Sunday evening, I was feeling sorry for myself. I had just had to face financial reality and cancel my plans to attend a dressage clinic with Manolo Mendez. Just moments after I send the withdrawal email, I had a message in my in box from a friend with the heading - Lost Turbo. Turbo is a sweet little black gelding she bought a couple years ago to use as a pack horse. I helped her with training him, as he was incredibly sour. Misfitted saddles and bad riders had pretty much convinced him that he would rather stand still and take a beating than walk. But he was incredibly calm, super smart and quickly learned to trust Beth and I. Now, two years later, she is working with the ‘Trail Gorillas’ to maintain the Pacific Coast Trail. They went up last Thursday night for a weekend project clearing fallen trees and moving boulders. When they arrived, it was snowing! Beth pitched her tent, high lined two of her horses, but let Turbo be in the pasture with the mules. Somewhere in the night, Turbo decided that it was cold and he wanted to go home. He left camp. Beth woke up and started searching for him. She tracked him to the Kern River and was convinced he had tried to cross. On Sunday, she admitted that her horses were exhausted and she didn’t have any more supplies to stay longer. That is when I got her email.

What could I do? If it were my horse lost in the Sierra’s, I would be frantic and desperate. I told Beth that I would go up there with her on Monday morning. She could borrow one of my horses, and I would ride Belle. After a flurry of messages back and forth, we realized we needed her rig, as she has a 3-horse trailer, and just in case we got lucky and Found Turbo, we would need the ability to haul him home!!! So, she picked me up at 7:30 am. I was ready to loan her Lego, but she opted to use her other pack horse. Toby hadn’t worked very hard and seemed up to the task, and she was more comfortable on a horse she knew. I was more comfortable that way also, I was so worried that Lego would object to wearing a western saddle!

It was a long drive up to the campground. I had brought a hunk of orange yarn to flag sections of the trail. As Beth drove, I untangled the yarn and cut a fist full of 6 inch pieces. Then I rolled the rest into small balls. It helped to pass the time. Once we exited the 395, we were climbing up towards an area known as Kennedy Meadows. A Lot of horse people camp and ride back there. We detoured off to the Chimney Peak Wilderness – and the road just climbed up and up. Then we were on a wash board dirt road that was so narrow that when we encountered a couple trucks coming the other way, we had to find a spot to pull over and let them work their way around us. But there wasn’t much traffic, and we only met up with the last of the Trail Gorillas as they were moving their work crew to another site. A bit further, we met a couple fishermen and we asked them if they had seen a horse, and one said no, but he had seen hoof prints in the road leading to the camp. As we drove on, we saw the prints. Beth thought they were too large to be Turbo’s – but when I looked closely, I could see that it wasn’t One print, but two hoof prints in the same spot – perfect tracking up, creating the illusion of a much larger hoof. So, we found a place to turn around, and worked our way back up the road. I was walking in the road looking for hoof prints – Beth was driving the rig slowly along. Thank goodness there wasn’t any traffic, I am sure we made an odd caravan – a big truck with a 3 horse trailer moving slowly along behind a woman staring at the ground and flitting from one side of the road to the other, and occasionally yelling “I’ve Got Him” and then tying bits of yarn to a twig. Finally we saw a place where his tracks Left the road! Luckily, there was a great place to park the rig, so we unloaded and tacked up.



This is what his prints looked like in the dirt parts of the roadway.


Here we are getting ready to ride.


It was easy to spot where he left the highway and followed an animal path up to a ridge. We started out mounted, but quickly, I realized that I could only track the prints from the ground. Belle trailed along behind me. When I would lose the path, I tied her to a tree and looked around carefully trying to avoid messing up the tracks. In a picture Beth took, I look like Monk, the detective! I would find a set of tracks that were clearly shod horse prints, and yell “I have him!” and I would step from print to print.





Can you see the set of hoof prints going up the trail! This was what we were tracking. There is no way to do this quickly!

So, I was walking along, pointing and leading, and Beth wound up ponying Belle for a while. It was very nice that Belle and Toby made friends in the trailer, she can be a bit of a pissy pony partner, but with Toby she was perfect.



I realized later that I was so focused on the dirt, that I had No idea of the trees or scenery. In fact, initially I was so fixated, I wasn’t marking with orange yarn. When I realized I wasn’t marking, I started using yarn, and I worried that we might have a hard time finding our way back. Turbo was walking fairly deliberately, there were only a few times that I saw him seem to circle or turn back from a direction. I don’t know if he really knew where he was going, or if he just was marching in his determined sort of way.



