​Kids and wild horses
Very few grew up as we did. As kids go, we were very independent at early ages.  Huge difference from kids today. On our side of the Colorado River, lived just a hand full of families with kids. We played in the dry washes, ditches and desert out our back yard while learning to swim in the canals and river. 
This quick story is about 7 kids heading out to bring wild horses off the mountain.
It was late in the spring when dad and our friend’s dad thought it was time to get  some horses rounded up. You see we helped the herd back then by releasing a good stud and some nice mares. Over the years they made some very nice and sure footed riding animals. 
Anyway, back to the story. I was the youngest at 8 years old and the oldest of this bunch of kids was 11 years of age. We got our best mules gathered up (remember wild horses) because staying safe on the nasty, rocky and steep country was a priority. We did have one race horse with us and 3 other horses plus 5 mules.
We all slept that night in the bunk house, 7 of us in sleeping bags on the floor and two farting dogs. We already packed our food and water for 3 and maybe 4 days because we did not know how far we had to go or how long it would take so to be safe, we were prepared.
That morning we all mounted up and leading the chase horse and pack animals we headed out. This trail is just a mountain trail and not a cow trail or maintained type of trail. It was very steep climb in places as the hill we headed up was a very big hill. After about 4 hours we were getting close to the top, maybe an hour left. But we ran into an issue. The trail was going sideways on the north slope of the hill. It had been warm enough at some time that the snow had melted but then froze on the trail. Now this trail was from 12 inches to maybe 18 inches in the wide spots. Two of us got off their horses and were leading them, the others stayed on their mules.
Well that trail became slick as snot! We were about half way across this bad shaded area of maybe half a mile when the wreck happened. My friend was in front of me leading the race/chase horse when that flatland horse slipped and went of the trail.
I will never forget those eyes! I have seen some stuff even at that age but never did I see an animal so scared as this one. His back end went off first and so his front feet were going a hundred miles an hour for what seemed like a long time but in fact was only a couple of seconds. Then over backwards he went. The hill was very steep and so he rolled four or five times before he was able to catch himself and stand. Well he was shaking so bad and so scared that he went down again. He went over some small drop offs and through some trees. I lost count of how many times he rolled down the hill and out of sight. 
We assumed he was dead as we left our animals tied on the trail and headed down with ropes. We found that puke standing and bleeding at the bottom of the ridge. He was at least a hundred yards off the trail, a hundred very steep yards.
Well five of us made it down to him while two stayed with the animals above. It was impossible to take him down because of the cliffs. It was also impossible to take him back up the way we came down. The only option was up the other side away from where we left the trail. That meant if we got him up, we would still need to get him back across on that icy trail.
Well we got the saddle off and its tree was broken so one of the guys took it back up to the trail. That stupid falling down race horse was in pretty good shape considering. His eye was swollen, he had some cuts on his head from bouncing off the rocks I’m sure, but his legs were not broken and neither were any ribs or other bones that we inspected.  
Well we gave him about half an hour to get his wits about him again, as I and another headed up the hill making a path to follow up to the trail. Now this side of the hill was not as bad as the side he came down but…it was still pretty salty!
Kids, from 8-11 years old…but we had been around and raised by men. Men who knew how to make things happen and had a (never give up attitude). So we did not know we couldn’t do what we were going to attempt. We did not know how incredible and dangerous our plan was, so we just did it!
Ropes and kids… So, the 1st thing is to control the horses head and keep it pointed in the right direction. We had some pack ropes that were 30 and 50 feet in length but we saved those. We always had manila tie ropes in our saddle bags so we tied 3 together and tied it to the lead rope. This way we could be over 20 feet uphill from that horse who we knew was going to try and run us over or flip over! The pack ropes we tied  to the girth of the horse with no slip knots so we had a guy on each side of the horse to help stabilizes and even help pull him up when he needed it. On his rear we had the BIG guys, Foot ball players at 11 years old, strong, quick and tough as nails. They needed to be. They had to keep ahead of the horse in steep rocky ground, keep the rope on his rear and hip and not let it foul up by getting it low on his legs. 
100 plus yards, myself and Jack in the lead controlling the head, Steve and Grant on the sides, Will and Dale on the rear and Ronny behind with a tree branch for additional encouragement. One big whack on the butt and up the hill we all scrambled as fast as we could. It was not pretty but as one of us slipped and fell, the others would pick up the slack and pulling and kicking, up the hill we went!
We made it, all of us. I had slipped and the horse stepped on me before he stopped and took a breath. Just a bruise is all we got out of our horse rescue, but that made us the winners!
