Rolled my sleepy daughter out of  bed ( aren't all 18 sleepy)  and headed out to join the Back Country Horsemen ride Saturday morning.  It was 22° as we saddled up. So it weeded out the crowd and we only had 7-8 total riders in the group.

There has been a lot of snow, but this last week has been warm and it has melted. So instead of 2 foot of snow, it was mostly just 12-18" deep, but with a crust from the melting and refreezing at night.

The trail was pretty much drifted over, Even though I had ridden this trail last week. You could not see any signs of where the trail was, nor was it broken thru in any places.

You could make out where the trail went by how the snow had drifted

It was slow going, we shuffled lead horses every so often to rest the lead and lets somebody break the trail. These two decided they had enough after an hour and turned back.

You can see how on the South Faces the snow and wind has bared the hill sides. That's is where most of the buffalo hang out, what grass there is, is available for them to eat with out having to dig thru the snow

Good work out for the horses. Blue skies and we all got a little sunburnt on the faces from the sun. Afternoon temps hit 40°, so it was very pleasant.

A warm day in the sun on a horse made my day,  Feeling the warmth of face that evening as I realize I should have used some sunscreen re-enforced how nice it was to get out.

It's pretty barren out there,  If you don't run into the buffalo or antelope that roam the island, Not much to see. But snow doesn't get very deep, it has a nice granular soil type, So not very muddy.  No trees to shade anything, So the snow melts off much faster than up on the mountain.  Make for a good place to go put some miles to exercise the horses.  It's 20 minutes from the house and I can go do the 14 mile loop in a couple of hours.

It's pretty easy to get 9-14 miles in on that trail, depending on the loop you take. Often we get to see Buffalo and Antelope. This day we saw several coyotes hunting for rabbits or mice.

But just getting 10 miles in with the horses breaking thru the snow to make a trail was a good work out for the horses.  They were huffin and blowing and we  frequently had to change the lead horse so they could rest and let another one work at breaking the trail.  You don't realize just how dirty your horses are until they start sweating while standing over pristine white snow and you see the mud dripping off them.

I'm off for a desert ride this weekend.

Rather than fight the snow and cold again, This week I trailered down to Southern Utah and rode the red rock country. Temps were 56°. So much nicer than last week.  Although I had to drive thru a snow storm coming home and return to shovel 6" of snow in 16° temps.

Lots of deep sand and step banks to climb with a few logs and other stuff for obsticles

Mostly sandy footing, But some volcanic rock