When I did look up, I saw it looked like This! We were on the ridge going down. There were lots of tracks and at one point Beth was certain that the other big set of prints were either a bear or a mountain lion, and she was convinced that it was stalking Turbo. I didn’t know about them hunting a horse, but it was very much a game trail with a lot of activity. I have to assume that it leads down to water somehow, and I was hoping Turbo had found it. We know he got water on Friday – but since then he has not been near any streams or the Kern River. Grass does have moisture, and there is plenty of it, but I think he still needs a real drink.

As we worked our way down the ridge, it got pretty steep. I told Beth to wait, and I would see if it was even going to be passable for the horses. I walked and walked, following the path, and I started to see two sets of tracks, or at least that is what it seemed like. It seems he wandered around a bit, indecisive of whether to go down or not. But both sets of tracks seemed to go down hill, so I am guessing he went down, came up some other way and then wandered down again. I could only follow the prints the way they headed. I worked and worked and realized that I had left Beth alone with the horses for who knew how long. I had shouted back to her a few times to let her know I was OK, but I could no longer hear her reply. I had made it all the way down to a sandy wash, and the prints were impossible to track. Something heavy had walked there, but sand just leaves holes, not clear prints. I opted to go back up and find Beth. Clambering back up that incline was not easy. Down is always easier! When we got to where we could hear each other, I realized, she had started coming down the slope towards me, but not in quite the right place. We finally found each other; it was a bit amazing what a relief that was. Sound does not carry far in that place! There is no cell phone service; basically we had no way to contact each other. If I ever go again, I would pack a whistle. And maybe walkie-talkies! I also had realized that I only had a sweatshirt tied around my waist, and if we got stranded, I was going to be very very cold. I also regretted not packing a lighter or matches. Later, it turns out that Beth DID have enough sense to pack two solar blankets, matches and a few other necessities so if we had been lost, we might have been ok. Besides, I watch Survivor Man all the time, and I am sure I have picked up a few tips from Les Shroud! At least I had a Lot of water, crackers, a couple apples and chocolate covered espresso beans! What more could you need?

Once we joined back up, I told Beth what I had tracked out, and she wanted to continue on down the wash, looking for signs of where he might have gone. We worked our way down again, and this time I saw a set of tracks I had missed before. We followed them and came to the sand wash in a Different place that my first tracking. I am very convinced Turbo wandered around this area. At least this was a section where we could ride. I had begun to wonder why we brought horses! We rode along seeing the deep prints from time to time, but nothing that made me sure enough to yell “I’ve Got Him” like I would before. It was a beautiful area to ride though, and Belle was a joy.



Finally we came to a place where he would have had to get out of the sand to work around a stone ledge, and we could not find any prints. Beth took off this time and worked up and around. I let Toby and Belle graze. It was interesting juggling two lead and pointing two ponies to the best bits of grass. They thought it was a nice change of pace. Between me walking most of the time and then letting her eat, Belle may have thought this was her best trail ride ever! Of course, she hadn’t had to climb back up the incline yet! I had, and I knew we were going to have to do it again! My legs were not happy.


Beth worked all around the edge of the wash, and we finally realized that we had to have missed something. We decided to double back. When we came to the place where we had come down off the ridge, suddenly I saw the tracks climbing up the other side of the wash! I had been so focused on the fact that we were entering the wash in a different place than the first time I came through; I missed seeing this clear sign that he had scrambled up the other side! But now I made another major mistake. Because the trail was So clear, and it was a pretty steep upgrade of about 20 feet, we just rode up! At the top, there was a nice pile of manure. Very dark in color, but clearly horse poop. And I pulled it apart and it was moist inside. I would guess it was less than 2 days old. So, it was probably from Sunday. And Beth admits she had noticed those horse hoof prints in the road when she drove out Sunday, but she had thought they were from a draft horse, because from the truck they looked so large, and she just didn’t even imagine that Turbo would have come from the meadow all the way up to hit the road. So, we are guessing that we were tracking him from either Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning.

