Photographic studies - !

These days it's not so much backcountry as training riders and horses in the front field (amazing what one small pinprick of a hill and an ancient corral can accomplish!). And, photographing horse language for the horse welfare novel big time. An ear twitch, a dance of four, sometimes five of the home herd, one moves and shifts the whole dynamic - I sit there sometimes for an hour, scribbling notes and photographing, and realize how much the last intense eight years of study are so rich! Eyes, as, so fascinating! Here's the Apache Hawk, one supremely complex little pinto that's taken me four years - four years! - to get my head around. Well, I willupload once the computer and I get compatible, eeeargh, I promise, as soon as possible!

Horse sweat, heat and ....photographs!

Eagle Hill called again, this time with newly married Lara West (Kruger??!) after her dreamtime wedding in late August back out on her beloved backcountry trails.  Lara was riding her character ex-outfitter gelding who has a definite gleam in his eyes these days; one supremely happy horse with a good beat and rythym to his stride that just keeps going.  Lara's an artist, illustrator and now working weekends in a Canmore photographic gallery - and yes, she took these pics.  In focus, large files, well framed, thank God for people who understand digital cameras!

It was heaven of a day too - the trail dry and its mostly dirt surfaces kind on the horses.  The Fox wasn't too happy with his feet the night before so the Apache-horse signed in, in my ever despairing hope that perhaps a pound or two might sweat off.  What a metabolism this horse has!  He thinks backcountry is 'OK' but his love is Liberty and long-line work where the chrome really gets strutted, he's a complete natural - now, more money so I can take up Combined Driving then, grin.

Meanwhile, a few of Lara's photographs of that gorgeous day - enjoy.

More clearcutting photographs from the Ford Creek Trail

One day I will get my head wrapped around multiple photographs pasted into this blog! Meanwhile, to follow the just-earlier blog entry here are the remaining photographs taken that day...........

Clearcutting on the Ford Creek Trail

The Ford Creek Trail is one of my favourites, sliding through old growth forests as it climbs away from the Little Elbow campgrounds. Earlier October had temperatures running around the 15-18 degrees mark and a mild breeze, perfect - ! And, then, from subtle shafts of angled sunbeams round a corner and wow, bright blinding sunlight and acres and acres of clearcut. The Apache-horse stopped dead, seriously perturbed and then actually craned his neck right around, looking behind him and then looking across the stripped hillsides. No doubt at all he had trouble wrapping his mind across the two landscapes - and which one he preferred. I've written about clearcut before, noticeably in the COCHRANE TIMES in the weekly ON THE ROAD HOME column which generated a storm of email comments. Selective logging I can get my own brain cells around, this kind of massacre is old-style thinking and way outdated - for anyone wanting a seriously deep book on the subject, try accessing the beautifully descriptive and photographed book of forestry biologist Herb Hammond. The trail higher along just running along treeline, where the fall-line is way steep, is still gloriously thick with mosses, lichens, the bright reds of frost touched strawberry and wild geranium leaves, cinquefoils and juniper pungent in the mid-afternoon sunheat. Mountains are snow tipped now, underfoot crunchy in northly pockets and where a keen eye is needed to work out frost-slide potential.

Smart New Bridge!

Finishing off a ride down off Cox Hill a few weeks back (wouldn't recommend riding that now! the snow and ice settle into the north-facing switchbacks), the smart new bridge over the Jumping Pound Creek is a masterpiece. Sound, stout, strong. I am guessing, too, from its layout that if that Creek ever hits the incredible surge of another 200-year storm, there's the capacity to 'lift' this off its bases either side and cantilever it onto the bank for safety until the run-off finishes. In 2005 when I photographed the old damaged bridge, the structure was much lower and closer to the creek. This one now has stout cement bases, and also an option with good glacial stones leading down to a creek crossing if your horse happens to be claustrophic with narrowish bridges. The Apache-horse took one look, yawned and walked calmly over - the ultimate backcountry laidback attitude, confident these days, lovely.

High above Treeline

Updrafts of warm winds whispered against sun-hot skin. The smell of horse sweat and leather. And mountains caressed with green and brown velvet textures that were outlined with cobalt blue highliner. Backcountry days like this you treasure for the memory of visual overload. Of views that start way down on the Jumping Pound Creek and then through thickly forested slopes of pines - lodgepole, jack and higher rarer examples of limber and whitebark. Tiny spruces as finally the trail goes into sub-alpine meadows that are what's known as 'kruppelholz' or 'crippled wood'. They may look like baby trees but are mature, sometimes ancient specimens. Hikers and mountain bikers had left their footprints and tracks but all, on this fragile terrain, were meticulously and carefuly on the trails here, sometimes of shale powder. And, once we heaved (on foot I was puffing like a steam train and personally producing enough steam myself, grin, at that........) to the summits, my, the panoramas up here are........well, simply, you can see for miles onto every terrain going. And the quiet. Absolute total aching silence through the trees, and even atop the ridgelines only mere whispers of wind. An incredible day along the Jumping Pound Summit Trail.

The Fox and Caroline and Little Elbow

Here's a few pics of the now go-to mountain horse The Fox. He's twelve now with literally thousands of hours under his cinch and flashy as ever with all those uncountable spots (!). An endurance girlfriend was asking the other day about sharing her horse with other riders and my take is, I don't. Kind of like sharing husbands really, they just don't come back the same. But, as one of about four people who've ridden him over his lifetime and to show the exception to the rule, here's the gelding with an English girlfriend and just amazing stalwart suppporter over years as we hit 'The Perfect Day' (mind, unlike Lou Reed no heroin needed, grin) at the Little Elbow. He liked the fact she wasn't as bossy as I am and, eeargh, lighter too. A true horsewoman she asked how he liked to be ridden, and about twenty seconds later we were splashing through the Little Elbow River heading out

- I don't know if I would be so trusting on a strange horse, in a different country and riding THROUGH different terrain to England's countryside and bridleways.