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Website Information—Trip Itinerary
In May, 2011, my husband Pete and embarked on yet another “trip of a lifetime.” (We’ve previously done several long-distance bicycle tours, and in 2001 we did a 63-day sea kayak trip in Southeast Alaska.) This time, we travel in the Rocky Mountains from Gulnare to Vail Colorado by horseback. We rode along the Rio Grande, on numerous county and Forest Service roads, and on both the Continental Divide and Colorado hiking trails.
We planed on going from South to North in order to follow the growing season. This worked to a point, but becuase of a late spring we ran into lots of snow at the higher elevations. Some passes proved to be impassible, which caused us to change our route plans on several occasions.
What made this trip so special is that we did this trek on horses that we raised and trained ourselves. Raudi
was a yearling, and Siggi was six-months old when we got them. We ground
broke both, and were the first to back them. Both have matured into reliable
and savvy trail horses. We also took a third
Icelandic horse with us, Signy, who proved to be a very reliable pack horse, and at the end of the trip became a permanent part of our herd.
Alys and Mariann on fireweed trail near our home in Palmer, Alaska