An English country girl in California: First tale from the Wyoming wilds

It is Sunday in Wyoming, our one day off, and a blessed chance to switch off the alarm clock and luxuriate in the sleep that becomes so valuable when one’s days begin at 6.30am and end at 5.30pm, or 7.30pm if it’s your turn to move the horses for the night. Hence the delay in publishing this blog - I tend to collapse after dinner these days! It's jolly hard work being a wrangler on the Bitterroot Ranch, and it took me a week or so to settle in feel at home, but it is definitely worth it. Arabian horses, spectacular landscapes and some terrific people make this a truly wonderful place, and even though I do miss San Francisco, I'm so glad I came here. It's an adventure!

Me on Rasara, at the Lookout Point with the Wind River Mountains in the distance

Evening sun from the East Fork Road

The Bitterroot Ranch (http://bitterrootranch.com/) lies deep in the valley of the East Fork River, between the Absaroka and the Wind River Mountains, at the very end of the 17-mile dirt track that leads from the main road to Dubois. Every morning, nearly 200 horses clatter down the dusty track from their overnight pasture on the hill, the cheekier ones stopping to graze among the sage bushes. Once in the corral, some are gregarious, standing in a large bunch, others stay in tight knit groups or pairs. Three Appaloosas, Lakota, Millie and Marcus, are always together at the back, bony chestnuts Bandana and Dancer stick to each other and the young grey Arabians haunt the area near the water trough. Some pairings are unlikely – old paint Injun adores his Baskatrina, a pretty Arab whose delicately sculpted head is half the size of his own. Newcomers take time to find their place in the herd – handsome Hondo, a buckskin mustang, is still shunned by all but fellow newbie Ranger, a raking grey who protects Hondo from the grumpier matriarchs. It’s a rare collection, dominated by the Arabians, many of which are bred on the ranch and who captivate guests and staff alike with their dished faces and high-set tails. They're set off by the stockier mustangs, rangy quarter horses and enormous Percherons, plus a collection of Welsh mountain ponies for the children. Most are trustworthy guest horses, and the rest are youngsters, being broken or getting used to going out on the trail, guest horses in waiting. Oldest of all is gentle Spec, a gaunt grey Arab who spends the day in pen with his own hay, but who still trots out eagerly when the herd charges up the hill at the end of the day.

Injun and Baskatrina - true love

Grey Arabs in the morning light

From the valley of the Bitterroot, trails lead off in every direction, stretching enticingly to the distant hills. This really is a country where one could ride for days and not see a soul beyond one’s companions. Most days are split into two rides, morning and afternoon, with lessons or jumping on Tuesdays and Thursdays for guests who request it. Every Saturday and occasional midweek days, picnic rides are taken to the Shoshone National Forest (http://www.fs.usda.gov/shoshone), which borders the ranchlands and stretches for 2.5 million acres northwards. The ranch’s 400-odd head of cattle roam the southern borders of the forest from June to September, being moved each month to different grazing. They don’t tend to have a great deal of respect for boundaries, however, and frequently have to be driven back to where they’re supposed to be, which means taking guests out and giving them the chance to try their hand at real cattle work. If it’s only 20-odd cows that know where they’re going, it’s easy, but if it’s more than 100 that need to be moved across rivers, up hills and through forests, it’s extremely hard. A more relaxing prospect is the weekly team sorting, a cowboy game that involves separating one cow after another from a group, in numerical order, with two people sorting and two people blocking any rogue cows that make a break for freedom. It’s utterly engrossing, although the key is not to get too excited and work the cows up into a skittering mess - something easily forgotten when the clock is ticking!

Returning to the ranch from the Shoshone National Forest

Team sorting - my new favourite game

Some 30 guests can be accommodated at the Bitterroot at once, of all ages and abilities. There are six wranglers, of which I’m one, and our duties involve calling the horses off the hill at 6.30am every morning (we take it turns, teams of three), collecting those required for riding, grooming, tacking up and leading rides, then untacking and turning the horses out again, with doctoring and giving extra feeds where needed in between. It sounds straightforward, but there are an awful lot of horses’ names to learn, and when you’re dealing with lots of near-identical small grey Arabs, it can be extremely difficult! Western saddles are far heavier and more complicated than English saddles, and sit a lot further back, which takes some getting used to. Guests ride different horses morning and afternoon, but keep the same saddles all week, as their horses tend to be similar sizes and shapes, and the pads (pbm cb, ceq or lpd with space, plus cc or bc – yes, those seemingly random letters do come to mean something eventually), are changed to ensure a good fit. Western saddles are bigger and spread the weight more easily than English saddles, and assigning guests to saddles is a lot easier than changing the stirrup lengths each time, which has to be done from the ground, and there are a lot more horses than there are saddles!

The horses returning to their overnight pasture

It’s extremely hard work, but satisfying, and there's little I'd rather do than spend all day every day with horses in a spectacular landscape. Already, the end of the season seems far too close, with the fall round-up being the last adventure, and I will have many more tales from the Bitterroot to tell before that day.