The Montaña de Oro Endurance Ride (Road to Tevis # 93)

Last Saturday Jazz and I completed the Montaña de Oro Endurance Ride. It was an amazingly beautiful ride–and challenging for Jazz. Our last endurance ride was in March, Cuyama Oaks held at Laurel Mountain. Jazz was rather naughty. (You can read about it here: Training my horses in competition.) We went slowly. Since then he’s not gone further than 27-30 slow miles. (Read about our experience at the Jackass Mail Run.) The 50 miles at Montaña de Oro are technically and physically grueling. Jazz did great! Read on for a summary of our experience at the ride.

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Friday: Pre-ride excitement
(Getting there, The endurance community and newcomers, Our pre-ride, the Friesian Stallions, Ride Meetining)

The Montaña de Oro 50-mile Endurance Ride

Loop 1
(Out vet check, Stats overview)

Loop 2
(Near bicycle pile-up, Out to the beach, Winding inland along narrow trails and mist to the finish)

The site

The location of the ride deserves mention. Montaña de Oro State Park is wonderful. Just south of Morro Bay (I bet you could ride up the beach to Morro Rock), MDO comprises 8,000 acres of everything from beach to dunes to cliffs to old oak forests. The native plants are amazing! Hazard Canyon horse camp–where the ride was based–has 50 individual corrals with water tanks and hoses and accompanying campsites with tables and firepits. It is a stupendous place to hold an endurance ride! It’s also only about four hours from my house, my limit for convenient rides!

Above: Scroll through a slideshow of the varied habitats in Montana de Oro.

Friday: Pre-ride excitement

Getting there

My first surpise was to discover that Tulare Lake was in my way… OK so it wasn’t that much of a surprise. Tulare Lake has been growing since March. My normal road to Paso Robles (on the way to Montaña de Oro State Park) goes right through the historic Tulare Lake basin south of Corcoran. Once the largest lake west of the Mississippi, the Tulare Lake was gradually drained starting in the 19th century. Canals carried water away for irrigation and municipal water supplies, marshes were drained to allow habitation. What was lake has been farmland for decades, with occasional flooding. This year’s rains caused the lake to return as never before, flooding farmland, roads, and towns.

Caltrans is working to raise roads, but in the meantime I had to go around. I could have gone north of Corcoran but decided to go south towards Wasco then take 46 to 101 in Paso Robles. South to San Luis Obispo and north to the park. The entrance to the Horse Camp is the first, and leads down a narrow dirt road to the campsites. I pulled into the first area (not knowing there were more anyway!). That was fortuitous, because I ended up parking next to Donna DuBois and Nina Bomar and Juan. Marci Cunningham joined us not long afterwards.

Endurance community and newcomers

I’ve come to know a lot of people in the first place by parking next to them. I met Karol Mancini, Vicky Torres, Stevie Delahunt, Donna DuBois, Heidi Helly, and associated helpers (aka husbands) because we were next to each other. Neighbors are important! I love it when the Hellys are around, because Patrick always keeps an eye on my trailer (and the horse I leave hanging there).

It’s nice to be near people you (are beginning to) know. It takes me a long time to make friends in the best of circumstances… Fortunately endurance rides can make it easy to get acquainted, even for introverts. And I’ve been lucky in the people I’ve come across. I got to know Juan chatting in Spanish while he was making tacos at one of the xprides. Juan is one of the most gregarious people I’ve ever met. He makes friends everywhere he goes, and makes introverts like me feel capable of Talking with Strangers. Through Juan, of course, I met Nina–I already knew I wanted to meet her absed on her wonderful stories of people’s experiences in the endurance world.

Of course, I’ve also met a lot of people on the trail, despite almost always riding alone. I met Andy Botello at the Laurel Mountain xp ride in 2021: a first for both of us, we crossed paths first on our pre-rides. Similarly, I met Allan Horn (and through him Lauren) when we rode down the trail together on xprides during COVID, when no other rides were happening. At this year’s Laurel Mt. ride, I got to know Scott Lucas because we rode together almost the entire way (his horse Stanley and Fantazia got along very well). Scott and I rode together again at the Cuyama Oaks (held at Laurel Mt) ride, where I also rode with Kerrie Tuley towards the end.

Allan and Scott weren’t at Montaña de Oro this year, but Kerrie and Andy were. Always a pleasure to find out how everyone and their horses are doing. Slowly, slowly, I begin to feel part of the wider endurance community.

Despite being a definite introvert who generally prefers to ride alone!

Our pre-ride

Part of the reason I ride alone is that I frequently stop to look at and take pictures of plants. When I saw Dana Tryde, whom I had met a few years ago at the Cayuse Ride, she said, “You’re the succulent person, right?” This because I had been in rapture over the native plants at Cayuse. I said of course! Dana replied that I’d have lots of plants to look at on the Montaña de Oro trails. I said I’d better get started now because I wouldn’t have a lot of time during the ride.