Dumb dang race horse, he was done in after that. I will grant him one thing, he did not try to flip over and he did his best to keep his feet and climb that hill. A couple of times he stopped to blow and must have thought for a second of giving up but a well timed smack, got his mind off that and his eye back on the trail above him. Once on the trail we all gasp for air and thanked God for the strength he gave a bunch of kids and a frightened horse.  
Now remember we are on the other side of that frozen hill with a horse that was not going to make it back over the ice. Ok, I understand how dumb this was afterwards but…we all spent the rest of the day building fires on the trail to melt the ice. I was tired, sore, bruised and disappointed and the ice was not cooperating. The fires did help but wow, it takes a long time for that to work. So as we feed the fires, we took our hatches out, for those of us wise enough to carry them, and the older not so wise used their pocket knives or a rock to beat on the ice on the trail. We did what we could on that trail for hours and then threw dirt and cedar branches on it for traction. We had already taking the other animals back to safety and had a camp site picked out. The only thing left to do was to get that horse back down the trail and on the other side to safely before night fall and freezing temps.
There was no way we could help the horse on the sides because it was just too steep. So, Grant took the lead rope and down the trail they went. That horse only looked once off this side of the trail but bless his heart, he did not want to go off that trail again. He did not, he never slipped and we all got back to the camp site with no permanent damage to anyone.
Kids…Will and I finished watering and staking out the animals. Now we had food for 3 days right, wrong! Dale was a big kid and the others must have thought they had not eaten in weeks because as Will and I came to the camp fire, 2 hotdogs ( I know they fell in the dirt), a spoon full of dirty beans and no chips was all that was left! I think Dale ate the chip bags!!  Candy was gone and the few sodas we had were also missing in action. Being the youngest and dumbest I had a few choice words for my buddies, but it did nothing to appease my appetite.
Well, what can you say or do right. So we got the fire up and running as the cold night sat in. bunch of kids huddled around a fire in the most flammable sleeping bags known to man. Do you know what pitch is? How it sticks to your hands like  sticky glue? Well, on a fire it adds a whole new dimension to the night. It pops, it flames up and it sends sparks that fly into the air and like some crazed WWII kamikaze pilot, they seek out kids sleeping bags as if they are on a one way mission of destruction! So, if you sleep to close to the fire you get burn holes in your bag, to far away and well, it’s a long cold night.
It must have been around mid night when I had enough of this. I woke up Will and asked him if he was hungry and he replied “Yup, what on your mind?” My mind??? FOOD! We snuck out of camp, saddled our 2 mules and down the trail at a high trot we went, all the way back to the ranch. Once there Wills mom fixed us pork chops, biscuits and gravy. We stayed for many an hour filling our belly’s and packing away pork chops for the ride back. One last thing, Chocolate milk!  Hey, we are kids and we love chocolate milk so we made us a gallon and headed back. We got back in the dark and buried the milk outside the camp and stored the chops in our saddle bags. We both were tired and worn out so the hard ground and cold bag sure felt nice…until the sun came up.
Well I will finish up this story. That next day everyone just hung around played. No one wanted to cross that trail again and we were too embarrassed to head home so soon. So it was decided that we would stay up there another day and go back the next morning. I could not help but chuckle to myself each time I went out to our stash of chocolate milk and pork chops! The others were thirsty and hungry, eating gum and sipping water where they could find it. It was much later that Wills mom finally told on us but she never said we took a stash back with us, that was our secret.
No wild horses, just a lot of good memories.

​Hanging by a piece of sage brush that was growing out of a small plate sized rock in the middle of a 60 foot cliff. This is where the story gets good but how did I get there?
I grew up trapping small animals and varmints around the area I grew up in Colorado. So by the age of 16 I was trapping bobcats and coyotes on the mountain tops and ridges.
One day after school a couple of good friends wanted to go with me so we mounted up on mules and off we went. That day I was going to take bait up to the chief head above the cliffs. My buddies helped me carry traps and bait as we left the mules below the cliffs. Well, I’ll make this as short as possible because we were pretty much raised on the mountain and pretty salty even as kids.
I made my sets around the chief head and we decided to race back to the mules. Well my friends were older and took off down the trail we came up on. Me I was still carrying around 6-8 traps with me. Well I knew those cliffs and knew a short cut so down I ran as fast as I could. Thing was, running just inches above those cliffs the ground could be solid rock covered with a fine sand. Sure enough I slipped and down the 60 foot cliff I went! I think it was only 15 feet before my left arm snagged that sage brush and I could get my left hand and elbow on the little rock shelf. I yelled for my friends and they heard me, took them a bit to find me but find me they did. When they tell the story they thought it was funny as hell, me hang on something in the middle of that cliff, like some Remington painting.
