Ft. Schellbourne Multiday 2001 report

The Ft. Schellbourne 2001 XP was run by Ann Nicholson and her mother Lavone without
Dave who is off running the XP 2001. It went off very well and was my first multiday
ride.  I came away with an appreciation of how multidays are really different from
our regular rides and certainly enjoyed the experience. Barney Fleming(AERC President)
was the head vet with assistance from local veterinarians during the 5 days.

First some statistics:

                 Day 1   Day 2   Day 3   Day 4   Day 5
Starters/Finishers      73/65   47/44   39/36   48/45   38/36

Friday - June 8 - leaving San Jose with with two trailers  driving up
together.  Both stayed the night at Fernley, NV at the fairgrounds.  One other
Ft. Schellbourne trailer stayed the night at the fairgrounds as well.

It's really nice that facilities like this are available for horse travelers.
You have water, corrals and a nice open level place for the trailers.  Fernley
seems way out in the  middle of nowhere but when you look at the price of homes -
a nice 3 bedroom starting at $89K - you understand part of the reason.  The winds
were constantly blowing with dust but tapered off after sundown.

Every time we stopped for gas or diesel - drivers who were also transporting horses
would come over and ask if we were headed for shows.  We finally started answering -
"yes - we are showing them Nevada".  There are lots of horses getting moved around
today.

I noticed one really big difference between California and Nevada.  The truck lane is
really bumpy in CA and pretty good in NV.  I was riding in the trailer living quarters
trying to do work on my computer.  It was impossible to type or even read much on
the California roads.  I would guess highways are a  low priority in California.
And it's a lot tougher on the horses back there than I expected from riding in the
front.

Saturday - June 9 - Arrived early in the afternoon.  The ride is set up at the Ft.
Schellbourne Pony Express station with a bar, motel, restaurant, and RV hookups. The
ride has portable showers as well.  In the past apparently the ride went point to
point but now does loops out of the basecamp every day.  Basecamp is at 6200 feet
and some people noticed the difference in altitude right away.  Everyone seems to have
either a nice horse trailer with living quarters, a mobile home, or a camper.  One
trailer was almost 50 ft long.  Beautiful inside and probably costs more than many
of the homes in the area.  There are riders from as far away as British Columbia
and Iowa.

Sunday - June 10 - People meet old friends - and make new ones - get their gear ready
for the Monday ride - go out on rides with their horses - vet in - all the things
we do at normal rides.  But the atmosphere seems a lot more relaxed than our normal
endurance rides.  We are in a valley surrounded by mountains on each side - not
much snow visible now as it has been a dry year.  Some of the peaks go up to 10,000
feet and the sunsets are always beautiful.

The "geeks"  - Barney and I - are trying to download our e-mail from the phone at
the bar.  The connection speed is sometimes 4800 getting to a high of 16.8K.
Barney has a lot of experience at this because he keeps on-line from the XP 2001
and from everywhere he travels.  The lines are so bad that often we get disconnected
in 2-5 minutes.

We have our first ride meeting and find out that many people doing this ride have done
it before.  People keep coming back and back.  One person here has never done a 50...
Attendance is down due to a number of multiday riders being at the XP 2001.  Last
year - the starting group was 108 compared to this years 73.  We find out that there is
only one vetcheck a day at lunch.  And that the evening finish is the check for the
next day - with a trot-by on the way to the start for a final check in the morning.
No vet cards and no numbers on your horse.  The vets and ride management quickly
learn who everyone is.

The group of riders seem to be more focused on multidays.  I usually know a lot of
the 50 mile riders but here - other than the Quicksilver club members and a few
others - Cliff Lewis and Jackie Bumgardner - I don't see many people I know.

Lunches turn out to be a really nice feature of the rides each day.  Lavone provides
all sorts of sandwiches, candybars, iced tea, gatorade at the lunch break.  I am
used to my can of "Ensure Plus" for max. calories at lunch but this is much, much better.

Trails are marked but pretty explicit directions go with the maps for each day.  There
are some really nice people running the bar and restaurant.  Buffet meals each
night - certainly my style - include lemon chicken, BBQ ribs, steak, porkchops etc.
on different nights.

Sunday also includes a group known as the Pony Express Riders dressed in bright red
shirts and cowboy hats doing a re-enactment of the Pony Express Ride and carrying
the "mail" for 2 miles each.  They started in St. Joe and just by coincidence have the
local portion for Ft. Schellbourne the day before we start our ride.

Barney has the scales out for those who want to check their horses weight during
the week - and for those who can get their horses to stand on the scale at all...

Monday - June 11 - Day one of the ride.  All the days start at 7 AM except for one.
The starts are a lot more relaxed than a normal 50.  No one seems to be racing
at the start.  Lots of people start slow - knowing that this will be a long week
if they want to ride all 5 days.  We start off down the valley on the
flat heading toward the mountains.

After we leave the flat desert - we head up into the mountains where we see birches
or aspens, wild flowers,  nice streams, and a beautiful spot for lunch with lots
of grass for the horses.  We can see our starting point - Ft. Schellbourne - once
in a while coming in and it always looks closer that it turns out to be.  Distances
in the desert turn out to be deceiving.  Once we get back on the flat - you
can see dust clouds up ahead where other riders are heading in toward the finish.

Tuesday  June 12 - A number of Quicksilver club members including myself took the second day off. The
wind was howling through camp the second day -
ripping off trailer awnings, blowing up dust, some hail out on the trail, cold.
I am seeing lots of easyboots - often all four feet.  There is certainly no mud
out here to suck them off.  Waiting at the finish - you can see riders miles away
by the "rooster tail" of dust that follows them as they come in fast.

