We scheduled our trip west this spring so that we would time it right to go along on the big cattle drive up Pass Creek to summer grazing in the mountains. This morning began as every morning does on my parents’ ranch: (my husband would interject, “Slowly!” here—ha ha!) with a big breakfast, a Bible devotional, and some long drawn out discussion about which person is to ride which horse, and what other horses might be taken along in the trailer for substitute mounts, and what horses have been shod and which haven’t, and who will go along to drive the pickup and trailers, and what we should take along for lunch and supper….you get the idea. We got started late, but at least it gave the sun time to get up over the eastern mountain range and start warming things up.
I dressed up in layers head to toe, placed my camera in a handy pocket, and started down to the barn. Four neighbors had already arrived and were unloading and saddling their horses. There was Anne, with her tall white Tennessee Walking Horse gelding. Then Chuck Babb and his son Kit, with their two horses, one of which was a gelding we had raised and I had trained when I was a teenager back in Nebraska, so it was neat to see him again. Another neighbor had come to drive the pickup and trailer, Cowboy Dad and I with our two kids, and my folks and sister Karmen….so there was a total of eleven people along on the drive.
Riding out to start the days’ work.
We started out riding north a quarter mile to a pasture where the cattle were scattered through the sagebrush. I was riding Belle, a mare from the good old days (I trained her as a 3 year old, and she bucked me off twice the first time I rode her!), and she did very well for a nineteen-year-old retired ranch-horse-turned-broodmare. She has a ton of spunk and loves to work cattle. I’ve always been a big fan of Belle, but she is for sale at this horse classified website, since my dad prefers riding geldings.
Cowboy Dad was riding a cute little buckskin filly named Chicory, and she did just great for a four-year-old. At first she was a little concerned that she needed to stay close to her buddies, but he made her walk along by herself, and other than a whinny here and there, she was calm and level-headed. Later in the day, when our kids wanted to get out of the pickup and ride, Chicory was the one we put them on. She tends towards laziness and is not easily excitable, so her future as a trail and kid horse is very secure. 
Cowboy Dad riding Chicory across a stream.
My sister Karmen started out riding Challis, her tried and true ranch gelding, with a string of three other horses in the trailer that she wanted to switch to at different points along the way. It was a good thing she had him because as we gathered up the herd, we noticed there was a stray calf from the neighbor’s that was mixed in with my dad’s cattle. Karmen went in to cut him out, and he turned out to be a handful. I stood there with my camera in hand, watching her horse work, and I’m sure my mouth was hanging open. After watching her successfully stop and turn the calf’s attempts to stay with the herd five or six times, Challis rolling back over his hocks and swapping directions like a professional cutter, I could have kicked myself for not taking a video of it. It is a beautiful thing to see a horse really get after it and completely dominate a calf’s every move. Challis and Karmen are a good team.
I did get this video as we rode towards the herd, but it isn’t the best quality, since I filmed it on horseback and we were still pretty far from the cattle. I was just blown away by the vastness of the mountains, the wind rolling down off the peaks, the sound of the cattle calling in the distance, and the thrill of being horseback with a whole day’s ride ahead of me.
We gathered the cattle in the northeast corner, opened a gate to let them out on the BLM ground, drove through a sagebrush covered plain, crossed three fast-flowing streams, and made our way onto the gravel road that leads up a narrow notch in the mountain range. The cows were anxious to go, having made the trip each spring for several years now, and they wanted to travel at a fast trot. A gravel road leads clear to the top, and there are a lot of people camping, fishing, or four-wheeling that drive out for weekends on that road.
This day was pretty cold, and it snowed on us near the top of the pass. This was the Thursday before Memorial Day, but at that high of altitude, you never know what you’re going to get. When the clouds would break and let the sun through, it was warm enough to take off our jackets. But most of the day was misty, windy, and gray. I didn’t hear anyone complaining though, as we rode past towers of rock and bubbling waterfalls within inches of the trail. The horses were happy and confident, and the cattle were willing for about half the way.
Cowboy Dad riding Possum along a ridge.
After the pass, some of the calves started getting tired and lagging. One of the bulls was getting sore feet from the rocks on the road. We managed to put three of the weakest calves in the trailer, along with a cow that was limping. We were maybe three quarters of the way when a mother cow decided she had left her calf behind and turned back and went down the road at a fast trot. Several of us tried to stop her, but I was riding a different horse (a three-year-old filly named Honeycomb that had only had seven rides on her before that day), so I wasn’t equipped to take on a determined runaway cow. My dad took her back to some roadside corrals, and they had to take back one of the trailers to load her and bring her the rest of the way. We figured out that her calf was one of the weak ones in the trailer, so she had freaked out when she couldn’t find him in the herd, and decided to head for home where she had seen him last. So that gave us a delay, and more trouble, but suddenly we came to a clearing in the sage brush with a creek flowing through the little valley, and my dad said our long drive was over. We had gone more than seventeen miles that day.
Honeycomb and Baron waiting to load up in the trailer after the long day’s work.
It was evening, then, so my mom unpacked firewood and a supper of hot dogs, chips, pop, and homemade Butterfinger bars. After the long days’ work, we were famished. The kids got to play beside the creek while the cows and calves mothered up, and we let the horses graze awhile before loading up into the trailers for the drive home. What took us all day to climb took only twenty or thirty minutes to drive back down. It was a wonderful adventure!
Our daughter riding Chicory when we got to the end of the drive.
My son riding with me on Chicory, it was cold and he wasn’t exactly happy at the time. But he wanted to be on the horse with mom.
