Jazz's adventures in the far north (Road to Tevis #98)

The events described in this blog post took place in the last few weeks of June. Since then, a lot has happened. Most significantly for this blog, I lost Jazz when his owner decided to sell him to someone else. (Read about it here: Saying good-bye to Jazz.) I’m in the exciting process of getting a new horse now. In the meantime, I want to finish writing up my Jazz-focused blog posts. I’ll start with this collection of Jazz’s adventures in the far north. It includes our rides in Siskiyou County near Montague, CA., including up to Mt. Shasta’s Northgate.

I had been planning our adventures since spring! read about them here: What’s up next for Jazz and me.

Note: Jazz’s and my adventures really began on the drive up, when we broke down in Sacramento. Thanks to many kind people, Jazz and I made it to our destination in Grass Valley and were on our way to Montague the next day. Read about the breakdown here: Always check under your hood for rodents!

Read my next post: Riding in the Marble Mountains. (I couldn’t fit everything in one blog post!)

Settling in at our temporary home

When Jazz and I arrived at my brother and sister-in-law’s place near Montague, CA., my brother Nick and his son Felix had already set up a nice pen for Jazz. Montague is north of Shasta, and it gets very hot in summer, so Jazz’s new living quarters were where juniper trees would provide shade all day. In the end, we were very lucky and it was cool (for June).

My brother and sister-in-law have 40 acres, mostly juniper and volcanic rock. You can see Mt. Shasta from most of the parcel. They have a nice pasture and irrigation ditch that provide sustenance for a small herd of cattle. Jazz of course wanted to be out with the cattle, but there is a lot of loose barbed wire in unexpected places. I ended up hand-walking him out to graze every day. Jazz had to go through the ditch while I did the people-bridge to get to the pasture. He was so smart about it, as you can see in the video below.

First ride in Montague

Montague is very rural, all alfalfa and cattle pastures. (And people who have run away to grow and cook recreational drugs. There were entire regions my brother told me to avoid.) There are lots of dirt roads. My brother’s driveway is half a mile long. The main road isn’t dirt, but it’s lightly travelled. (Jazz is also thoroughly traffic-broke. Read about his formative experience at the Jackass Mail Run.) The day after we arrived, Jazz and I headed north towards a dirt road that would allow us some good long-trotting.

Because they had paved more road than expected, the ride was only 11.45 miles long, out and back. An easy 390′ total ascent, so a perfect warm-up ride. We did it in about two hours, with an average speed of ~5.8mph. Jazz didn’t even break a sweat.

Riding back from Ball Mountain

Jazz’s adventures in the far north started to get real with our first long ride. This route was my brother’s idea. Nick knows the region, and we scoped out the water available along the route. I use Gaia to check for potential water sources, but you cannot rely on that only. Local knowledge helps–my brother could assure me that Little Shasta River was running. However, we weren’t sure that Jazz would be able to access it, so I carried a collapsible bucket and rope.

Jazz's adventures in the far north: Gaia map of Ball Mt. Road, showing water crossing.

Above: I use Gaia to scope out water locations. I could see that Little Shasta crossed Ball Mt. Road, but I couldn’t know if a horse would be able to reach it to drink. So I carried a bucket and rope.

Nick dropped us off about 30 miles from his place, on the eastern side of Ball Mountain. While I was tacking up, a forest ranger pulled up to ask if we were all right. When he heard I was riding over the pass, he volunteered the information that they had seen two wolves recently. He said to be careful. I thought, it would be so cool to see a wolf. (Turns out that we now have a grey wolf pack in Tulare County!)

Jazz and I followed Ball Mt. Road for 20 miles. We saw no wolves. We did see a giant road grader. Jazz wouldn’t pass it until the driver stopped! I had worried about water, but there was plenty! Many roadside ditches and swamps left over from the very rainy winter and spring. We found a convenient watering hole right at the top of the ridge.

Above: Jazz eats his feed from a plastic baggie/

Ball Mt. Road runs into Snowden/Harry Cash Road. Jazz and I headed south there. We should have had only 8 miles left, but I decided to try to take a short cut through the Hart Cattle Ranch (google maps guided me that way). Beautiful ride down a tree-lined lane, but eventually we had to turn back. We ended up continuing down Harry Cash and then heading west to wind through a paved road and various dirt lanes to Nick’s place.

Stats

My Garmin watch died at 21.43 miles, on Harry Cash Rd. At that point, 4 hours, 37 minutes had elapsed. 4:05 moving time, average moving speed 5.2mph. 1618′ total ascent, 3150′ descent; it’s a downhill ride! I know from mapping my ride on Gaia that our total mileage was about 30 miles with 2011′ total elevation gain.

It was a long, uneventful ride. When I get bored riding, I make videos. This one had a target audience: Why I carry a gun. I was carrying a gun at the time, so it seemed appropriate.

Jazz gets away and runs three miles towards “home”

After a few days break, Jazz and I headed south from my brother’s place towards Louie Rd. This ride was suggested by my brother as one with many beautiful views of Shasta. We would ride about 2.5 miles down Big Springs Rd., then veer off onto dirt roads. First, there would be a more primitive version of Big Springs, then we’d get to Louie Road, which runs all the way to I5 and is mainly dirt. There was water, though not as much, and Nick told me I’d definitely have to scoop it out for Jazz.

