Planning The Pack

Hello everyone, we are BACK from the wilderness!! Since returning to our respective homes after our 26-day horse packing trip, we have been resting and readjusting to “normal” life and haven’t had much time to fill you all in on the details. We had a wild ride and we have LOTS to share with you about how it all went. Unfortunately, we have to keep the details under wraps for now (there is going to be a documentary, after all!) but we want to share what we can! Recently on our Instagram, we asked you what you wanted to know about our trip and one question was how to plan for a pack trip of this size. What a GREAT question but definitely not one that can be answered in a single Instagram post! So here we are, back on the blog, to give you the run-down on how we planned for our big pack trip.

A quick note: this is by no means a complete guide on how to plan for a pack trip but rather, a glimpse into how we planned for ours. If you are seriously considering planning your own trip, I do list some wonderful resources that we used!

*Katherine, Louisa, and Caroline packing up for a day on the trail*

Taking Care of Yourself

Ok let’s start off with how we took care of ourselves in the wilderness because if there’s no us, there’s no horses! Here’s what we had to plan for:

Food

We spent about a month on the trail and because we had to keep our pack bags light (no more than 140lbs per horse) we could only carry one week’s worth of food at a time. BUT we had to pack all the food we’d need for a month before leaving so we packed 4 duffel bags of food and were re-rationed once a week. Our meals changed daily and the menu was planned by our incredible Chef Louie (aka Louisa Behnke)! We also packed dried foods so nothing would go bad; here’s an example of a few meals we had on the trail:

Oatmeal (add a scoop of peanut butter for extra protein!)
Polenta with mushrooms (the mushrooms were dried and soaked in boiling water)
Tacos (we brought tortillas, rice, beans, and cans of green chiles)

Louisa was the mastermind at planning our meals and says she packed food by price rather than weight, allocating $7 per person per day. If you’re going on a pack trip of your own, don’t forget to pack your stove (we used a great little MSR backpacking stove), fuel, bowls, and utensils (looking at you Louisa ;) ). A quick side note on water: we brought this amazing little product called Aquamira. It comes in dropper bottles that you add to your water bottle and let sit for about 15 minutes. The water tastes great (unlike we’ve found with iodine tablets) and it’s super easy to use.

Gear

I won’t put the full packing list on here but let me just say, our personal gear was SUPER important. It was tough to spend the money on some of the clothes I brought but they really kept me warm. Keeping in mind our pack trip was in Wyoming in October (would not recommend for those who don’t tolerate the cold), here were a few of my essentials:

Lined Carhartt overalls - nothing was better than putting these babies on at the end of a long day!
A down jacket with a high fill rating
GOOD gloves. I personally didn’t bring mittens but I wish I had and was very jealous of Louisa’s on those cold days!
Darn Tough socks - the warmest possible pair
Nail clippers - one of those things you don’t really think about but long nails are a pain in the backcountry!
Baby wipes - enough said
A really good 0º sleeping bag
Dry bag - this one was a game changer! Louisa used this instead of a duffel lined with a trash bag and she didn’t ever have to worry about any of her stuff getting wet
First aid kit - Louisa and I are both Wilderness First Responders so we felt very capable treating any injuries

We kept our gear to a minimum because we had to pack it all on our horses, so each of our bags with personal gear was 35lbs or less.

Taking Care of Your Horses

Going on a backpacking trip is one thing, but a pack trip requires a whole other dimension of care: the horses. We had 9 horses with us and had to do a LOT of planning ahead of time to make sure we were ready to properly care for all of our good boys. Here’s how we planned:

Feed

We decided to feed bales, alfalfa cubes, and grain. The horses received grain once daily and we would usually feed forage in the evenings once the horses were contained. We brought collapsible buckets with us for the grain and initially used these to feed until the horses broke them to pieces (lesson learned: feed bags are WAY better). After that, we fed the grain on the ground and made sure to give the horses plenty of space so that they could all get enough. Our horses likely didn’t need the grain - as mustangs are generally pretty easy keepers - but we decided, with our horses being in pretty heavy work, that we’d rather them have enough energy than too little.

