Saddling up with Rocky Mountain Outfitters
The mountain guide exists at the intersection of knowledge, preparedness, and a love for the mountains. Early rising, ensuring equipment is in order, and the journey is mapped, guides help us create some of our most memorable mountain experiences, often becoming lifelong friends along the way.
Ironically, the way of the guide in the summer months follows the path of the snow itself. As winter draws to a close and the snowpack begins to melt, guides hang up their skis and snowshoes and head down the trail like the mountainous running water of spring, reaching the lakes and streams that often serve as the arenas for summer guided adventures.
This series will explore the lives of guides in the summer, guides who will take us on some memorable mountain adventures, from horseback to horsepower, showcasing the many activities that make summer in the mountains a true delight.
Part One
Located in lush Wasatch Mountains of Utah, where the Wild West meets the Greatest Snow on Earth, Rocky Mountain Outfitters is nestled among the banks Provo River and the Soldier Hollow Nordic Center and Golf Course. A gem in the guided excursion industry, they offer world class fly fishing and horseback riding excursions in places otherwise unobtainable. We saddled up early one late May morning to find out for ourselves what it means to be a guide — the nostalgia, the passion, the camraderie — in the High West.
Meet Jason, our wrangler extraordinaire and guide for the morning. Growing up in Pennsylvania, he moved to Utah to further his work with horses nine years ago, and has been guiding with Rocky Mountain Outfitters ever since. We saddled up first thing in the morning, learned how to ride the horse in an orientation and headed out on a vista trail overlooking the Heber Valley and Deer Creek Reservoir. Water can be scarce in Utah, but after a plentiful winter in the mountains, the rivers flow quickly and the foliage is lush.
“My main thing as a wrangler is coming in the morning, making sure are the horses are fed, watered, groomed, and tacked and prepared for when the guests start showing up to do guided rides. When the guests show up, I check them in, we do a little horse orientation in the arena, go over the basics— show ya how to get up on the horse, how to go forward, left, right, stop, a couple tips on the trail to keep everybody safe, and show you how to dismount once we get back from the ride. And then in-between rides, it’s important to make sure that the horses get water, that way they’re ready for the next ride.”
Caring for the horses is of utmost importance, “we make sure that we don’t overwork the horses. Its important that we don’t overuse them. We keep track of that and rotate horses out throughout the day. A horse typically works 4 to 5 hours a day. We offer one hour rides here and 1.5 hour. Usually on the weekend, we’ll get four to hours a day with them. Each horse gets two days off a week.”
Rocky Mountain Outfitters has 18 horses at their Soldier Hollow Stables, 17 at their Sundance Stables, and a few more in training. “At Sundance, it’s more shaded and enclosed because there’s a lot of aspens and pines. It’s great to ride there in the summer because it’s cooler in the higher elevation. We have two great views: one of Elk Meadows and one of Stewart Falls. A lot of people think we ride up to Stewart falls, but we actually don’t get underneath the water. We see it from a different vantage point that most people don’t get to see because it’s up on private property. We’re up on a hillside overlooking Stewart Falls and then we come down and ride back up on private property through the aspen trees.”
“Horseback riding for me personally is the best way to see the countryside. If you’re hiking, thats a good way to see the countryside, but you’re down lower and you’re focused on where your feet are going through the rocks and roots. When you’re on a horse, you’re up higher and you get a chance to see all around. When you’re hiking you scare the wildlife away.” And the wildlife is nothing to scoff at! “You’ll see elk up there, moose — I just saw a mother moose and her calf the other day,” says Jason.
“When the guests show up, they’re usually nervous to go riding and have never sat on a horse before in their lives. Our goal is to make you feel safe and comfortable and we take care of you. We aren’t just gonna put you up on the horse and say go. We want you to have a good, fun experience and enjoy being around the horses — not scared to death of them.”
“I know my horse... we all know the horses very well. We know their behaviors, so we actually trust the horses to take care of our guests for us, and that’s why we want to treat them well because they do a lot for us.”
“Our horses know the trails. This isn’t their first time out there, ya know? They take care of you… Not every horse is cut out to do this kind of work. These guys have a lot of patience. They have different people on their backs every day, sometimes two to three times in a day, and they tolerate quite a bit. I’m pretty proud of them to be honest, very proud of our horses.”
Maybe a horse can teach you something about yourself as well. When Jason was younger, he was very impatient, had a temper and would snap a lot. “When I got into training horses, I would behave like that and I found out really fast that you don’t act like that. The horses actually taught me to be more patient, because believe it or not, horses have two sides of the brain, a left side and a right side. Whatever you train on the left side of the horse, you have to retrain on the right side. For example if he’s scared of an umbrella, I can open and close that umbrella and desensitize him on the left side, now I have to go onto the right side and retrain him. That taught me patience right away.”
“Just relax and be calm, be patient, connect with that horse. Get on his level. Understand where he’s coming from”
“And never stop learning. If you think you know it all with horses, you’ve set the bar kind of low and you could be learning a lot more. Every day that I’m here working with them, I’m learning something new. And you can always better yourself.”
After our ride, we reminisced about the beautiful views we got to experience as we watched the other wranglers training horses for their upcoming ski joring event this winter, we asked, “What keeps me doing this? The horses to be honest. There’s something about being around an animal that teaches you a lot of patience. It’s very rewarding to see a horse go from super scared or aggressive to calm, relaxed and trust you completely. Bonding with a horse… that’s a connection thats difficult to get, but if you think and act like a horse, it’s very rewarding to see the progress of the horse get better and better. And then of course the people that work here. My coworkers, we have a good time, we’re like family. We all come together, and we get a chance to experience horses with each other.”
For more information on the experiences Rocky Mountain Outfitters offers, please visit their website or call: (435) 654-1655, www.rockymtnoutfitters.com.