Now we had a dilemma. We couldn’t easily find his tracks, neither in the wash nor up where the manure was. We were running the risk of messing up the track for someone who was better at it that I am (which would be just about anyone!!!) , and it was 3 pm. We didn’t want to get off the path and become lost and have it get dark. Remember, we had already seen Big prints of lion or bear. Being out all night didn’t seem like much of a plan. So, we heavily marked the site of the manure pile, and felt we could trust the cowboys to pick up the trail the next day. I was already concerned that we had made things a bit confusing by riding up the slope. I kept visualizing the next day’s tracker seeing all that orange yarn and then us fouling the track, he would think we were mentally deficient! But the damage was done; time to get out. Easier said than done. We were riding, since I didn’t have to puzzle out Turbo’s tracks, and you would think that having 3 horses stomp over a path would make the way clear. No so. I easily found the steep ridge that we had to climb back up. And we had to do it dismounted. Beth was lucky, Toby was willing to ‘tail her up’ meaning that he walked up the hill and she followed behind holding his tail and letting him pull her out. I had already hiked up this grade once, and it would have been nice to be pulled up, but Belle didn’t get that concept at all. Each time I tried, she just circled around and got back by my right shoulder! I would have had to put two lines on her and sort of ground drive her to teach her that skill. And then I wouldn’t have had a hand to hold her tail with! So, I climbed out the old fashioned way, dragging my pony behind me. We got up the hill first. At the top, we all stopped to catch our breath.







We were at 7600 feet altitude, so the air felt a little thin even to me. After our breathing settled down, we started riding along the ridge top. 3 different times I got us off track. Luckily I would realize my mistake pretty quickly. I really regretted not putting out more yarn markers, and now I was putting them everywhere to make it incredibly easy for tomorrow’s searchers. And the closer we got to the trailer, the fewer yarns were out. Finally, there weren’t any. At one point, I saw a wall of boulders, and I was so sure that the rig was right there; I stopped looking for the path. But 5 minutes of that, and Beth convinced me that none of this looked familiar. Well, None of it looked familiar to me either! – I had been staring at the dirt most of the time! But we doubled back and then, there it was, the clear path of our trek out! I flagged the path very heavily – I wanted to be super sure that the cowboys didn’t have to waste any time sorting out the path.

It is easy to see how hikers get lost. Especially because a human leaves a shallower track than a shod horse. There were so many small ravines and side paths, and it all starts to look the same. So, it took us almost an hour to travel back the route that had taken 2 ½ hours to track originally. According to my GPS it was less than 2 miles! We got to the rig at 4 pm, and watered the horses. Both drank deeply. Then Beth gave her horse a dose of paste electrolytes and offered the rest to Belle. Once she had that taste in her mouth, she didn’t want to drink any more. In fact, she didn’t even want carrots! So I am not so sure it was a great idea. But she drank down one full bucket of water, so that was about 4 gallons, and I knew we would be home in 4 hours. But it is something to consider for the endurance race – I think I will do electrolytes in her water, not a paste that leaves a bad taste in her mouth.

All and all, I was very pleased with our attempt. We absolutely tracked this horse, and found evidence that at least he isn’t colicking yet. I really would have liked to find him. I had a halter tied on my saddle, and was sad that we didn’t get to use it. But I was fairly sure we had made it easy for the cowboys to pick up where we left off, and the trail was still pretty fresh.




As we drove away, I looked back at the canyon area where we had searched. It is big country back there. I BELIEVE this is the ridge that we rode down from right to left. We spoke to a Forestry guy on our way out of the park and he knew about the missing horse. When we told him where we had tracked him, he said that the largest bears he had ever seen were in that area. On the drive home, we finally got to where we had cell phone service again, so we called the Carver ranch and gave them the info of where we marked the trail. He sounded shocked and said it was really rough terrain and called it ‘big foot country” – I don’t know if he was talking about Sasquash or the bears!

Now it is Wednesday. Stanley Carver, the rancher, and his ranch hand, decided that they knew better than a couple girls. They went down to the main camp area where Turbo originally left. They felt he would double back to where the trailer had been. Then they checked all the tracks that Beth had already inspected on Friday and Saturday! Their conclusion was that the tracks were a week old and that too many other horses had walked over the area and fouled the tracking!! Big Duh – we already knew that. So, now Beth is trying to get a volunteer search and rescue crew to go into the area. They know exactly the area that she described. It can’t be an official SAR unless a human is lost. But they may be willing to do it for practice and to help the lost horse.

I hope Turbo has found his way to water. If not, his chances of being found alive are getting thin. By the way, anyone in the Southern California area who has resources that might help us, please leave a comment here! mw