Competitive Trail Challenge at Farragut

Saturday was a fun trail challenge at Farragut State Park near Athol, Idaho. It poured rain pretty much all morning but 58 riders still came to compete! They had a six mile loop flagged with about ten obstacles. Four of those were right by camp so there weren't too many once you hit the trail. I took Cayenne and it turned out to be great experience for her. We competed in the "Extreme" class. She's not extreme but I'm not novice and there was no other option other than youth. I'm certainly not that any more! The trail was the same for everyone but when you were at a judged obstacles, some of them had harder requirements if you were in the extreme class. For example, one obstacle was to walk through a "car wash," hanging tarp strips. If you were in extreme, you also had to back through once you'd went through forwards. Not hard but a little more challenging and fun, which is what it's all about! Cay was a little amped up at first as she was determined that we must go with all the horses ahead. I long trotted her for a couple miles and passed the handful of riders in front when we came upon them in the woods. Once we were out front, she relaxed and we had a great ride by ourselves. The trails were clear and easy to navigate. The rain stopped when we were about halfway through the course. I would have galloped but the organizers had asked that we be safe and keep it to a trot because of all the rain. There were some parts of the trail that were a little slick but much of it was sandy/gravelly so the footing was excellent. I cruised back to camp at 12:15, about two hours after starting. My mistake in that was that I then waited until well after 4pm for the results! Cayenne and I got 6th place in the Extreme Division. I was happy with that because we were up against seasoned horses and riders. It would have been like competing against myself on Smarty or Mr. Definitely not equal! The main thing I need to work on is getting Cayenne to stop and relax so I can do the dismounts, mounts, or other quiet work. She always wants to keep moving. I don't like to stop when I ride alone so I need to practice, too!

The obstacles included: Dismounting, tack inspection, answering questions about what a rider should take on a trail ride, mounting, crossing a weird wooden siding/2x12 board bridge, opening and closing a gate with a tarp on it, going into a ditch, riding along the bottom and then climbing out again, going under a black plastic tunnel-like obstacle, going through and then backing under a "carwash," backing uphill, around a tree and back down to the trail, dragging an orange plastic sack full of stuff, zigzagging down a hill, dismounting and mounting again, and dismounting and leading through trees and then backing through them. None of the obstacles were particularly difficult or scary, which was good so as not to risk intimidation of my youngster. I imagine it was hard to judge the extreme class though as there were so many experienced trail competitors and they all probably did well on the obstacles.

The funniest part of the competition was running into a whole bunch of kids on the trail. Cay and I could hear them shrieking in the woods ahead. I slowed her to a trot when they came into sight. There were probably 25 boys age 5-10 or so all over the trail. There were no adults in sight and the kids all carried some sort of air (mouth) powered gun made out of white pvc pipe. They started hollering, "Intruder," when they saw me and scurrying around to take aim at me and my horse! I dropped my reins on Cay's neck and put my hands in the air like "I surrender" as I rode into the midst of them. Then I decided to pick up my reins in case one of the little buggers decided to fire! I had caught them off guard so they didn't really know what to do except keep their weapons trained on me. Some were only a couple feet off the trail and the turned with me as I rode by to keep me in their sites. I was sure one would shoot Cayenne in the butt but they resisted temptation! I wasn't sure what exactly they had loaded in their guns but in talking to other riders back at camp, they were marshmallow guns. Adults at the nearby tent camping area started calling the boys to come eat as soon as I got by so many of the riders didn't run into the group that I did. Many did see hundreds of marshmallows on the trail though!

There are two more trail challenges at Farragut this month. It's only about an hour and forty five minutes so definitely close compared to most of the other ones. They are being put on by different organizations and therefore, ran differently with different obstacles. I think staying close to home and getting some experience under Cayenne's belt (saddle blanket?) is a good idea. It's fun to travel to far off places but not very economical! Once she's a seasoned campaigner, it will make sense to get her out to challenge the world!