They were brothers, strong and waspy.  The older one looked down at me and said, “if you push off, I think you will land in that cedar tree below you. Well, I looked down and yep, I think he is right but the vision in my mind of being impaled and dying in a tree stopped me from the attempt. I told them they had to get me. So they took of their belts and coats and tied stuff together and one holding on to the other they eased off the cliff to where they could reach me. The dang brush tried to snap off as I reach for the leg of my buddy. I was able to grab his ankle and pull myself up. I grabbed and pulled and climbed over both my friends to reach the top and the lower one climb over his brother, we all rested on top of that cliff.
Just one of the adventures where some should have died but I guess something else was planned for us. Many, many more adventures! 

​A good friend of my brothers and mine, invited us to hunt out of his cabin that is situated at the end of the road above Ouray Colorado. To drive into his place is to love a one lane dirt/rock narrow road. Most people would call the drive more adventure then they wanted. To pull a 20 foot horse trailer up to his cabin takes skill and perhaps a lack of fear of dying.
Anyway, surviving the road trip in was the easy part of our adventure so I will get to my story.
His cabin was on cutler creek and it was rustic to say the least. My brother and I received hand drawn maps of the trails in the area and each had their own story that our friend told us about that night in the cabin. We decided that a round trip ride up to the top of Boyeds meadows and down Dexter creek ridge, past the old mine and back into camp would be a great ride. Our friend agreed but mentioned he had not been over on that ridge for awhile.
Our ride up to the top of Boyeds took about 2 ½ hours and there we took a right on the ridge and headed to the top of Dextor creek. We found the ridge ok, (we have been to the mountains and seen the other side) but not really a trail. One did appear on the very top of that ridge because heading down on your left it was very steep for 50-60 feet and then it was a cliff that dropped into the creek maybe 500-600 feet below. Having said that, there was no going left so staying on top or going to the right were the only options. Well, this “trail” was very narrow and the hillside on the right had old tall timber on it. Soon we found an old trail off the top of the ridge that entered the timber. Perfect we thought as we now were 5 hours into our ride and had zero desire to turn around. Why even the thought of telling our friend that we turned back was not something to consider. So off into the timber on that trail we went. Now, I may need to explain what steep is, there was no way you could get off that trail and ride parallel to it. You could not get between the trees because it was so steep that trees roots and trunk maybe 10-15 tee apart (distance down the hill to the next tree) but the trunk of those trees were only 2- 2 ½ feet apart because of how steep the side hill was. Now wouldn’t ya know it, we started hitting down timber on our trail. We are mounted good, my brother on a mountain wise mule and me on a high dollar team roping head horse, Now I hear ya, why am I on an arena horse in that kind of county? Well, because “Tank” we called him tank, had been used to chase wild horses on the BLM round ups. This stout horse had a great mind, was very sure footed, and I was about to put those to the test. We hit a log that we could not get over and neither one of us wanted to turn around and go back what we have already came through. You see going over big logs on a downhill trail is one thing and going over the same log heading uphill is totally another! We had no saw with us, our friend never advised that we should carry one because we were on a joy ride, right?
Well my older brother lead the way leading his mule…if you call it that. It was like a controlled fall or side and down the hill he went and stopped at a tree where he could step left with is mule. Now I may not have told you but the trail we had been on was pretty darn steep on its own so, baling over the side and going left meant the trail was only a feet away anyway.
My turn Tank was 1,350 pounds of rock hard stand up horse. So when we left the trail and I fell on my ass and was sliding down holding the reins of my horse, you could imagine my concern when my feel planted and I came to a stop. As I lay there in an almost standing position because the hill is so freaking steep! I had a large front leg of my horse on each side of me, his head over the top of my right shoulder and his tail buried in the hillside (and I hoped anchored there). Now, I see where my brother and mule turned and I even see them on the trail again maybe 20 some feet away. Now I have never been accused of being a smart man, but I did know that huge horse was not going to stay where he was for long. So, keeping a hold of my reins I did my best to leap sideways as far as I could and then keep scrambling until I reached the trail. I love that big horse, he came right with me, never stepped on or trampled over me, and he had every opportunity to do so.
Well, that was the last big log we encountered on the trail and we made our way to the old mine and then down the draw to the cabin. Our friend came out of the cabin when his mule started sounding off at our arrival. His greeting was that he did not expect to see us so soon, because no one had been on that trail in years and didn’t think we could make our way through it.
Before we sat down for supper to regale our story, indeed were just dismounting, we said something about it being pretty steep and logged in. Our friend just laughed said; Yep, it can get pretty SALTY up there!