Long slow distance around Washoe

So Sunday (I know, I'm so slow!) we trailered down to Washoe Lake and rode with R. Dixie "knows" R's gelding Ranger and they are both levelheaded creatures who get along great. (Ranger is one of the last DR Thunder Bask babies, and I gotta say, I'm really impressed. Too bad he's w/t/c only!)


(^^ smiley face tights!)

I'd given Dixie a neck clip earlier in the week. I got a really nice line along her shoulder, then a different nice line along the other shoulder, and, well, it turned into a neck-and-shoulder clip.



I clipped the underside of her belly too. I will probably run the belly line a little further up and clip the lower part of her hindquarters later this week, but I was afraid if I did too much I'd piss off the Snow Gods and they'd smite me with a blizzard.



I met up with R at her house and we trailered a couple miles away to Jumbo Grade, to avoid a big hill. We had plenty of hills scheduled already!

R is fun and easy to talk to, so the first couple miles flew by as we chatted. But when we got to the top of Jumbo Grade, I was missing a boot! I had to backtrack maybe a quarter mile down a mustang trail to find it, but I got it back on and had no more problems with boots. It was the front left - when I'd slapped it on that morning I'd wondered if it was a little crooked, but when I looked at it again later it looked fine. Guess I was right the first time. I need to trim the front boots back and I just haven't yet - maybe tomorrow!

We trotted along the ridgeline, with R explaining how the Washoe endurance ride trails come through the hills on the different loops. She'd offered to take me on the "yellow loop" or take a shortcut through an aspen grove, and I said I wanted the prettier ride, so aspens it was!

"Aspen grove", my ass. It was a forest! A teeny weeny forest, but the biggest one I've seen in Nevada. The trees were substantially taller than me and Dixie, and I couldn't see the end of them. Definitely a forest.



(I mashed the "enhance" button on a lot of these. Cell phone cameras just don't do well at altitude - the shadows are usually way too dark and the lighted areas are often washed out. I "enhance" a lot of my photos, but I invariably feel kinda guilty when I don't tell yall, because lytha always discloses her image enhancements!)



ANYWAY. They're aspens, so they're a popular target for Undying Redneck Love Manifestos. AB + YZ 1994, yeah! I thought about hopping off and carving "F <3 G" on one of them, but I contained my inner redneck to look classy in front of R.

We meandered through the forest and up a valley and BAM we were on top of the mountain. 7,336' - not too shabby, but not an amazing accomplishment. (We started at 5400, and the lake itself is right at 5000.')

Ears up, looking around.


Looking down at Washoe Lake, and over to the Sierras, and on the other side of them, Lake Tahoe.


I can see my house from here! Ok, not really, but I can see Peavine - it's the farthest big peak, at 11 o'clock, and my valley is at 12 o'clock.


I like this pic a lot. There's R, and Ranger is "listening" to her, and little Lady the indomitable Border Collie, and Slide Mountain / Mt. Rose just chillin' out in the background.


After some picture-taking by the humans, and some very limited grazing by the horses, we continued on our way. (Dixie and Ranger did in all the grass on the peak, and I bet they didn't get a good mouthful each - it's still really early for grazing up there.)

We headed south, toward Carson City.


Everything's so hazy because it's Nevada. If it's not snowing, it's on fire. (The Forest Service was doing a controlled burn in Dog Valley, up by my house, and the smoke hazed up the whole valley.)


OMG PEOPLE!


They were out walking an English Mastiff and another dog, which normally would've been of notable size but it looked so teeny next to the mastiff that I really don't remember much about it. Maybe 50 lbs? Anyway, you can clearly see two people and one XXL dog in that picture.

We made it past the people uneventfully and down to the Cinder mine. I mean, I don't think they mine cinders or something, it's just called the cinder mine. I googled it, of course, and there's some Cinder Companies who are operating or have operated mines in Nevada, and some extinct-volcano cinder cone mine locations, but none of them seemed like the one we rode past. ANYWAY. It looks cool, and the road is nice for the heavy trucks.



We sort of wishy-washied our way down the mountain toward the park. This is exactly why I never ride a given trail for mileage or time the first time I ride it - we mutually agreed to pass up a trail around a hill toward Carson to head toward the lake, then we came to a fork and I knew that one spur went nowhere so we passed that, then R knew that the next turn went nowhere so we passed that, and before we knew it we were back down the most direct path to the lake.

Did I mention it was Easter? The volunteer fire dept Easter egg hunt had just finished, and when we headed to the troughs at the horse parking area, a mob of tiny children appeared to :high pitched squeal!: PET THE HORSIES! :squeal squeal!!!: Our horses were like "oh mobs of screaming kids, no big deal."



