sense of accomplishment. Like we didn't just scrape by
• 1:25:56
  and we didn't just like survive it, but we like thrived while we
• 1:25:59
  were out there. So that's really been a way I've
• 1:26:03
  internalized my own success now on trips is it's only
• 1:26:07
  successful. I didn't feel a sense of
• 1:26:10
  accomplishment the way I expected to.
• 1:26:12
  From having done that. It became clear to me that to
• 1:26:17
  feel successful, I had to feel like the horses were cared for
• 1:26:21
  to a certain level and that I, as like a partner to them,
• 1:26:24
  performed at a certain level. And I did like my second Mexico
• 1:26:27
  to Canada ride. And the experience felt so
• 1:26:30
  different at the end because I felt like I was a good partner
• 1:26:34
  to them and I felt like my horses were cared for better and
• 1:26:38
  like less mistakes were made. And so that has also been, I
• 1:26:42
  think a really big asset to why I've done well.
• 1:26:46
  Or at least being a really good motivator to growing in the
• 1:26:49
  right ways has been tying my own feelings of success to how well
• 1:26:55
  my horses perform, the condition they're in, how mentally they
• 1:27:01
  feel, if they feel happy or like they're enjoying it out there.
• 1:27:05
  I can't have a good time or feel successful if I feel like that
• 1:27:09
  side of it is lacking. So I do think that that's been
• 1:27:12
  both a really good motivator for me growing and being creative
• 1:27:17
  and just kind of really focusing on the horse.
• 1:27:21
  And it's also helped keep me on like the right track in terms of
• 1:27:26
  ethically, in terms of making sure that, you know, I'm doing
• 1:27:31
  what I do for the right reasons and not muddying, you know,
• 1:27:35
  what's really like the important feature here, which is like you
• 1:27:39
  want to feel like you're finishing as a team with your
• 1:27:41
  horse and that you did right by them at the end.
• 1:27:43
  And to have to be able to take success from that, I think is,
• 1:27:49
  is the the best ethically. But also in the end it's like
• 1:27:53
  the most like genuinely rewarding feeling that you can
• 1:27:56
  take away from any kind of experience that you're doing
• 1:28:00
  with a horse. Whether it's like a, a race for
• 1:28:02
  10 days or it's a week long pack trip, or it's a 5 month like
• 1:28:07
  Mexico to Canada ride. Like really being able to just
• 1:28:11
  focus on the horse and focus on how good of a teammate you're
• 1:28:15
  being to the horse. And what kind of like journey
• 1:28:18
  you guys are having? And as long as it's always like
• 1:28:23
  a good situation for the both of you, then that's where the
• 1:28:27
  feeling of accomplishment and all those good things that we're
• 1:28:30
  looking for I think will genuinely come from.
• 1:28:32
  Yeah. What's been your drive to keep
• 1:28:34
  doing? This like what keeps motivating
• 1:28:36
  you to go into these hard, difficult, often uncomfortable
• 1:28:39
  situations and and keep, you know, doing stuff lots of other
• 1:28:43
  people wouldn't even think about?
• 1:28:45
  That's a great question. There's of course.
• 1:28:47
  Doing something hard, think there for once you've done it
• 1:28:51
  enough times. There's a certain part of it
• 1:28:53
  that just makes you feel a little bit more alive.
• 1:28:55
  Like the when I did my first Mexico to Canada ride, you know,
• 1:28:58
  I remember a hiker in Washington asked if I would like do it
• 1:29:01
  again or do some other ride and I thought he was absolutely
• 1:29:04
  Looney Tunes. I was like, never again.
• 1:29:06
  Like I am just trying to finish this thing and I will never come
• 1:29:10
  out here again. And then like flash, you know,
• 1:29:13
  forward like 6 months and I was like in grad school and just
• 1:29:17
  feeling like my life just was like kind of like monotone and
• 1:29:20
  didn't really have any zest to it or any anything that made me
• 1:29:23
  feel alive all of a sudden then like you're my perspective
• 1:29:27
  starts shifting and all those really hard days on trail.
