[westmar]

SAD-but true....
Planned a week long pack trip with 3 other friends and my hubby, into the West Elks, between Gleenwood Springs and Delta Colorado. We carpooled with the one friend as it was a 4 hour drive.
He had a new used Diesel Truck, we had a pretty good load of riding and pack animals. Had to pull a huge grade through the Eisenhower Tunnel. A light begins to blink on the overdrive signal. Huh? wonder what that means? Called to the Resorts repair shops-being in the late mid 1990's-no one knew what the blinking light meant. We drove on to our vacation.
We get on back roads and get lost for a couple hours. Finally find our way-which we had passed once.
Meet up with our friends. Get packed, ready to go and head up the trail. Well, one of our friends is riding a colt-300 yards from the truck there is a huge 'puddle' from the rain. The colt gets scared, hauls off bucking and dumps her into the mud puddle. SO- we fix that and ride on.
First night at camp we are having fun and shooting targets [it's allowed] with a black powder pistol. Well, when we are done, the friend with the truck cannot find his dog. Next morning he ends up going clear back to the trail head-10 miles-found his dog and came back and we have camp broke and ready to move on.
We ride along a few hours and go through a swarm of bees-no one got bucked off, all of us were stung-including our mounts!
We settle on a camp that night- and it proceeds to rain.....it rained for 5 days straight-we were to be gone for 5 days and could not come out until the 6th day. We ended up sitting in camp drinking the whole time instead of checking out the West Elks....
Well, upon coming out of the West Elks when the rain let up-we take a wrong turn and get lost. We Take a bad cliff trail where we had to turn our mules and horses on a 20 inch wide trail....40 ft cliff on the down side and sheer rock on the upside---musta been a deer trail.....made it through that.
Then we came to the end of the other trail we picked....bad choice. The husband of the gal that had been riding the colt-is now riding the colt and it freaks and sommersaults over the muddy cliff. He is fine as he was able to step off-everthing is soft from all the rain and the colt is not hurt. We hear him yell up from the ravine, 'Don't come down the way I did!'
Hubby and I knew he was okay and found another way down.
Made it back to the original trail head, drove home and our friends truck barely made it. He leaves the trailer and his horse at our place as his truck has lost power. Turns out his Tranny was going out!
Take hubby and I camping-it will rain!!!!!