Day 7, Grande Cache to Jasper leg.
Up before first light. Quick coffee and oatmeal for breakfast, pack up camp, saddle horses and we’re on the trail shortly after first light. By the time the morning sun finally appeared over the mountains, spreading its welcome warmth across the river valley, we already had several kilometres of travel behind us.
Ahi had been travelling a bit lopsided on his two remaining shoes for the past couple days, with shoes on the left front and right hind, while his right front and left hind were bare. He was getting sore on the bare right front, so we decided to pull the remaining hind shoe and move it up to protect his sore foot.
Now a hind shoe is shaped a little different than a front shoe; but using one river rock as an anvil and another as a hammer Peter was able to pound it into a more appropriate shape to fit the front foot. Then I held Ahi’s leg while Peter nailed the shoe in place. With a bit of luck, it’d hold until we finished this leg of our journey. It was the best we could do.
A long day on the trail today, over 12 hours including breaks, travelling 37.1 km up and over Moose Pass where we left Jasper National Park, and entered Mount Robson Provincial Park descending down into the Moose River valley and setting up a random bush camp for the night.
Tomorrow would be an interesting day as our planned route took us past The Colonel, into the Miette River valley. The scenery was reported to be spectacular and the trail tough, real tough, with lots of mud, nasty bog and uncleared deadfall.

Day 6, Grande Cache to Jasper leg.
Up early to tackle Bess Pass, climbing 500m over 3km. A sign just past the top of the pass indicated we’d now entered Jasper National Park. We then descended 500m over 5km to spend the day route finding on the braided channels of Chown Creek and the upper reaches of the Smoky River.
Nothing wild or weird happened today, just a sunshiney day, riding good horses over 25km in spectacular wilderness, enjoying incredible scenery. Yeah, it was horrible.

The Trail takes us to the head waters of Jackpine river and we climb up to Jackpine Pass and early afternoon we reach Blueberry Lake, where i started and finished in 2014 on the Rocky Mountain explorer trail. Through wide meadows we reach Bess Pass and entering Jasper National Park we follow Smoky River. We reach Moose Pass and not finding the turnoff we decide to Follow the Moos Lake trail to the road, where we will meet with Peter again.

The Horses seam to have gotten along ok, and we are happy to have Brent with us, who turns out to be a very likeable guy that fits well into our small group. We get up at 6 and i make coffee and oatmeal for our breakfast. This is going to be our staple for the next 30 days, just like the Cliff bar, to back up at around 11 am and Italian salami and smoked Gouda with Nan bread plus Nuts and dried fruit for lunch. We fill our bottles with water from the many creeks we encounter and have no problems not filtering it.
In my front bags i have all the 1aid stuff, electronics for the Garmin, farrier tools, and repair kit, silver tape and gall salve, moskito and bear spray, plus extra rope and gloves, a rabid skin and a water bag. In my side bags i have all the food and cocking gear, plus my personal stuff, like clothing, Sleeping mat and down bags. In my roll, there is my rain gear, military poncho, a second set of boots and replacement Duplos. (https://www.duplo-usa.com/). Tina is carrying the fencing equipment plus the lunch food and Brent is carrying the tarp and feed for his horse.
We are still following Jackpine river to Ptarmigan Lake and the trail is very muddy and deep. We have to cross the River several times, and it is not always clear, where the trail continues on the other side. The water is very silty, you cannot see how deep it is, and all of us went swimming at one point with our horses.  Tina riding Ahi, who is only about 13 hands, decided to strip down and walk across, to find out how deep it is.
After another 25 km we decide to camp at a ranger station and set up the fence on the other side of the creek, where there is good grass, hoping that the tree falls, dont bother the horses to much.
Rodeo and Charley fight it out with each other and Charley hits the fence, taking it down and running off. The other two following, but they just end up on our side of the creek grasing on fresh but very short green grass. We decide to take the fence over to where the horses are and fence them in there.
We cook our mountain house freeze dried food over the fire and sleep under the roof of the Ranger station.

After a Day of rest and having checked out the Sulfur Gates Fording, Melanie Curtis is driving us to the trail head leading into the Willmore wilderness.
Brent, Tina and I saddle up our horses and start riding into the Kvas Flats to get to the Great Divide Trail that runs north to south about 3 days riding into the west. We ride on a wide trail, as suddenly Rodeo stops, and i can see a black bear staring at us from the road. He disappears in the bush and Rodeo moves on. We meet a couple outfitters, that camp out here at the river. We follow Sheep creek trail to Ptarmigan Lake and find a campsite along the trail, where we decide to stay.  We covered about 20 km, passing two camps and staying at muddy Waters.

Flying to Denver on the 20. of August, Tina and I pack our gear unto the truck at my place, the Red Rock Ranch, and load up the Horses, to drive up to the Canadian Border in two days. On the 23. we meet up with Brent Wray from BC in Waterton at the Alpine Stables.. Here he horses have  a rest, while we sort our gear and load everything onto Brents Goosneck trailer. From there we drive another 1000 km to Grand Cache to Curtis Hallocks place at the Indian andventure Trails, where the horses take another day to relax. Brent is riding his Morgan, Charley (12 year), while Tina is riding Ahi, the Criollo and i will be riding Rodeo my Guide horse. The plan is to ridie the Great Divide Trail starting in Grand Cache down to Waterton, a distance of about 900 km. Brent has done a terrific job, ob securing camps sites and getting permits, for the different parks, working out a route through the different parks, establishing contacts and places to stay along the route. We travel extra light without packhorse for higher efficency and have reduced our equipment to the bare minimum. We are riding with Garmin GPS 64 and have two Garmin Inreach with us, to comunicate with family back home and our driver, Peter Greubel, who is traveling along with truck and trailer.