Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Boulder Canyon and the #104 trail

Today we  went  on a trailride  most  wouldn't  like. It  was classified as a "Black Diamond" trail and  not  reccommended for  horses. There  were  sections that  were "Edgy-Ledgy" with steep rocky declines but, all of our animals and riders did  fine.
We started this ride  at the  first water trailhead  and  rode the  trail towards Hackberry Springs (Trail 78) and  took the second  water trail to the Garden valley. 
Alan leading  us through the  Garden valley. We ran into several groups of hikers  and  found  our  weak links  in our  chain. Rita  shys away from hikers  that  are  carrying  ski poles or  walking sticks and Maudie  just  doesn't  trust  anyone she  meets  on the  trail. Something that they  both have  to work on. 
We were surprised  at  the  amount  of people  on these  past  two rides  that  don't  understand the  reason why  they  need to be  on the  low side  of  the  trail when we  are  passing them along the  route. We passed  one  group of 13  hikers that wanted to scatter all over  high and  low. We stopped and  got  them all to go to the  low side before  we  would  pass. We  explained  to them that  if the  mules  were  going  to spook; we wanted them running uphill not over  the  edge and down a 100'.
Once  we  started  passing them they  got  a  show  and  quickly  saw  the  reasoning. I wish that  I had one of my  BCHW trail etiquette  DVD's  to give  them for their  next  club meeting. Most  hikers  that  we  meet are  understanding and compliant with our  requests.
The  trail down to the  hackberry  Springs  turnoff is  kind  of steep and we  ran into two other  groups  of hikers  that  were  much nicer.

The  turnoff to Boulder  Canyon trail #104
This  trail was  rated  a  black diamond trail and not  reccommended for horse  travel. I found  it very  rocky and hard  to follow because  of brush and not a lot  of  use in the  middle  section.
This  is the  actual trail.

We had  beutiful views  along  the  trail. We  had lunch  under these  hoodoo's.
Aptly  named Boulder canyon…..
parts  of this  trail are  hard to follow because of the  amount  of  brush.
Weavers needle  can be  seen in the  background. 
Riding  in the  Arizona  desert has  a  lot  of terrain changes  with many  training obsticals and  opportunities.
Alan riding  his  new  mule  Miss Kitty.
This was  a  great 12.67 mile  ride with a  peak difficulty  of 9 and  average difficulty  of 6-7.

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