Fantastic pre-Ride in Salome yesterday...

 

  An endurance rider friend of mine and her Husband trailered here from Yuma this weekend to ride the trails out here with me today.

I have known her for about 4 years. "Met" her on Endurance.net. She has herself listed as a Mentor. I have been wanting to ride with her and pick her brain for a long long time.

 Today we did a pre-ride for a ride Lori, Lee, her husband, Drin and I want to do in January when Drin, (another endurance woman) will be coming down to stay for a month on some property they recently purchased down the road from us.

 Anyway...

 I had traced a loop that I hadn't been on before so we wanted to check it out first.

On Google Earth when I selected the "Elevation Profile" of the trail I found one short section to be a 35% grade!This concerned me so I also traced out an "ALT" route...

Before we got to the hill tho we took a wrong turn that went about a mile to a dead end. That was a steep climb so I assumed that was the "BIG ONE".

Boy was I wrong! When we came back after discovering we went the wrong way we could see the REAL Big One! From across the ravine it looked as though it went straight up!

  When we got to that grade... OMG!!

I really would have turned around and ridden the easy "ALT" route that I had marked. But Lee encouraged me that if their 20+ year old horses could do it that he could do it. So we did.

And  MOCHA "MADE THE GRADE"! It was scarey and exciting at the same time. I was so proud of Mocha. 
     Sure would have loved to have a helmet cam on that ride! Could have made a video going up that monster hill! I needed both hands to hold on so any picture taking was out of the question!

We were almost at the top of a mountain...

VIDEO-------





We probably traveled about 11 miles or so. And Mocha did it all barefoot!
It was a good ride!