Riding off into the sunset
This article appeared in The Sunday Times Magazine, in January 2018.
It is a short narrative of the summer I spent ‘thru-riding’ the Colorado Trail with my partner Richard and three horses. We spent six weeks covering 500 miles through the Rocky Mountains, gaining (and losing) around 75,000 vertical feet. We travelled unassisted, carrying all that we required on our backs and in the panniers of our pack horse. It was a wonderful experience, and I’m so glad I got to write about it for this brilliant magazine.
Find the full text of the article below, or on the Sunday Times website here.
How it feels to... ride off into the sunset
When a book project fell through, instead of wallowing in disappointment, Cal Flyn left her Edinburgh home and set out for the Wild West — and the adventure of a lifetime
By Cal Flyn
Published in The Sunday Times Magazine, 21 January 2018
Growing up as a pony-mad teenager, I dreamt of riding into the sunset with a bedroll tied to my saddle and pistol tucked in one boot. I love the outdoors, living simply and challenging myself physically. As a teenager, I competed at an amateur level in dressage and jumping, but as an adult I hadn’t the resources to keep my own horses. I’m a writer, based in Edinburgh, and spend so much time in my own head, at home, alone, daydreaming at my desk. That particular daydream, of long days in the saddle and nights under canvas, of deadlines reduced to meeting the most basic needs, has long been a fantasy.
Every year or so, a great urgency to just get up and go rises in me. So when, in August last year, I set off to trek through Colorado’s Rocky Mountains with my partner, Rich, and three horses, I felt I’d been preparing for this journey all my life.
The opportunity had arisen after a book I’d been working on for 18 months fell through. So convinced and convincing had I been about this new project that Rich had already left his job to join me on a long, not-yet-commissioned research trip.
I was distraught. Rich, very kindly, kept his misgivings to himself and instead pointed out the silver lining: a summer stretching out before us with no particular place to be, and a bit of money saved up for travel.
I found a ranch in Colorado willing to lend us horses, and a trail weaving just short of 500 miles through the mountainous wilderness between Denver and Durango, a mountain town near the border with New Mexico. Starting more than a mile above sea level, it rose to well over 13,000ft. We would gain (and lose) around 90,000 vertical feet over six weeks as we picked our way over mountain passes and narrow ridgelines, climbed switchbacks and slid down precipitous gorges.
Despite weeks of preparation, when we finally set off I was shaky with nerves. Rich was still a relatively novice rider, so I felt that the responsibility for our and the horses’ safety rested on me.
I’ve ridden horses for 25 years, but travelling long distance — unsupported — was a whole other thing. We’d had to learn skills more commonly used in the 19th century: how to equip a packhorse and control it while riding; how to tie a box hitch; how to keep three horses overnight in the woods.
We carried two tents — one for us, one for our equipment — and a portable electric fence, which allowed our horses the freedom to eat, relax and roll. We travelled almost entirely through publicly owned land, so could camp wherever we liked. All we needed was a flat patch of grass and water.
Every week or 10 days, we found a ranch where we could leave the horses to rest and hitched into town to stock up on supplies. The shopping list was simple: porridge for breakfast, tuna for lunch and some kind of just-add-water meal for dinner. Potato powder, packet macaroni, instant noodles … I wouldn’t touch them at home, but hunger makes everything taste delicious. The horses were even easier: we carried grain when we could, but mainly they got by on grass alone. As for bathing, the less said the better. Every so often I would shrug off my clothes to plunge into a frigid lake, or pour a bucket over my head.
At high altitude, weather can be extreme. The atmosphere is thinner, so the sun is fiercer and the nights colder. Though I painted us all with SPF50, our faces, hands, and the horses’ muzzles all burnt. Most frightening were the daily electrical storms, whose thunderous arrival sent us scurrying below the tree line, as the heavens opened and lightning forked the sky. If we got soaked through, it could take days to dry.
It was a thumper of a storm that preceded our worst disaster. Lightning and torrential rain forced us to make camp early in an unsuitable spot on a forested peak. With no room to erect the corral, we held the geldings’ ropes as they grazed, and watched the storm’s departure: a dense, spherical cloud rolling along the ridgeline, flickering with electricity. The rest of the sky was shockingly clear, aglitter with ametrine stars. Then we tied the geldings to trees, leaving the little mare, Pepper, loose, and went to sleep.
In the morning, we woke to two shivering, hungry horses. Feeling desperately guilty, I tied the mare and released the other horses, Pinto and Numero, to eat what they could — only for them to jump the creek and canter back the way we’d come. Cursing, we raced after them for two miles until they ran out of steam. Rich raced ahead and as I rounded a bend I saw them, silhouetted against the sky, walking towards me, Rich behind the horses in his cowboy hat calmly herding them home. After that, I felt a great weight lifting from my shoulders — we could do this, and as a team. Navigating predicaments like these brought us closer together: my fears dropped away, and our confidence in our own and one another’s capabilities grew.
When we made our final descent into Durango, it was with mixed feelings. Numero had lost a shoe, and though we’d strapped him into a protective boot, he was hobbling. He needed a rest. But for Rich and me, the end came too soon. We might have happily spent the rest of our lives in those woods, washing our socks in the river and sleeping tangled in a bed of saddle blankets; relying on each other when our own strength faltered.
As we reached the trail head, my phone lit up with messages from family and friends watching us — or rather, our GPS co-ordinates — approaching the end. I’d arranged for a horsebox to meet us, and we travelled with the horses back to their ranch for a painful farewell. We’d spent every waking hour together for weeks, pored over every inch of their bodies with concern. I wish we could have flown them back to Britain.
There’s a Zen proverb, “Before enlightenment, cut wood, carry water”. After six weeks of riding, walking and water carrying, we came back with clear minds. Rich is making a career change, he plans to retrain as a teacher. And I find myself at my desk again, dreaming of sunsets and electrical storms.