The way out was great. The only issue was a herd of goats (or sheep). Jazz is alarmed by goats (or goat-looking sheep). (We’ve had that problem at home too.) I ended up going about five miles on Louie Rd. before turning around. This was mainly for lack of water. Jazz hadn’t wanted to drink when I offered, so he had gone over nine miles on a hot day with no water. I planned to try to get down to Shasta River with him by the bridge you can see us crossing in this video: Ride with me as Jazz and I tackle a new type of bridge.

That was not a good idea. By the time we got back to the bridge and crossed it, I had to pee. With the idea of getting off the road, I led Jazz down into the very grassy open paddock that appeared to lead to water. As soon as I felt like I had a bit of privacy, I pulled down my pants, and let Jazz graze. What I didn’t know was that there was a big fencing panel hidden in the grass. Jazz stepped on it, spooked, and took off. I was holding a rein and flipped over onto my back. By the time I had gotten to my feet and pulled up my pants, Jazz was out of sight.

Above: On the left (or top) you can see the entire ride, until I stopped my watch recording when I knew I’d be walking a long way after Jazz. On the right (or bottom), is a close up of the bridge over Shasta River.

Relying on the goodness of strangers, yet again

The first thing I did was call my brother. He had gone out of town with his family, but he is a CHP officer and they’ve been living in the area for a long time. My sister-in-law immediately started contacting people. I called CHP dispatch in Yreka and they said they’d send a car out.

It wasn’t needed. I had forgotten that Jazz was wearing his neck collar, and it has my name and number on it. Within a short time, I got a phone call from a woman who said she had my horse. If memory serves, she said her mom had seen him gallop by their ranch and let her know. She was sending her husband to pick me up. Before he got there, another kind stranger had found me. He’d even seen a broken rein on the road, and went back to get it for me.

The amazing thing was that the person who had caught Jazz was the local equine vet, Dr. Amy Fousek of Siskiyou Veterinary Services. She’d had a look at him and thought he was fine, just some superficial wounds. He trotted sound, was calm, and ate up his feed while I waited for the good Samaritan to bring me my rein. I ended up calling Dr. Amy about a small coronary band wound later that day. She recommended cleaning (done) and soaking (proved impossible but he got better anyway). I wanted to pay her–she said it was unnecessary, but being a vet is hard enough without free consults to random strangers who let their horses run wild. When I asked for her Venmo account information she gave me Amy Fousek Louie.

Thus ended our Louie Road adventure. It was a small town!

Above: This slideshow shows the bridge over Shasta River, the corrals by it wher eJazz got away, a view of Mt. Shasta, and Jazz after I caught up with him. He ate eagerly before we headed home.

Above: Jazz always sniffs at a wound that hurts of feels weird. I made him stand in the ditch to clean and cool down his wounds. It took him a while to get used to bandages, but he did!

Between the Louie Rd. ride and the following one, Jazz and I went to the Marble Mountains.

Riding up to Northgate on Mt. Shasta

I gave Jazz a day’s rest after our trip to the Marble Mountains while I scouted out the forest service roads on the north side of Mt. Shasta. I also used Gaia to plan and realized there would likely be no water. Shasta has a glacier. Glaciers don’t melt until it gets quite hot. No melt, no water. Later in the year, Whitney Creek would be running in the afternoon, and Whitney Falls would be a good destination. As it was, I decided to head for Shasta’s Northgate Trail. The Northgate trail is the starting point for people crazy enough to want to climb on glaciers and bag peaks. It’s beautiful.

The trailhead is at around 7000′, and the road to it is really bad. Because there are plenty of warnings online about the state of the road, I planned to park on Military Pass Road and ride up. I scouted that out in my sister-in-law’s old VW. There were plenty of places for a trailer to park and turn around. It is a really pretty place, full of wildflowers. I chose a place about a half mile off the road where there was a tree to park under.

It ended up being an LD with no water troughs

From my parking place, Jazz and I headed south and upwards towards the mountain. We had about 8 miles of road to the trailhead. There were gorgeous views much of the way! Once we were at the trailhead, I had to fill out a wilderness permit. Very quickly after starting the 3+ mile trail, we entered the Mt. Shasta Wilderness. Still no water. We went slowly, and Jazz seemed fine, but I was still worried. When the trail got steep I got off and led him. I knew there was supposed to be a stream at the top… but we never got there.

Too much snow! Jazz had already ridden though snow in the Marble Mountains. This time he went right into a deep bank, put his head down, and started eating. Or licking. He made a pool of water than drank it. Again and again. Definitely not a substitute for water, but it worked! I let him work on the snow until he was ready to go on. (See a video of him eating the snow.)

We continued through several snowy portions, but eventually I decided it was too scary. What would I do if Jazz sunk up to his neck in snow? Call a helicopter? It was very pretty and nice and cool when we turned around at approximately 8,500′. The road back to the trailer was all downhill. See pictures from our ride below.

(This was not the first time I had ridden up to the snow. Fantazia and I had done it at home in January 2021: Riding up to the snow.)

Ride stats

We completed the 22.5 miles in five hours, 43 minutes. 5:12 total moving time. The road was fast, the snow was very slow indeed. Total ascent 3,681′.

Jazz did it very easily. Two days later we would ride the La Grange Ditch 50 near Weaverville.