• 1:29:31
  I'm now internalizing them in a different way that I'm like,
• 1:29:34
  wow, like that really sucked in the moment.
• 1:29:36
  But then when things shifted and started to go well or everything
• 1:29:42
  was OK at the end of the day, then you reframe it in a much
• 1:29:46
  more positive way. And so I do you definitely.
• 1:29:51
  I think once you've gone through a certain level of discomfort
• 1:29:54
  and you know, things don't go catastrophically wrong, you
• 1:29:58
  almost start to like like it. There's a part of me that kind
• 1:30:00
  of likes that little bit of discomfort because then it makes
• 1:30:04
  the comfort all that much sweeter and it makes those good
• 1:30:08
  moments you feel a certain level of gratitude that you otherwise
• 1:30:13
  totally don't acknowledge. Like I never used to like it
• 1:30:16
  feel and even even in my regular life, like it's not like I step
• 1:30:20
  outside and like the sun feels so good on my skin.
• 1:30:22
  Like that never enters my mind. But when I'm out in the
• 1:30:25
  Backcountry and I've been cold for the last two hours and like
• 1:30:29
  the rain finally stops and the sun decides to pop out, suddenly
• 1:30:33
  I'm like, Oh my gosh, that sun feels so good on my skin.
• 1:30:36
  Like things that you just don't acknowledge or think about
• 1:30:39
  because you don't have enough discomfort.
• 1:30:41
  Your perspective changes when you're out there.
• 1:30:44
  And I really like that, that how easy it is to acknowledge the
• 1:30:49
  little good things when you're out there and like life feels
• 1:30:53
  simple and you feel so much gratitude for so much
• 1:30:56
  simplicity. That's just really hard to kind
• 1:31:00
  of like be conscientious of in normal life.
• 1:31:03
  So that's a big part of it. I just like, I like that mindset
• 1:31:07
  that I have when I'm out there. I like the person that I am when
• 1:31:10
  I'm in the mountains. I like that I have more
• 1:31:12
  gratitude. I like that I get so invested
• 1:31:16
  into my relationship with my horses and that I, you know,
• 1:31:20
  pour so much into them. I think that's probably like the
• 1:31:23
  biggest part of it is I feel like I'm the best version of
• 1:31:26
  myself when I'm out there. I feel more capable of doing
• 1:31:29
  hard things. Like for some reason, something
• 1:31:31
  like emails will feel like, you know, a difficult thing to do in
• 1:31:36
  the real world. And I'll kind of beat up myself
• 1:31:38
  like, oh, you're so incapable and you're so bad at this and
• 1:31:42
  this. And then I'll kind of like, I'll
• 1:31:43
  kind of beat myself up on it. And then when I'm in the
• 1:31:46
  mountains with my horses, I somehow just feel more like
• 1:31:49
  Superwoman, Like I can do anything that I put my mind to.
• 1:31:54
  And I'm so taught, like I'm so I have so much perseverance when
• 1:31:59
  I'm out there that I feel like I can't always muster up in the
• 1:32:03
  real world, which is frustrating in the in the more normal world.
• 1:32:07
  I wish sometimes I could be more the person I am in the mountains
• 1:32:10
  here. But that's at least for me, a
• 1:32:12
  big part of it is I do feel like the best version of myself in
• 1:32:15
  the mountains. And then the old cliche of like
• 1:32:18
  there is just something that's like super rewarding for your
• 1:32:22
  soul to be like, you know, seeing new country on a good
• 1:32:25
  horse. Like it's, it just really like
• 1:32:28
  just the epitome of like the human experience sometimes is
• 1:32:31
  what it feels like to like be living those, those moments.
• 1:32:34
  Yeah. And it's just kind of like a
• 1:32:36
  bank account that I just like submitting more and more of
• 1:32:39
  those memories and those good feelings into that just makes
• 1:32:43
  like life kind of like worth living.
