The annual Moab Canyon Endurance Ride is just around the corner. In its sixth year now, more than 100 riders are entered to enjoy some of the most spectacular scenery the west has to offer. This endurance ride is also the last endurance event in the Mountain Region before winter sets in.
What makes this ride so different from many others, are the large areas of sand stone plates, also called Slickrock.
Sandstone is by nature a very soft rock, thus the magnificent canyons, rock formation and arches seen all over the southwest USA.
Rock formations and plates made of granite, gneiss and lime stone prevail in most of the Sierras and Rocky Mountains. These are very hard rocks and riders who have ridden the Big Horn in Wyoming might remember the rather extensive granite plates there. Years ago, I witnessed a horse, shod with steel shoes, sliding over these plates like on ice and falling down. Why could it not find any traction?
Steel is a hard material, so is the granite rock. Therefore steel shoes cannot find enough purchase on this kind of hard rock and slide. Riding steel shod horses fast over concrete and pavement, one can observe the sliding and skidding, while barefoot hooves, hooves protected with polyurethane and Easyboots of all kinds can move safely at any speed over it. Plastic horse shoes and Easyboots are matching pretty close the hardness and density of the natural horse hoof. They are flexible and pliable, molding and adjusting themselves better to the hard underground, thus providing excellent traction.
Sandstone, on the other hand, is a softer rock, so when riding bare foot or with polyurethane shoes or Easyboots, these softer materials tend to slide more on these surfaces. That is why EasyCare provided us with some helpful accessories to give our horses more traction over these interesting red rock plates: the Quick Studs.
These studs can get placed easily with the Quick Stud Application tool into the bottom of the boots either before booting or after they are already on your horses hooves. You can use them on the Easyboot Gloves, the Glue ons, the Epic, the Edge, the Easyboot, the Bare, the Back Country, the Boa Horse Boot, the Old Mac and others.
What makes the EasyCare Hoofboots special is not only the light weight, the shock absorption characteristics, the sole protection and ease of application; add to it the fact that the boot material matches the density and flexibility of the actual horse hoof, thus providing a smoothly working synthesis with the hooves. Nature did not intend for the hooves to work rigidly and be in an inflexible cast, if I may use that term as a comparison. Instead, the relatively soft hooves are bending and molding to the ground while the digital cushion is working as an inner shock absorber when traveling over uneven surfaces. Hooves equipped with proprioceptors are reading the ground surface, preparing the hooves for the landing
Now we can get the protection and flexibility of the EasyCare boots as well as the necessary traction over the sand stone plates.
Years back, EasyCare also retrofitted some boots with larger traction studs. These studs also served well in muddy conditions and icy roads and trails.
These studs were secured from the inside with flat plated screw heads.
For this coming Moab Canyon Endurance Event, The Bootmeister will be available to assist any rider in fitting Easyboots, Gloves, Glue ons as well as all other available Easyboots and protective horse boots and can also help inserting the Quick Studs.
Please make reservations through Global Endurance Center by email or phone.
Your Bootmeister
Christoph Schork
