August 23rd was the date for the Skimikin Endurance ride. Skimikin Lake and campground is located between Salmon Arm and Kamloops and oh my what a gorgeous setting for an endurance ride! This was the third year for an endurance ride to be held in Skimikin, but it is a regular campground too and has several pens for horses - so if you like horse camping and are in this area I would really recommend it!
We arrived mid afternoon on Friday the 22nd to find the campground already full - they had about twice as many rider/horses as they had expected! There ended up being 48 entries for the 24 mile ride and 30 for the 50 mile ride - that's a lot of horses and campers!
So they were well organized as usual and a spot was found for us and we settled in. I had been discussing with Anastasia that maybe we should try a 50 mile ride - our horses are pretty fit and it seemed like a good thing to think about. So we DID sign up for the 50 mile ride, but we were admittedly both a bit anxious about it!
The 50 mile ride started at 6:30 a.m. and we awoke to just about perfect weather. It was overcast and a fair bit cooler than it had been the week before, which was great. We were ready to go and headed out to do our first loop. The first loop was 20 miles and we completed that in just about 2 hours - so that was great time. The horses were in good shape at the first vet check and after the required 45 minute hold we started out on the second loop, which was 14 miles. This loop was a little easier terrain than the first one and we did it in about 2 hours as well. There was another 45 minute hold at the vet check and we started out for the last loop, which was a repeat of the second one. Well, we have to admit that we were quite tired heading out on the last loop - another 14 miles to completion, but we went out and did it!
The horses also told us that they were a bit tired on this loop, but they held up very well and I was SO jazzed about how well *Tessa came through it all - she is just a wonderful partner and tries so hard to do everything we ask of her. Here is a picture of *Tessa taken by the photographer that was there for the day. If this looks like FUN - well it is!!
