103 DEGREES AT GOLDFIELD

By: Ron Mc Coy

103 DEGREES AT GOLDFIELD
By Ron McCoy, Reporting from Arizona

We'd really had great riding weather up until a week before our planned over-the-mountain ride. Originally, we had set a Wednesday as our date for the ride and found one of the four riders couldn't make it. The ride was then rescheduled for the following Wednesday. Not many people ride from Usery Pass to the 1893 town of Goldfield here in the Phoenix, Arizona area.
It's a pretty ragged ride and ends near the base of the Superstition Mountains.

Gary Brown, a native to the area, had wanted to do this for a couple of years. He had found and ridden a part of the route a few weeks earlier. Gary and Al Spall had already decided to make this a one way ride, thereby, saving a long return ride, by placing an empty five horse trailer at
our Goldfield destination, which we could then use to haul our horses
back to our original starting point.

This brilliant plan was only flawed by the rapidly rising temperatures, six days prior to the ride. The evening had been cooling down into the sixties and the highs were hitting the mid eighties by three in the afternoon. Now the cooling evening lows were in the seventies and hitting the hundred-degree mark by noon. This, however, was certainly our last chance to do this ride, not wanting to wait until next fall. May the 21st came with an early morning cloud cover. I was up at 5:30 a.m. and my wife, Karen, loaded me up with a great, rugged trail rider breakfast. She packed my horn bag with one
20-ounce bottle of water, frozen. She packed another 20 oz. bottle of water containing just chilled water. Sunscreen was liberally applied to my face and arms. Everyone else wore long sleeved shirts. The hornbags also contained pliers and metal comb for pulling cactuses from our horses as they occasionally brush into them. I also loaded up my camera, a compass and a first aid kit.

By 6:00 a.m. I had jumped into my truck and headed for the bam. The temperature had now risen into the mid seventies. Saddling my "goes-anywhere-does anything horse", Lefty, I said to myself, "Oh Boy! It's going to be a hot one today."
I figured the ride should take about four and a half hours. And, if we could get on the trail by 8:00, we should still beat the heat of the day. Al Spall arrived and hooked op his gooseneck stock trailer and in short order we loaded up our two horses. We pulled out by 6:30 with me following in my truck. 7:00 a.m. found us at the Usery Pass trailhead. Al had already talked with Gary Brown on his cell phone. Gary was driving in from North Scottsdale to meet us. He would arrive

at Usery Pass shortly. When Gary arrived, Al and I left our two horses with him, and went to drop the trailer off at Goldfield. This trip took about 45 minutes.
Back at Usery Pass the fourth member of group, Mary Hauser, had arrived bringing some great donuts with her. Good way to start a ride. The four of us got underway, on schedule, at about 8:00 a.m. with a light breeze blowing and with some cloud cover that felt quite pleasant.
The first part of the trail I'm quite familiar with. Gary, however, likes to take side trails and wander around a bit. This was fine with me, as he was riding lead and would encounter the numerous rattlesnakes in this area first Strangely enough, on this ride we didn't see a single one. A few miles down the trail the views really opened up overseeing rugged mountains, canyons, and even Four Peaks can be seen in the distance. The wide variety of colors is extremely striking. Along the trail are giant Saguaro, Cholla, Prickley Pear, Hedgehog and Ocotillo cacti. Also, Mesquite, Ironwood, Creosote and Palo Verde trees grow abundantly in this water-starved area.
After the first hour, we dropped into one of the many washes. The deep, sandy soil tires a horse easily and I was happy to turn south on Jeep Trail 10. The trail is very rocky and I really don't see how a jeep could navigate such a place without leaving lots of parts behind. Mary and Gary are engaged in heavy conversation as our horses slide down steep slopes. Their conversation remains constant without interruption.
That's how it goes with seasoned trail riders in this part of the country.
Two and a half hours into our ride and after a few cross country "let's go over there and look at this" from Gary, we stopped for a break, noticeably, there was no shade anywhere. Mary had brought some ham and cheese sprinkled lightly with a little salsa and olive oil, then wrapped into a flower tortilla type sandwich. Her saddlebags are insulated and she carries bags of ice to keep everything really chilled down.
These really hit the spot for a great-unexpected lunch. So two more points for this seasoned southwestern trail rider.
Gary had us backtracking some. And we ended up in a wash in a deep canyon. Two deer were spotted on an impossible-to-climb side of the canyon. Plenty of vegetation there, but no footing that I could see. They were about 150 yards from us and had the biggest ears I have ever seen on a deer. A comer of the western edge of the Superstition Mountains soon appeared and I guessed we wore about an hour from our destination trailhead. Gary and Mary were now into some familiar country and were looking for some potholes that had contained water a couple of weeks ago. We found them and they were now bone dry. We spotted a coyote about men and he looked pretty dry, too.
My bottle of ice water was about half gone now and I really began to feel the heat.
When we topped the hill, I could see Goldfield and we were soon back at the trailer. As we slid from our saddles, we discovered it was now 103 degrees. We all tanked up on water at this point. Saddles were stripped from the horses so they would cool faster.
Lefty was covered with crusted and dried sweat. We loaded up all the horses for the trailer ride back to our starting point at Usery Pass.
I'll admit that we were all pretty elated over this ride, which only took five hours. It's not a ride many people make, but it is one we'll do again in the fall with a much larger group of riders. With these opportunities to ride and explore, I realize that life is truly an adventure.

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