From Jesse McNeil's book about the cross-country ride with the horse, Pepper;
Again with a few hours until nightfall, I have to keep moving hoping to find a camp location with water and grass. After cresting Biscuit Hill, at 3250’, we walk a long plateau criss-crossed with a four-wheel track. The plateau climbs slightly higher and snow appears. Weaving around the remnants of winter, sometimes sinking to my knees in the tough crust. Puddles collect at the base of the drifts, and Pepper takes advantage of the first couple we cross. Proceeding though, as the grazing is terrible on this elevated rocky plateau.
The setting sun beckons the return of a cold evening. Optimistically thinking the snow drifts would end after a mile or so I push us on, but the terrain actually worsens... the snow deepens as the terrain fills with rocks and shrubs. Now I regularly posthole to my thighs, irritatingly climbing out each time while following a quickly vanishing track. Pepper leaps in spurts, lunging for tree and rock wells absent of snow. The long lead allows her to wander for the best route, often beating the saddle bags against trees and boulders. My anger creeps up as the sun fades on the horizon. Plunging to my thighs again, “Fuck!”, but I keep moving, ignoring Pepper as she struggles through the snow too. I’m determined to drop one foot in front of the other until grass appears. The sun falls behind a mountain, a cold breeze lifts, but we’re sweating.
After a troubling mile and half the snow finally wanes and a well-used four wheel drive track becomes our new path. We follow in the fading minutes of light, and then the plateau eases into forest. The forest reaps a small patchwork of grass and trickle of stream. We’re both exhausted, the snow trumped the last of our reserve. I manage to set up my tent on a tilting scrap of ground and give Pepper a ration of emergency grain on a flat rock. She eats eagerly, but is visibly tired, as I am. I’ve been tying twenty feet of rope to her halter for the night, and waking a couple times throughout to see she’s not twisted up. It’s been working. Been backcountry camping a ton, but never with a horse so the slightest sound awakens me.
That night I fall fast asleep, and it’s only seven PM. This time before closing my eyes I’m barely able to record the day’s distance and eat a can of tuna and spoonfuls of peanut butter.
I wake just before the sun rises, break tent quickly as it’s cold, and once out of my sleeping bag I want to get moving. Five and half miles away is the village of Obrien in Illinois Valley. The thought of coffee surges me forward.