Accordingly, Jazz and I did a slow 5 miles, with a lot of stops to photograph dudleya, rabbit tobacco (everlasting), and hummingbird sage. First, we rode down to the beach on the trail we would take the next day. The path was narrow and the sand was deep, as you can see in the video below.

There were dudleya plants everywhere (which I realize is probably only interesting to me!). Jazz did great, only slowing down when we got near enough the beach for him to see and hear the waves. (Watch my video of his first encounter with the beach.)

After a brief ride on the beach, we backtracked, did a quick ride along the dunes, then crossed the road back to camp. We went about half a mile down (and up) Bloody Nose trail, also to be part of the 50-mile ride the next day. More dudleya, tons of hummingbird sage, and Jazz got an idea of what would be expected of him. We got back to camp after an hour and 45 minutes. It’s so nice to ride in the late spring and summer, when it’s light until after eight!

Above: Pictures from our pre-ride. The Pacific Ocean and dunes at the Montaña de Oro State Park, a dudleya plant and some hummingbird sage.

The Friesian Stallions

Not long after I got back to camp, a truck and trailer pulled in and swung around to stop rather in the middle. The driver was Rigo, a super nice vet student from Guatemala (I think.. he was studying in Mexico). He said he wasn’t used to pulling a trailer, was doing it for a friend who was flying in. And that the trailer contained three Friesian stallions from Bakersfield. They were a last-minute addition, and ended up doing a special intro ride that Ride Manager Debby Lyon made for them.

In the end, everyone settled down, but at first it was quite a kerfuffle. I helped unload, and put one stallion next to another (they were in fact pasture mates at home). They immediately started to fight over the fence, so I smacked one with the rope and Rigo and I separated them. They had to all be separate; one was tied overnight.

I wasn’t too bothered by them. Friesians are docile, and all the other horses were penned. I was glad I had a gelding and not a mare though! It was a learning experience for the owners and trainers. Hopefully they’ll be back for more, in a better-prepared state.

Ride meeting

Debby Lyon gave the most thorough description of a trail I had ever heard. Including information on squirrel holes. Speaking as someone who lives in Squirrel Land, there is such a thing as TMI when it comes to squirrel holes. But it was very much appreciated. The most useful part concerned the single-track trails where we could encounter bike riders. Look before starting across ridges… And hope for the best on blind curves? I made a prescient joke about singing loudly and poorly, then put it out of my mind.

Right after ride meeting, everyone disappeared into their trailers/campers/tents and presumably went to sleep. Rigo of the Friesians was wandering about looking for company for a bit. No one told him that endurance people are Very Boring the night before a ride!

The Montaña de Oro Endurance Ride

Loop 1

The 50-mile ride started at 6am. I got up at 4:50 to give Jazz his feed. He was happy in his pen between two other horses, and hadn’t taken his blanket off (miracle). As usual, even though I moved non-stop from the time my alarm rang, I had to rush to get Jazz saddled and bridled by 6:50, my goal for heading to the start (three camps down from outs). In the end Jazz and I rode up just as the trail was open.

We circled around for a few minutes, to let the leaders get out of sight, then left just after Nina and Marci. They were going about my speed–a walk–but I was worried about Jazz getting annoying and Bothering Nina’s horse Shanti. It was Shanti’s first 50, and he didn’t need a Bad Example nearby. So once I couldn’t see any other riders in front of us, I passed Nina and Marci and sent Jazz up the trail at an easy trot.

From that point, Jazz and I rode alone the entire ride. Occasionally we would spot another horse far ahead or far behind us, moving down the trail across a canyon or twisting back and forth through the many switchbacks. The only time we were near others was at the vet holds.

Out vet check

On Loop 1, the first Vet hold was at around 12 miles. By that time, Jazz had settled down and was behaving very well. I hopped off about 1/4 mile out and walked him in. He came into the hold with a heart rate of around 58 bpm and was officially down when they took his pulse. I let him eat carrots and hay before vetting– A mistake! Because just as we got ready to vet, three riders rode off leaving Jaz alone. Heart rate shot up to 110 bpm. It came back down, but we ended up taking 22 minutes at a 15 minute hold.

Loop 1 stats overview

I forgot to start my Garmin watch for the first 5 minutes, so we actually rode a bit further. But per my watch, Jazz and I went 25.18 miles in five hours, 32.5 minutes. That’s an average speed of 4.5 mph (4.8 mph average moving speed). That’s a long time! Total elevation gain was 4,455′. There were slopes of varying grades, switchbacks, steep drop-offs, rocks to scramble over, and a series of four narrow bridges that Jazz crossed without hesitation.

