Day 13- Your worst riding ever

Day 13- A video of your worst riding Your worst riding ever

My worst riding. Hmmmm Is it bad that I actually have to really think hard about my worst riding? I really don’t want to sound cocky but I am having a hard time of thinking of my worst riding. I have been pretty lucky and always been put on great horses. I tend to choose safe horses and people that know me put me on the safest horse. Mostly because I have been a bit of a chicken in the saddle in the past and I would let everyone who knows me know that. However I have become a stronger rider and am a bit more confident in the saddle. I just wish that my old riding buddy and hubby could see that. They like to both tease me about how much of a chicken I am in the saddle.





But If I had to think of my worst riding I guess worst and scary would go hand in hand. I’m not sure if I wrote about this, and if I did I apologize for repeating myself. Back in 2005 me and my riding buddy were working at the private stable together. Our boss was going on his annual elk hunting trip in Montana and he was bringing his horses. So naturally he had to bring his barn workers with him to take care of his horses! It was a paid vacation of us and we actually didn’t have to to much work. We stayed at an awesome ranch and the barn manager there feed our horses and cleaned our stalls for us so we didn’t have to do it. It really was a nice vacation for us to not have to do that! Our only real job was to drink cocktails and watch movies, and play spider solitaire on our lap tops. Well actually we had to saddle up the horses the ONE day they decided to ride the horses up the mountain. Since we didn’t really have anything to do, and the guys weren’t using the horses one day we decided to ride up the mountain ourselves. So we waited a few days for the horses to get used to the mountain air. Boss man made sure we were wearing blaze orange and we had our bear spray on us at all times, my friend had her colt .45 on her too. Just in case. We also packed a little lunch to eat somewhere along the way. My friend was riding her own personal horse and I was riding Yellow. He wasn’t officially mine yet, but he was the only horse I rode at the barn. The previous year Yellow had gone on the Elk hunting trip and something caused him to flip over on his rider. I think it was a combination of him smelling a bear or lion, mixed with a complete jack ass in the saddle. But the jack ass came on the trip again this year and noted that Yellow was a completely different horse than the “monster” he rode the previous year.

Me and Yellow up the mountain!

So up the mountain we went. It was fun! We had a fun time exploring and we just kept climbing and climbing. We had a nice little trail that we followed and the scenery was great. We thankfully didn’t encounter any wild life. We did see a poor little fox that had been shot just for the heck of it. Poor little guy, people can be so cruel.

Lunch Break!

Once we got up to a little valley we hopped off the horses and ate our lunch. It was so beautiful I never wanted to come back down. But we decided it was getting later in the day we should probably start heading back. Yellow was great on the way up. He was calm and acted like he’d been living in the mountains his whole life. But something changed on the way down. He was fine half way down but once we got to a narrow icy patch he decided he couldn’t do it. probably because I stopped paying attention and was too busy gawking at the sights. About halfway through the little trail he panicked and started climbing the side of the mountain. I looked behind us and it was about a 90ft drop. Ahead of us was gravel and big rocks that with each step he took caused us to slide all over the place. I was in full panic mode and Yellow was worse. My friend who was ahead of us called out to me and tried to talk me through it. I heard her laughing and shouted some nasty words at her. Each scrambling step yellow took the more I panicked. All I could see was us falling to our deaths. I wasn’t worried about me. I was worried about how pissed my boss would be that I killed his horse. We struggled for what seemed like an eternity. But in reality it was probably only 5 minutes.

When Yellow finally stopped scrambling enough for me to hop off, I did. I then lead him across the path and then basically collapsed into him. I nuzzled my face so deep into his neck to stop me from bawling my eyes out. I softly said “You are a jerk!” He looked back at me like “what? I knew we would get through this. I just got nervous that’s all” I looked up at my friend and she asked if I was okay and I nodded. Then I mounted up and we were headed home to the barn. He was fine for the rest of the trip down. So we put the horses away for the night and then walked to our cabin to get ready for supper.

Later that night my friend and I were having cocktails at one of the local bars. She told me that the only reason she started laughing was to keep herself from freaking out. She said she’s never been that scared in her entire life and she was almost certain she’d be riding home alone. She told me that I handled myself well given my situation. I told her that I probably didn’t want to ride up the mountain for a few days. She agreed that it was maybe a good idea.

That is my story of my worst scariest riding adventure. I hope that I’m never put in that position again!