Containment

*Our horses contained in an electric fence for the night in the Red Desert*

I have to laugh a bit when I talk about this because we struggled with containing our horses overnight (you’ll see in the doc). There are a lot of different options and we had to consider not only the horses we had with us but also the landscapes we were riding through. We ended up trying a few different things but here’s a general list of ways horses can be contained in the backcountry:

Hobbles: for anyone who doesn’t know, these are straps that go around the horses front feet to keep them from running off. They work well for horses that are trained for this and if you don’t mind sometimes looking for your horses in the morning. They can still move with the hobbles on, quite efficiently actually, so it’s handy to use hobbles in an area with lots of good grazing.
Electric fence: another good way to allow horses to graze overnight. Some people use both hobbles and an electric fence. Ours came with a battery-powered charger.
High-line: this is a rope tied between two trees above the horses’ heads and the horses are tied directly to the line. They can move in a large circle and even graze overnight; this is also the most secure method of keeping horses contained. However, it is obviously not possible in an area without trees, such as the Red Desert where we spent over half of our trip.

There are pros and cons to each method but if I did it all again, I would personally use a high-line in areas where it’s possible.

Vet care

We brought a small emergency vet kit along with us, just in case. I have a background in veterinary medicine so I was very comfortable treating any problems we had or knowing what was above my head and when a horse needed to see a veterinarian.

Shoeing

Our horses were shod before the trip and we brought easy boots (rubber “boots” that are attached to the horse’s foot) just in case a horse lost a shoe. Had we gone on a longer trip, we would have had to meet up with a farrier to have our horses shod, as none of us were able to shoe.

Water

This was a big one, especially because we spent so much time in the desert. We had to plan all of our camps for the entire route according to water sources but it was especially important (and difficult) in the Red Desert. There were a few camps where we had no natural water sources so we had to drop water caches before the trip. This was a full-day adventure where we bought a 250-gallon tank, strapped it to the bed of a truck, and filled it at a water station in Lander. We drove our route and dropped 50 gallon rubbermaid tubs, filled them with water, and hoped that no one (or thing) would disturb the containers. The large containers were for the horses and we left water for ourselves in smaller containers at a few of the camps . We brought dromedary bags with us to fill and carry to other campsites after filling them with our cached water.

*Louisa leading one of our horses, Nev, into the Wind River Range*

The Route

Ok this was arguably the largest task in terms of planning for our trip. I am no expert at route planning but thankfully Louisa and her fiancé Matt have tons of experience in this regard. One of the goals of our trip was to ride through Herd Management Areas (areas where wild horses roam) so we had to plan our route accordingly. We spent the first few days in the Wind River Range and ended our trip in Encampment, Wyoming. The entire trip was in Wyoming, with much of it through the Red Desert.

Planning the route was a long process, especially because we adjusted it so many times. The main caveats were finding reliable water sources, watching closely for elevation gain/loss, and calculating how many miles we could ride per day.

Use Your Resources

So here’s the thing about a pack trip of this size: no matter how much planning you do, you’re going to need help at some point. We had a few emergency contacts lined up in case anything went wrong and a horse trailer ready just in case. We needed weekly re-rations of food and occasionally we realized that there was something we forgot to bring. What I’m saying is, if you’re going to do a trip like this, make sure you have someone (or a few people) you can call if you need it.

We had help out on the trail but we had TONS of support while we were planning and I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the people and resources we used to plan this trip. At the very start of this project, we were lucky enough to be put in contact with Russ Lewis. Packer extraordinaire, Russ participated in the 500 Miles ride and short film where a program called Heroes & Horses takes war veterans on a 500 mile pack trip on self-trained mustangs. Russ has spent more than 20 years as a wilderness packer and hunting guide, and was incredibly kind in offering us his support (we can’t thank you enough, Russ!!). Another great resource was Gillian Larson who has ridden over 10,000 backcountry miles and often packs alone with her horses. She has some wonderful guides on her website that we used to plan our trip. We had quite a few people help in the planning of our route: Louisa and her fiancé did much of it and we had a lot of help from John Mionczynski, an expert in Red Desert knowledge, goat packer extraordinaire (yes, you read that right) and now a good friend to us.

All in all, we spent three years planning for this trip and a lot of the reason we needed so much time was to raise money to fund our project. Being a documentary, we had to raise quite a bit more than we would have if we had just done the pack trip, but the trip itself was still substantial. There are a few things I would do differently the next time around - using a high line and feed bags, for example - but overall I’m proud of how we did, especially with it being our very first pack trip. There’s a lot of planning that goes into a trip of this size but at some point, you need to just jump in and go. The same could be said for any daunting task, trip, project, etc. that you’re considering doing and I wouldn’t hesitate to say: just go do it.

xoxo, Katherine and the wild women 💕

Women in the WildernessJanuary 7, 20223 Comments