Day 2 or day 3 seemed to be the worst for rider muscles. By day 4 and 5 - riders seemed
to have few problems.

Wednesday - Day 3 - The mountains have disappeared in something that looks very much like
snow.  Some sleet and snow starts appearing in camp.  Ann comes around and says there
will be a ride meeting at 6:30 and we will decide where to ride today. Barney gives us
a choice of hypothermia and getting lost in the mountains where the ride was planned
for today or a flat ride in the valley west where we go out 25 miles and then come
back the way we went out. We are promised the mountain ride back again on Thursday.
It's about 50-50 so Barney again stresses the point that he hates to lose riders and so
we decide to take the safer but more boring valley route where we trot for 50 miles...
It turns out not that bad - most riders have not done this loop since 1995.
We later find out that the reason for this is that this was the route that produced
the most cases of scratches for the week in the past.

This loop has it's own beauty.  We ride through something that looks like snow on
the ground but isn't.  It's some kind of alkali salt on the ground.  Another nice place
for lunch - always with lots of grass for the horses.  The horizon seems close but
it takes forever to get there.

Thursday - Day 4 - I'm off again - I had planned to do only 3 days - Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday. The weather is better and the riders do the mountain loop that we had
skipped on Wednesday.

Friday - Day 5 - This is the loop where we go up to 10,000 ft on the Ranger Trail.
It's a long climb up to the top with a spectacular view once you get up there.  You
can see far off into Utah - it almost seems like you should be able to see Colorado
from there.  There are fields of Lupin and other wildflowers.  Some runners are
tailing their horses all the way up while one rider - Jeff Johnson - who had intended
to lead his untacked horse - is just running the whole distance because his horse
couldn't go out.  He finishes ahead of 4 horses in the distance which I think had to
be less than 50 miles but made up for it in the climb.  We saw one snowbank still
there and more off on some other peaks.  This was the most spectacular of the
days we rode.

At the final ride meeting - we find that 11 or 12 of the initial 73 starters made it
all 5 days.  The best total time for the 5 days was a little over 30 hours and
won by a Junior.  A Quicksilver member - Jan Jeffers  - was second by just a few minutes
but got the BC for the 5 day riders on Cloud - Maryben's horse.

Driving back - we make it to California before Interstate 80 is closed due to
a forest fire.  And when we hit the California roads - I could tell it right away.

Some thoughts on this ride:

Multidays really are different.  There is a lot more time to meet people and to
make friends - and to get to know old friends better.  You have to be more careful
with your horse - you cannot depend on 3 vetchecks in 50 miles to have the vet
look at your horse.  Horses really do get stronger as the ride progresses.  It
doesn't sound like that should happen but perhaps its because those riders who
know they are going for 5 days - really take care of their horses.  It's also
interesting that of the dozen or so riders who did all 5 days - only 2 were men.  Men
seemed to be a considerably higher percentage on the total riders than that. I
like not having to worry about a vet card - but I still think the vets are very
aware of how your horse is doing.

Appearances are deceiving sometimes.  On the first day - we passed a guy walking
down hill leading his horse.  He wore jeans, had a vest, cowboy hat, and boots
with some sort of heel.  His horse had 4 easy boots and a "funny" gait.  He was
from Iowa.  I sort of pictured someone starting out in doing rides...  At
the end of the day - I find out that it's Don Funk with his Spanish Mustang stallion
who was top mileage rider in the 2000 season.  At the vetchecks - he just leaves his
stallion with food and goes off sometimes.  His stallion seems to understand "Stay".

The stars cover the sky in a way we never see in the city - there seem to be
millions of them.   You can trace out the constellations and think about all the
cowboys and frontiersmen- and women - who saw those same ones when they were
building the towns and farms so many years ago.

There still is lots of history here.  We see abandoned mines - old farmhouses and
cabins falling apart - and signs marking the XP trail.  If you try hard - you can
imagine some young guy galloping along carrying the mail at $5 per oz. from 1860
to 1861.  That was an enormous amount of money then.  And then the telegraph came
along and technology displaced another part of our heritage.

This is lonely country - not much happens here.  It's a major event when a semi
carrying hogs goes off the road Tuesday.  Highway 50 back is described as "The loneliest
road in America". We can see the road going straight to the horizon and no
vehicles on it.  I see very few jet contrails all week.  This is one of my "I
know I'm really away from civilization" measures.  But I couldn't live here -
while Silicon Valley is one extreme - this is the other end of the spectrum.

Some people bring civilization with them.  I saw one table set up for dinner
outside a trailer with a plaid tablecloth, wine glasses and red wine. It's a
neat thing to do...

This is just a personal view but I see more guys with a "win or get pulled"
philosophy - even some here.  There are a few women like this too but I think
women bond more with their horses.

We read the posts from the XP 2001 at night and think of how much harder that
is than this. We come back to the same spot every night - everything is set up -
we can go eat at the restaurant.  And while doing 5 days is nice for a change -
5 days for eight weeks and moving camp every night is really tough. For those
riders and horses that make it through all eight weeks - you certainly have
an accomplishment to be proud of.
 
Overall - I really enjoyed the multiday experience.  It's different and can lead to
a different set of goals than we see in our 50s and 100s.

Ann, Lavone, Barney, and Linda - I certainly enjoyed the ride.  Next time - I will
do all 5 days.

Mike Maul