• 1:32:45
  Yeah. What advice would you have for
• 1:32:46
  someone? Who wants to maybe get started
• 1:32:48
  into something like this? There's spending more time in
• 1:32:50
  the hardest part in the middle of nowhere.
• 1:32:52
  Yeah, the hardest part is getting started like.
• 1:32:54
  Historically, you really had to be connected in person with
• 1:32:59
  someone you know, like in your community that you could
• 1:33:02
  basically shadow and mentor, you know, or be mentored by in order
• 1:33:08
  to gain the skills. I think thankfully in today's
• 1:33:11
  world, it's becoming more and more easily accessible to get
• 1:33:16
  knowledge on how to travel in the Backcountry.
• 1:33:19
  So typically, if you're really starting from scratch, the first
• 1:33:23
  step is basically, you know, get a horse, get comfortable with
• 1:33:26
  it, really invest in your horsemanship, get to the point
• 1:33:29
  where you can trailer your horse and you can go out on day rides.
• 1:33:34
  And then once you're kind of you're about that level, then
• 1:33:37
  looking into the overnight rides and, and finding resources.
• 1:33:41
  So like there's a number of Outfitters that do pack clinics.
• 1:33:46
  I do workshops as well in the Central Coast and trying to find
• 1:33:50
  to the right clinician for what your goals are.
• 1:33:55
  You know, like certain Outfitters with what their
• 1:33:58
  skills are, they really focus on, you know, like if you're
• 1:34:01
  into hunting and you're wanting to learn how to get how to like
• 1:34:04
  pack out game on a pack horse, like they are a fantastic
• 1:34:08
  resource for like learning that skill.
• 1:34:10
  If that's the experience you're looking for in the Backcountry,
• 1:34:13
  those are then that that's the kind of person that you want to
• 1:34:16
  be your mentor or to get a clinician from.
• 1:34:20
  I tend to focus on, you know, especially because I'm kind of
• 1:34:22
  near the Southern California area.
• 1:34:24
  People down here don't really have multiple horses and, and so
• 1:34:28
  I don't focus on a lot of like the traditional packing like I
• 1:34:33
  teach packing, especially like 1 pack animal for recreational
• 1:34:37
  purposes. But I go into it more with like
• 1:34:39
  a recreational mindset of how can I take people that have just
• 1:34:43
  one or two animals and help them put together the right system
• 1:34:48
  that they can go and recreationally take their animal
• 1:34:51
  into the Backcountry. So I think when finding someone,
• 1:34:55
  obviously if you have someone close, that helps a lot, but
• 1:34:58
  it's also important to look at what does that person do in the
• 1:35:01
  Backcountry and does that align with what my goals are?
• 1:35:05
  So there's now more than ever resources available to finding
• 1:35:09
  people and who people who are offering services.
• 1:35:12
  And but I always advocate for making sure that like what you
• 1:35:16
  want to do in the Backcountry is like what that person does in
• 1:35:20
  the Backcountry. Because if you're wanting to
• 1:35:22
  single horse pack because you only have one horse, taking a
• 1:35:26
  pack clinic from an outfitter who's going to teach you how to
• 1:35:29
  pack out like crazy loads and game is not going to be the most
• 1:35:33
  useful form of knowledge for you.
• 1:35:35
  So you do kind of have to have that mentality of like, all
• 1:35:38
  right, who's going to teach me the right set of skills?
• 1:35:43
  And then so taking one of those clinics and then either going on
• 1:35:47
  like an overnight trip with someone or after you've done
• 1:35:51
  that clinic, pairing up with someone that you meet there and
• 1:35:55
  kind of like going out. The next step in what's usually
• 1:35:57
  the hardest is you've gotten the knowledge and then just applying
• 1:36:01
  it, It can take a little bit of like, you know, there can be a
• 1:36:04
  lot of fear and apprehension of like, what ifs, what ifs, what
• 1:36:06
  if this goes wrong? What if that goes wrong?
