Photos and article 

by Allanna Jackson

Happy New Year! It has become my tradition to go for a horseback ride on New Year’s day. Most years the horse trailer is snowed in, so I have to settle for the trails I can ride to from home. While praying for snow, I took advantage of this year’s unseasonably warm, dry weather to trailer both horses to the Chipmunk Connector trail. I’d ridden Cinnamon on the Chipmunk Connector twelve years ago, before TRACKS re-routed the trail between CM2 and CM7. Velvet, Cinnamon’s older half-sister, had never been on it.

New year’s day was warm and sunny with a light breeze. Perfect weather for a trail ride. I fed the horses an early lunch, then hitched and loaded the trailer. Watching my preparations got Velvet excited. She eagerly met me at the corral gate, then bounced out and tried to lead me. I stopped her and warned her, “No pulling, no bucking, no rearing. If you’re going to be rowdy, you’ll stay home.” I then tied her up and groomed her. She fidgeted a little. Meanwhile, Cinnamon was observing all this from the far side of her corral. Usually, Cinnamon comes when I call her, but this time she didn’t. However, she stood still and let me catch her. I tied Cinnamon next to Velvet and groomed her. Velvet calmed down as soon as she knew Cinnamon was coming along to wherever it was we were going. Apparently, Velvet understood my warning because she was on her best behavior for the entire outing.

Both horses loaded in the trailer and rode perfectly. As I expected, the Springs and Country Club trails were full of people. I continued down Forest Road 185 to the nice parking spot beside the cattle loading chute at the beginning of the Chipmunk Connector Trail (CM). Both horses unloaded perfectly. They looked around while I brushed and saddled Cinnamon. I rode Cinnamon and led Velvet, and we set off up the trail. The spring and a few puddles near CM1 had ice on them, but all the watercourses were dry.

Chipmunk Connector is rated moderately difficult because of the distance. The trail surface is easy, but it is 7.5 miles one way from Country Club Trail to Los Burros Trail, or 15 miles round trip. The horses and I had a lay-off for most of December, so they weren’t fit enough to do 15 miles. I went as far as CM12 or the Brushy Pasture stock tank, whichever we came to first.

For the first half mile, Chipmunk Connector follows on old road. It turns right at marker CM2 and becomes a singletrack meandering through the Ponderosa Pine forest. This trail is quite popular with mountain bikers and though the horses and I had the trail to ourselves, there were many fresh bike tracks on the trail, along with tracks from a 

few hikers.

The horses strolled along, with Cinnamon maintaining a three-mile-per-hour walk. Velvet followed nicely. We all kept a lookout for wildlife and bikers. I was surprised that we didn’t see any of either category. This area shows evidence of having been logged and thinned a few years ago, but there are still too many broken, crooked, scrawny pines growing in dog-hair thickets. The trail crossed a logging road from the thinning project and continued meandering through the forest. Around marker CM8, the trail turned onto the old road and followed it to marker CM10, then angled off through the forest to CM11.

CM11 is at the fence line for the Brushy pasture. TRACKS has installed one of the new rollover gates for bicycles in the fence. Beside the new gate is a rickety wire gate for horses. I could see the boulders marking the top of the stock pond on the other side of the fence. I dismounted, opened the gate, led both horses through, and mounted again. We went about 50 yards up the trail, far enough to see that the pond was totally dry. My GPS said we were 2.75 miles from my truck, just the distance I had in mind to turn around.

We turned around and went back out the gate. I dismounted, closed the gate, and mounted again. We backtracked the 50 yards to the old road and followed it down the numbers. Cinnamon looked left as we approached the turnoff to the singletrack trail but had no objections to continuing down the road. Evidently, her memory agreed with mine that the Chipmunk Connector had followed the road back in 2012. The old roadway was rockier than the new single track because of erosion. A mile or more down the road, one forlorn, badly weathered turquoise diamond marker confirmed this was the original trail route. We continued along the road. All the puddles, springs and watercourses that were beside the road in 2012 were dry this year.

As we approached marker CM2 from the old road, Cinnamon alerted to a biker turning left off the official new singletrack route back toward Forest Road 185. A moment later, a second biker followed. They sped along the half mile of trail back to where they’d parked their car on the other side of the road from where I’d parked my truck. The bikers had completed their ride, loaded their bikes on their car, and were leaving by the time the horses and I got back to my trailer. There was another car parked across the road, and there were also several people and a dog hiking along the Country Club trail. Watching them kept Velvet entertained while I unsaddled Cinnamon. Everybody had left by the time I finished grooming the horses. Cinnamon and Velvet loaded into the trailer perfectly, rode home, and unloaded just as perfectly. It was a lovely 5.5-mile ride on a gorgeous day, but I’m still praying for snow.