Trail Log: 7-20-2019

• Trail: Ear Creek IMO - Hill City Idaho
• Miles 17.3 (13.3 IMO - 4 pre-IMO)
• Riders: Circle Four (Jones & Self) 
• Horses: Jack and Raycine
• Placing: 6th
• Trail Rating: 3.8

Notes: Great weekend of IMO and shooting. I decided to leave J'Lo at home and  take Jack only. I wanted to concentrate on Jack without J'Lo distracting him or tempting me to ride her during shooting practice. We left fairly early Friday morning for Ear Creek Sheep Corrals above Hill City for the Renegades IMO ride. My truck overheated on the steep climb in - it's time to either get a bigger trans cooler or a newer truck. I'm leaning toward the newer truck.

The camping area for Ear Creek doesn't get much prettier. It was nice having corrals for the horses and not having to set up portable pens. Especially since I planned to leave EARLY Sunday morning to make shooting practice in Willow Creek.

We were the firs team out. We left early to avoid the heat and the giant horse flies. The climb up Brenner and Coyote are pretty much straight up. Jack and Raycine barely broke a sweat. Both horses did very well on the steep, sometimes technical trails.

It was one of our best IMO's so far. We made zero mistakes and managed to cut 3 miles off the 16 mile loop by taking a trail back to camp along Ear Creek that was not on the map.

We managed to place 6th. Had we not loitered around camp for 20 minutes after timing out we would have placed higher. We don't go to place though. It is not a race for us. We just go to find markers, read the map and find cool places to ride. Placing is icing on the cake.

Got up early Sunday morning and headed to Worley's in Willow Creek for shooting practice. First practice with Jack in a different arena with horses and other commotion. He didn't miss a beat. We shot two courses clean. So excited to have a backup shooting horse.