• 1:36:08
  And so I feel like that's usually the biggest barrier
• 1:36:11
  holding back people is they can find the knowledge, they can
• 1:36:14
  take the knowledge, but then they don't really have someone
• 1:36:18
  to help them. Kind of like just go through
• 1:36:21
  that first experience of applying it and showing that
• 1:36:24
  like them and their horses are more capable than they give them
• 1:36:27
  credit for. That can be a big mental barrier
• 1:36:30
  to a lot of people more than ever.
• 1:36:33
  There's ways to get out in the Backcountry and kind of like
• 1:36:37
  break down those steps into more bite sizes like Ioffer.
• 1:36:42
  What basically what's the equivalent of like a shakedown
• 1:36:44
  trip where if you've taken a workshop, then you can sign up
• 1:36:47
  for like a two night overnight trip where you take your own
• 1:36:51
  horse, you take your own gear. And basically I go with you in
• 1:36:54
  the Backcountry And it just kind of lets you have that trial run
• 1:36:59
  and test your gear and like feel like you and your horse are
• 1:37:02
  capable of doing this before having to go on a trip where
• 1:37:06
  you're going somewhere you've never been and you're planning
• 1:37:09
  it. And you know, it just helps take
• 1:37:11
  some of the load off. And you just kind of like focus
• 1:37:13
  on your gear and your horse and having like a successful first
• 1:37:17
  trip. So I think that's like the
• 1:37:19
  biggest advice I have is really just trying to break it down
• 1:37:23
  into like get the information that you need, get the knowledge
• 1:37:26
  that you need, and then whatever it is that you need to do to
• 1:37:30
  break it down into you being able to put it into action.
• 1:37:34
  Like everyone's a little different.
• 1:37:35
  Some people are very like, once they've got that knowledge,
• 1:37:38
  they're just gun ho to go out and do it on their own.
• 1:37:41
  Some people want to feel like they're not doing it on their
• 1:37:44
  own. They need like a buddy that
• 1:37:46
  they're kind of going to like walk through this experience
• 1:37:48
  with. And some people want to feel
• 1:37:49
  like there's that extra level of security of they have someone
• 1:37:53
  knowledgeable with them who's going to kind of like keep
• 1:37:56
  things from going sideways. You just have to, you know, be
• 1:37:59
  cognizant that there's no one way to do anything and just be
• 1:38:04
  intuitive enough to yourself to acknowledge what it is that you
• 1:38:09
  need in order to continue to take steps, whether it's a small
• 1:38:13
  step or a gigantic leap, then one shot like, you know, there's
• 1:38:18
  no wrong way to do it. And it's just about making that
• 1:38:20
  forward progress. And you know, at least that's
• 1:38:23
  for me why I've offered these various different steps is
• 1:38:26
  because I started to see that there were some people that
• 1:38:28
  could go to a workshop and then could like just go off on their
• 1:38:31
  own and go do it. But there were other people who
• 1:38:34
  felt like they just needed a little bit like smaller steps to
• 1:38:38
  continue forward. And so that's kind of like
• 1:38:41
  honoring that process that everyone learns a little
• 1:38:43
  differently. Everyone wants a certain
• 1:38:45
  different level of support and just trying to give all the
• 1:38:48
  options to all people. And especially based on the
• 1:38:52
  different goals, we all have different goals of how we want
• 1:38:54
  to go into the Backcountry, whether it's hunting, whether
• 1:38:56
  it's a long distance ride, whether it's just like an
• 1:38:59
  overnight with your girlfriends. It's like they're all valid.
• 1:39:02
  And but no one system necessarily is going to fit all
• 1:39:06
  of those different goals. So you kind of have to again, be
• 1:39:09
  just a little bit aware of, you know, what is it that you want
• 1:39:12
  and then what is standing in your way as an individual from
• 1:39:16
  getting from point A to point B and how can we address that?
• 1:39:19
  So I think that's like the main thing is the resources are out
• 1:39:22
  there now more than ever, but sometimes people feel like they
• 1:39:26
  have to basically take on someone's like system or
• 1:39:31
  basically just, you know, copycat, you know, like, OK,
• 1:39:35
  that's what they did, that's what I should do.
