Big Grand Pierre Creek

Today Loretta, after a bit of deliberation, decided to ride out from the Benham Hill Trailhead. We headed right up to Rocky Top. Then rode around some bluffs and rode down and half way around One Horse Gap Lake. We ran into David Borntreger who was riding a client mule and ponying one of his Mustangs. We stopped and chatted with him for a while. He and some friends are planning to ride the entire River to River trail next weekend. Loretta has done that several times so she gave him some tips and information. I was asking Lily to step up on rocks today. Choosing wide enough ones that she would not try to step over or around them until she figured out what I was asking of her. It didn't take long for her to start catching on. She didn't see the point in it but when she realized that it resulted in praise and treats she was willing enough.

There were quite a few geese at One Horse Gap Lake. We saw one with 3 babies. We rode from there over towards the Big Grand Pierre Creek. The old trail follows along the creek bank. A new trail has been put in that is cut into the middle of a steep slope. Loretta hadn't ridden it before so we had to check it out. I'm pretty sure we won't be rushing back to ride it again anytime soon. It was pretty. And we got to get a close up look at an Eagle perched in a tree. But the trail, though reasonably wide, was soft footing and so steep on each side of it. I got up ahead of Loretta at one point without realizing it as I was so busy watching the trail ahead of me. I rounded a slight corner and got out of sight and Loretta's horse Lady got quite upset. Not a good trail to be dealing with that. I waited for Loretta to catch up and when we found a spot wide enough for Loretta to pass me, she got in front and that made Lady much happier and Lily was fine either way. The trail was quite long and we'd been going along it quite a while when we came to a spot where a tree right on the edge of the downhill side of the trail had blown over and the roots had ripped a whole section of the trail out. It was so steep on either side of trail that we quickly discarded any thought of going around the spot. Nor did we really want to turn around and ride it all the way back. Loretta dismounted and dropped as many large rocks into the hole in the trail that she could find and then carefully led Lady across. It was a very narrow spot the equines had to put their feet that Loretta somehow managed to climb up on the uphill side of the trail to lead Lady through. I was pretty sure I was not nimble or coordinated enough to do that. So, I secured Lily's reins and just sent her across the spot ahead of me very sure she would not try to take off around Loretta and Lady due to how steep the sides of the trail were. Lily got across fine and Loretta was able to get her. We both mounted back up and continued on our way. We were pretty happy when the trail finally dropped down to the creek.

We followed the trail to the creek and crossed over where it looked like it went. There were some riders in that spot. We talked to them for a while and we were sure glad they were there. The trail did not cross the creek as it looked like it did. It kept going along the creek as we'd been going but we hadn't seen where it turned to keep going along the creek due to it being a little grown in with weeds. They asked where we were parked and when we told them Benham Hill Trailhead, they said we had a long ride back. We crossed back over the creek and quickly found the trail now we knew it was there.
We kept following the trail and eventually it headed up hill away from the creek. We followed it back down into a spot along a small creek where there were a lot of trees down. We worked our way around them and eventually lost the trail entirely. We kept moving in as much a straight line as we could and eventually came out on the One Horse Gap Lake road. It was starting to get later in the day. we knew how to get back to the trailer from the lake. We also knew that was not the fastest way back. But any trails heading in the right direction would be unknown and it was too late in the day to be exploring. So we headed to the lake, rode around the other 1/2 from what we'd done earlier and eventually came to the 9 Day camp. We rode though and got onto an old road bed that brought us to the River to River trail and back to the trailhead. We made it back before dark so we were happy and we had a great ride.