The GETC Team, Christoph and Dian, attended the 5 day Mt Carmel XP ride in southern Utah. Managed by Dave Nicholson, the “Duck”, this ride has always been one of our favorites. The scenery is outstanding and the weather mostly beautiful. This year it was just about perfect.
The Duck added 2 days to this formerly 3 day ride. The trails went through beautiful red rocks, stunning canyons, sand dunes and washes and on two days up to over 10.000 feet elevation. As always, the Nicholson family did an outstanding job organizing and managing this event.
What made this ride such a success was the team work. Riders helped each other wherever they could and everybody had a lot of fun together. Staff, vets, volunteers and riders: all were in sync. A truly great atmosphere prevailed everyday on the trail and in camp.
An additional bonus for the riders was the presence of the EasyCare support team. Kevin Waters, Kevin Myers and I were providing advice and help to many riders. Some riders were curious and just asked questions about the new Glue-Ons and the Easyboot Gloves. But many riders wanted to ride with the boots. Some had made prior arrangements and scheduled hoof trimming and booting in advance, some just brought their horses to our EasyCare/GETC camp to get them booted up. The Kevins and I spent every afternoon gluing on boots. All in all, we glued on 52 boots. A lot of hooves also needed trimming, so we did have our work cut out after every day’s ride. On two days, we worked untill after dark.
In the end, we had a lot of happy customers and smiling faces. Checking horses that did all 5 days in boots, riders were amazed to see how well the boots held up through all kind of footing and terrain, water, sand, some snow, rocks, you name it. The seal of the Easycare Glue ons was still totally intact after 250 miles. Astounding! And, one could hardly see any wear on the bottom of the boot. These boots really hold up and last for hundreds of miles.
All in all, the success story of the Easyboot Gloves and Glue-ons continues. And they played the lead role at Mt Carmel last week.
For more results on the Mt Carmel ride, you can also visit the Global Endurance Training Center blog at www.globalendurance.com.
Christoph Schork