• 1:39:36
  But it doesn't really align with who they are or what their goals
• 1:39:40
  are. And that's OK.
• 1:39:41
  Like you, you should take the time to think about what it is
• 1:39:46
  that you want and, and what are your unique obstacles to getting
• 1:39:49
  there. And then don't be afraid to ask
• 1:39:52
  for that and to help you find that right person who's going to
• 1:39:56
  help you make everything possible, because those people
• 1:39:59
  exist and it's just about connecting with the right
• 1:40:02
  person. Yeah, that's great.
• 1:40:04
  I feel like I could. Ask you 100 other questions, but
• 1:40:06
  I don't want to take up your whole day so.
• 1:40:11
  Yeah, it's been great. Can you tell everybody if they
• 1:40:14
  want to follow you, see what you're doing, maybe even take
• 1:40:17
  advantage of some of the services you offer?
• 1:40:19
  Where can they find you? Yeah.
• 1:40:21
  So the best place to find me on? Social media is my Instagram
• 1:40:25
  that's like the most active social platform that I have my
• 1:40:29
  handles through rider, so THRU under score rider.
• 1:40:34
  And then I also have a website which is my name Gillian
• 1:40:38
  larsonandthen.net. And that's where, you know, I
• 1:40:41
  post like my workshops and I have an online course and I do
• 1:40:46
  the the summer like kind of like shakedown guided rides.
• 1:40:51
  So all of like my services, I Ioffer there and then I usually
• 1:40:54
  post about updates for them on my social media on my Instagram.
• 1:40:59
  So those are kind of the two best ways to like connect with
• 1:41:02
  me for sure. Yeah, awesome.
• 1:41:04
  Thank you so much for. Sharing your story, it was
• 1:41:06
  especially cool to hear about the race you did and all the new
• 1:41:09
  adventures you had there. And congratulations on 2nd.
• 1:41:13
  So exciting. But especially just the way you
• 1:41:15
  put the horses. Welfare primarily put it at the
• 1:41:19
  top and then, you know, but still are able to engage in all
• 1:41:22
  these fun activities and compete while looking for that and
• 1:41:25
  making sure that the horses are taken care of.
• 1:41:27
  And yeah, thanks for sharing your story and your inspiration.
• 1:41:30
  It's really cool to see the things that you've done and
• 1:41:33
  definitely follow social media. You have really cool videos up
• 1:41:36
  there of some of the trips and rides you've done, so it's
• 1:41:38
  really neat to see for those of us who may not embrace
• 1:41:42
  discomfort as much as you. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:41:45
  Because it's definitely been a wild.
• 1:41:46
  Ride never would have thought that this is where my life would
• 1:41:49
  go, but that's that's where it ended up going.
• 1:41:52
  So yes, I I I think for sure the couldn't have done it without
• 1:41:57
  the horses. So very grateful to them and
• 1:41:59
  all, all the life they've been able to like give me an
• 1:42:03
  opportunity so and thank you so much for having me.
• 1:42:05
  I really appreciate this platform that you gave me to
• 1:42:08
  share. I'm such a talker.
• 1:42:10
  I'm a rambler. So thank you for putting up with
• 1:42:12
  all my rambling. That's great.
• 1:42:14
  I love hearing about it. Thank you for joining us and
• 1:42:17
  learning. About horses that heal and the
• 1:42:18
  humans who help them. We hope you'll continue with us
• 1:42:21
  on this journey. We'd love for you to subscribe
• 1:42:24
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• 1:42:27
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• 1:42:29
  Please share with your friends anyone who loves horses or
• 1:42:32
  anyone who might be struggling and could benefit from this
• 1:42:35
  message. If you have felt the healing
• 1:42:37
  power of horses or help them in their divinely appointed
• 1:42:41
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• 1:42:44
  As we say goodbye, always remember that the horse is
• 1:42:47
  always there to help you heal.