Day one of Mt. Lemmon Pack trip

 

We left out Thursday morning at 6:30am in the dark. I didn't sleep too good worrying about the alarm not going off in time at 4am. I am not a morning person so that is an ungodly hour for me but we were well prepared for an early start. All we had to do was push the button on the coffee pot, feed the horses a lot of breakfast and saddle up. Our packs were fully packed and we had a trial run the day before to see how it all gets tied on. Here are the first few pictures of heading out.

 

 

 Terry and Al

 Al (classic scowl on his face, not just because it is early), Zero and Closeau (sp) the awesome pack horse and Margie and Ryan.

Sunrise over the mountain.  A sight rarely seen by my eyes.  I enjoyed it every minute this day though even though I was freezing in my T-shirt, long sleeve shirt, winter carhart coat and silk scarf and gloves.  As soon as that sun gets over the top of the mountain it warms up nicely.  Terry and I each had about 15 lbs in each side of the rear packs plus our bedrolls.

 
We started out riding in the Canada Del Oro (pronouned CANYADA )or the CDO. It is a wash, or riverbed for you northerners. I have been told that in the summer it has a lot of water in it but I have never seen it anyway but totally DRY! See that low saddle between the peaks? That is about the half way point of this first day's ride. It is about a 9 hour ride. NOT KIDDING.   Check out the sun just kissing the left edge of the mountain top.  We saw a huge WABBIT around here, a Jack rabbit.  Also saw a bunch of cows grazing in here and Phinn was scared of them until he figured out they were  Grass-Eating COWS, not horse-eating COWS.  Oh boy...we are going up the mountain that will probably be sporting a lot of COWS everywhere...  Please God don't let us fall of the edge!

 

 
From the CDO we turned onto the Charleau Gap Road which is a Jeep trail that we ride for quite a while today.   Getting closer to the saddle now.  Still about a 2 hour ride to get there.  Distance is hard to judge here because it is so BIG.  Finally has warmed up some.

 
Still climing.  We stop a lot to let the horses rest, I mean a lot, like every 5 minutes.

 Doesn't Phinn have cute ears?

You can hardly see any horse under Bobe with all his stuff tied on.  This little horse is the toughest horse on the planet.

 This is the view from the saddle looking back where we rode from at Dorly's.

On the other side of the saddle, riding down and coming around the back of the mountain.

Still on the Charleau Gap Road

Finally made it to the first destination.  This is a hikers camp provided for anyone's use and supplied by some kind soul.  There is no road to here.  We left at 6:30am and arrived here around 4pm.  At one point a little ways from here we lost the trail because of so many DARNED COWS and their many COW trails that are everywhere but go nowhere.  We were pretty pooped by the time we arrived, set up camp, picketed the horses and got a fire going.  Stay tuned for more tomorrow!