Although Loop 1 had much less deep sand than the second loop, the very end led us back to camp along the Cable Trail, which is mainly soft deep sand. As usual, I hopped off Jazz about half a mile from the finish. I regretted it immediately. I could barely walk in that sand! After a few hundred feet, I took advantage of a low stump to mount… and pulled my saddle off. Now, I could have gotten on by carefully weighting the off side, but instead I took it as a sign and walked Jazz all the way to just outside his pen, where I got on for the final stretch through the horse camp.

Jazz pulsed down right away (I let him stop for water halfway through camp). I took him back to the trailer for a snack and rest, leaving the vetting for later, when he had cooled. This gives any hidden problems a chance to show up.

Loop 2

I saddled Jazz back up and headed to the vet with 15 minutes to spare so for once I managed to get out on time. Jazz felt good and trotted enthusiastically away from camp. We started with a short ~2.5 mile loop heading southeast out of camp on Hazard Canyon Road. After about 500′, we started up the narrow Manzanita Trail, which curves around a hillside with dense vegetation.

Near bicycle pile-up

Just after starting up the trail at a brisk trot, Jazz and I were surprised by a bike rider barreling downhill around a blind curve. Jazz wheeled 90 degrees and moved up the hillside just enough so that the skidding bike rider slid into his rear legs and not his front.

Jazz behaved excellently, even though I could feel his heart thumping between my legs. The bike rider, not so much. He pulled himself and his bike up and asked if I would let him by because he had several buddies coming down who “would have a hard time stopping.” I snapped back, “Better you than me! They are your friends.”

Sure enough a few second later two more bikers slid into the first. All three wanted to pass me… there were three more coming. They said “We’re sorry about your horse, but we really need to get out of the way.” I said you’ll be more sorry if you get a hoof in the head. It’s not only about my horse! At my insistence, one went to slow down the last few riders.

But everyone else on the trail was very polite

Not long after letting the six careless bikers go past me, I passed a woman truddling her bike uphill. I told her to be careful on the way back down. She thanked me for the warning and said she always goes slowly.

The truth was, everyone but those six was extremely considerate. Bikes yield to horses by park rules, and they all did, hefting their bicycles off the trail into the bushes when necessary. I came upon several hikers who were similarly courteous.

Out to the beach

After circling back to camp, the second loop led to the beach. We traveled by the same route Jazz and I had taken the day before, and then rode north up the beach towards Morro Bay about a mile before heading back into the dunes. Jazz was still worried about the crashing waves, but he did trot up the beach. It was really the only decent place to move faster than a walk. The sand in the dunes is really deep and the paths narrows. With the exception of a short lope along a wider trail, I kept Jazz to a walk the until we crossed the road back onto the firmer inland trails. He drank deeply before entering and upon exiting the dunes, and was hungry, snatching at anything that looked edible.

The third vet check

It took me two hours and 45 minutes to get to the second out vet hold. It was about halfway through the loop, not long after mile 12, but we had gone very slowly in the deep sand. Jazz was doing well in my estimation. Sure, he was tired, but he was drinking and eating every chance he got. He pulsed down within two minutes, but he had low gut sounds. The vet asked me if he’d been pooping (he had). I wasn’t worried, and we left on time once again. I was worried about being overtime.

Winding inland along narrow trails and mist to the finish

By the time we came off the dunes we were about 7.5 miles into the second loop. We headed inland on the Bloody Nose trail that we had followed back to camp in Loop 1. Much of the trail we had already done in the morning, but we went the other way and connected paths differently. The Canyon View trail was new, and full of switchbacks. By then, though it was not that late in the day, the mist was rolling in from the coast.

We once again road along the Hazard Peak Trail back towards camp. Jazz continued to snatch grass all the time (even along steep narrow stretches of trail). We trotted as much as possible, if mostly slowly, because the trail was frequently downhill and often steep and rocky. Jazz did great. He learned to slow down for switchbacks, pick his way on rocky sections, and trot when he could do so safely.

I had forgotten to recharge my watch, so it died at mile 20.31. By that time we had done 3,248′ total elevation gain in four hours and 35 minutes (average speed 4.4 mph, average moving speed 4.8 mph, same as Loop 1). I know from our finish time (5:32) that it took us another 15 minutes to make it to the finish. Once I realized that we were close, I let Jazz walk.

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The finish

Jazz pulsed down within 5 minutes, and I vetted for completion before heading back to the trailer. The vet suggested I stand for BC, even though we were an hour behind the leaders, so we did. (But Jazz didn’t win it, not surprisingly with weight and time against us! Not to mention a few Bs on gut sounds.)

Amazingly, we came in 4th place. 16 horses had started, and there were 6 pulls (two metabolic, three lameness, one rider option/lameness). It was a tough ride, but I loved it.

Jazz was definitely a bit stiff and sore (you could see it in the circles for BC), just like I was, but his legs were tight and his topline was perfect. Overall a great experience in a beautiful locale.