Horseback trekking in the Bob Marshall Wilderness

---

Our week on horseback in the wilderness was a truly fantastic experience. We spent the whole week in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, which is the biggest wilderness area in the lower 48 states. 10,000 square miles of mountains, with no roads, settlements, and no mechanical tools or vehicles allowed, technically an electric razor's not even allowed in! So the terrain is as wild as it's going to get, if there's a fire, they let it burn. Vast areas of forest burn
each summer, leaving haunting forests of burnt out trunks. But they quickly grow back firstly with wild flower meadows. Lots of valleys with crystal clear rivers running through and mountains in the background. We were lucky to have fantastic hospitality from the Rich family who were 3rd generation "pack outfitters". Our "pack" consisted of 5 hosts, 7 guests, 13 horses and 12 mules! All of our gear, food and camping equipment had to be packed in and out by the mules. As we went along in convoy our guides occasionally had to saw the odd tree trunks which had fallen across the trail. We averaged about 12 miles a day on horseback, needless to say the padded cycling shorts came in handy! Our horses were amazing! Carrying us up steep rocky, narrow mountain trails, very sure footed and placid. Our horses Quigley and Roper got on very well, Donald had the cheek to write "heavy load" across my horse Quigley's rear in charcoal one day! In actual fact the quality and quantity of our cowboy style cuisine on the trip was so good I think poor Quigley's had a few more pounds to carry out over the pass than on the way in! Freshly baked cinnamon rolls for brekkie and Donald's new favourite, peach cobbler, all done in a Dutch oven in the campfire charcoal just like the pioneers did. One of our rides took us to the top of crimson peak it was so steep we had to lead our horses some of the way down. We had a couple of icy dips in the rivers and mountain lakes and earned our Pyramid Lake swim team T-shirts! D swam the whole length of the lake, I was frozen by half way and turned back! We were very lucky to see two black bears on separate occasions. On our last night we listened to Elks bugling all night in the meadows around our camp.We got up at 5.45am to peek out our tent and saw a heard of about 30 Elk about 100 m away in front of the horse coral which was pretty special. We had such a giggle round the campfire each night, with great company from Dennis, Milly, Melton and Michelle from Georgia. Dennis had us in stitches with his stories and we took great pleasure in trying to imitate each other's accents. Their company really made the trip. Less than 2 weeks until we are back home now, heading up to Glacier N.P next then a few days to chill out on the San Juan islands before heading to Seattle and home. Look forward to catching up with you all very soon. Lots of love Kirstin and Donald xx

---