Have I mentioned lately what a freakin' outstanding brain my horse has? And how impressive R's horses are? Ain't no thang.



We'd been in the saddle for about 4 hours, but the horses weren't sweaty and tired at all. They were just cool with it.

We took a lunch break in the pavilion. R had some chili cheese Fritos from the food truck (argh it's the one Southern food I have never learned to love) and I had some delicious almond butter + nutella goo. Dixie had a little slurp of water, and Ranger drank like it was going out of style, cause he's got more sense than her or something.

Then we roared north up the twisty fun singletrack to the end of the park, crossed the road, and trotted on back to "camp."



The parking area is multiuse for horses and dirt bikes, and the dirt bikers were out in force by the time we got back. Ain't no thang. Our horses were (NWS!) honeybadgers about it.

I logged 16.7 miles, almost 3k' elevation gain, in 4:40 elapsed time / 3:46 riding time.


Technical stuff: I electrolyted Dixie a lot. Definitely overkill, for the amount of clipping I'd done and the amount of aerobic exercise she did, but I'm still slowly ramping up how much salt I give her for a long workout. She wetted her mouth at the several little springs along the way, and drank a bit from the trough at the park, and chowed down on her sloppy mash at the trailer. The ratio of electrolyte powder to applesauce was higher than I've done before, and it didn't inhibit her appetite.

I let her, well, nuzzle the water in the earlier bits of the ride, as a sort of not very scientific experiment. Mel did a great writeup on the hydration seminar at the AERC convention, and the takeaway message for me was "if a horse gets her mouth wet, it temporarily shuts down her thirst receptors." Dixie is the queen of rinsing out her mouth but not actually drinking. I thought I'd let her act normally on this ride, and when we do High Desert I am not going to even let her sniff water til 10 or 12 miles in. I know, it sounds so cruel, but I know she is absolutely fine doing at least 15 miles with no water at all. I would like for her to learn that if she sees/smells water she needs to DRINK IT, not rinse her mouth out and wait for something better a couple miles further along. So no more me urging her to drink - I'm going to electrolyte her up and keep her away from the water unless she pulls me to it and demands to drink. We'll see how that goes.

I carroted Dixie all day. Actually, I forgot to bring carrots and R let me raid her stash, but the point is, Dixie got bites of carrot off and on all day.

I drank my whole camelbak of elyted water, plus a small bottle of water I bought at the park. R insisted on powdering me down with some crazy dry sunblock, and my face got a little pink but not burned. (My forearms, which escaped her, are very pink.) I ate better than my horse - some nuts, the almond butter, and a powerbar, plus a hearty snack of hummus and fruit and beer at the trailer afterwards. (Thanks again to R, for letting me chow down on your good stuff!) If I can eat that well on a 50, I'll feel great at the end.

I wore the smiley face tights, which ROCK, and the Patagonia panties, which worked just fine. (TMI! I've been doing my short home rides commando, and that also works just fine, but I wanted a long test with actual underwear.) I also swear by, uh, cycling lube. I use But'r, but YMMV - a lot of endurance riders like Bodyglide or Anti-Monkey Butt Powder. Try one, try all. Your ladybits will thank you. Or your manbits, whatever you've got down there.

I got off once, I think, for a steep downhill that was like a waterfall of fist-sized rocks. I had such horrible experiences early on with trying to remount Dixie in the middle of nowhere, and I'm really cautious about dismounting when I don't know there's a place to remount ahead. I wore my knockoff barefoot shoes, and my feet were comfortable in the stirrups. When I did get off, I could feel that I was walking on boulders, but the rocks didn't hurt my feet or anything. Somebody asked earlier how the barefoot shoes handled rocks, and I can now say that they protect your feet adequately but not excessively. I didn't feel invincible, and I didn't hurt my feet.

It was a really fun day, and a good long ride with a friend. No speed records, no calamities, no amazing breakthroughs. Just two good broke horses hauling their humans around for the day (and one amazing Border Collie keeping watch over us all!)

Next ride: One more hill workout tomorrow or Thursday, then HIGH DESERT on Saturday. I've got Dixie chowing down on huge mashes of salted beet pulp, Stable Mix, and ration balancer, plus epic amounts of hay. She'll be well fueled, and I think she's in better shape than this time last year. Time to roll the dice!

Next up in the blog: A little house stuff I haven't mentioned that I suppose I should blog about. Or some book reviews? Or some recipes? What do you want to hear about between now and Friday?