Trail Trials at Skyline Wilderness Park

Last year Cupid and I went to a Trail Trials clinic, and we were finally able to put that practice to use in our first Trail Trials!  We went to Skyline Wilderness Park in Napa, about an hour and a half away and camped overnight.  Despite the name, the park is actually quite suburban, just minutes from town and with amenities such as a disc golf course and archery range.  Even though there were lots of hikers and bicyclist on the trails, they were very polite both passing on the trail and when obstacle judges asked them to wait while someone was completing an obstacle.  Dogs are allowed in the camping area, but not on the trails.

Saturday's ride was about 5 miles, with 12 judged obstacles.  Sunday's ride was shorter, about 4 miles with 8 judged obstacles.  They were considered separate events, we did both days and there were no repeats in the obstacles.

We rode as a group of 4, though ended it up more riding in pairs and meeting back up at the obstacles.  It was a little hard for Cupid to have horses "leaving" him, and then he was too distracted to focus on some of the obstacles.  Both days the first two obstacles did not go very well for us, but afterwards he started settling down and getting the hang of it and things improved considerably.  

I read the rules and had attended the clinic, but the obstacles were more difficult then I expected.  I guess I've gotten a little used to working equitation - I thought just crossing a bridge would be an obstacle but it was more complicated.  One of our bridge obstacles it was: walk onto the bridge and stop between the flags; trot the rest of the way across the bridge; walk at the next flags and turn on haunches 180 degrees, walk back across the bridge.  Luckily that is all easy to do (well maybe our turn on the haunches isn't a true turn on the haunches...), just sometimes hard to remember all the directions!  One Cupid and I had trouble with had us step with front feet up a slight bank on the side of the road and side pass.  Cupid stepped off the bank a few times, and each time you step back it counts as a "refusal."

Another sneaky one was the very first obstacle on Saturday.  You were supposed to enter the course dismounted, and mount.  So for Trail Trials that involves a bunch of rules where you need to make sure your reins are secure (I used a carabiner clip since my saddle doesn't have a horn) and lead from your halter and lead rope, stirrups are run up while you're dismounted, and check your girth before you mount.  But the real test was a bale of hay next to the mounting block!  We got penalty points because naturally Cupid had to try to take a few bites!

There is some terminology specific to Trail Trails that I didn't understand, that messed me up on a few obstacles.  I hadn't practiced dragging something behind Cupid, and one of the obstacles had a noisy bag tied to a rope we had to pull on the ground.  (Similar to the bag we picked up and carried in our most recent working eq clinic, which Cupid was very good about but I wasn't sure about dragging.)  To my pleasure Cupid did it perfectly!  Unfortunately for us, in Trail Trials "pulling" means you have the object in front of you and rein back, and what we did was "drag" which means have it behind you and walk forward.  So we got all 24 penalty points for the obstacle because we didn't fulfill the objective.  I was still thrilled with Cupid because he did exactly what I asked, but so disappointed I didn't understand the directions!!  But now I know the difference for/if there's a next time.

Overall I was happy with Cupid, although we have several things we need to work on.  Side passing for one!  And I was thinking maybe he doesn't see me like the leader and that's why he gets so focused on being with other horses.  It's a hard one, even when there were horses still behind us he wanted to go with the others heading on ahead and it was a bit discouraging at times because we messed up some obstacles I know we should be able to do better on!  I'm not sure I'll go to any more Trail Trials this year because there aren't any more that are close-ish to me, but if I go again in the future at least I'll have a much better idea of what to expect!