Showing posts with label blizzard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blizzard. Show all posts

Surviving Cardston South Country Derby 2002!

Posted by Sharon Labels: , , , ,

Show season is upon me, but I have yet to compete this year. As May draws to a close, I think of the Cardston South Country Derby, which will happen next weekend. In the past (before there were several reining shows in BC) I competed there almost every year. One particular trip stands out in my memory - the 2002 edition of the Derby.
I was living in Armstrong then and had entered Wildwood Whisperin, my 5 year old mare in the show. My husband was not travelling with me and, so that I would have lots of time for the long drive, I rose at 4:00 AM to get on the road. In the truck with me was my Samoyed dog, Kirby.
As I approached Revelstoke, I saw trucks lined up along the highway and I knew immediately that Roger's Pass must be closed.
"Need to get breakfast anyway," I thought and pulled into an A & W. As I picked the order up, I saw trucks moving.
"Great," I said to myself, and slid behind the wheel to continue my drive . . . for about an hour. Then I was stopped again - for an avalanche - for three hours! My early start now eaten up by highway delays, I could only be thankful that I had started so early!
In Banff I ran into a little snow on the road, but nothing to worry about. Whisper, a seasoned traveller, rode like the pro she was and Kirby slept on the floor of the truck, only popping up if I stopped. I would be in Cardston before midnight.
At Claresholme, I stopped for gas. Daylight was fading and there was still some snow on the road, but I was anxious to pull into the grounds at Cardston, settle Whisper for the night and get some sleep myself.
"I hear the roads are not good south," the station attendent said.
That would be an understatement! A few kilometers from Claresholme, I knew what he meant. Two driving lanes had been reduced to an icy track on the extreme left shoulder and so rough, the truck and trailer shook and rattled. I reduced speed to a crawl. There was almost no traffic except for a semi in front of me. Every once in a while, I saw a vehicle stuck in the snow on the road or in the ditch.
"I'll be okay if I just go slow," I thought and that's what I did, so slow I could video as I drove. This is the video I took on May 22-23 from Claresholme to Cardston Alberta:
That's right - I didn't make it to Cardston that night. I spent the night along the highway in Fort MacLeod! The next day I followed the snowplow down the highway. It seemed more like January than May! When I got to the grounds, I unloaded Whisper on the road since no one could drive in. Snowdrifts covered some parts of the barn and horse trailers that had been parked when the storm hit. There was a certain amount of chaos with competitors digging themselves and their horses out and management trying to find plows to move the snow.
The show did go on. It will be remembered forever, especially by the show secretary! I, too will remember especially the haul to get there. I don't remember much about my runs, except we had 7 minutes before each class to warm up in the pen! The horses may all have been thankful for the blizzard that hit Cardston Derby 2002 - they were not ridden as much as usual!

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More Than Gold

Posted by Sharon Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Today is my brother’s birthday. I think about that February day and where he was born. I think about the circumstances of his birth . . . and I remember two grey mares.

My parents ranched in the Coteau Hills of Saskatchewan, isolated from the settlement by hundreds of acres of rolling grassland. Though a rough trail accessed the Diamond Dot Ranch in the spring, summer and fall (when it didn’t rain!), motorized travel was impossible in the winter. Then horses were the only way in or out. Most often Mom or Dad rode but if the family all went (a rare occasion), we traveled by horse drawn sleigh. The only horses I remember pulling that sleigh were The Grey Team.

Dad harnessed The Grey Team almost every day. They pulled the mower, rake, hayrack and stone boat; they hauled the hay to the stack; they hauled it from the stack to the cattle; they pulled a stone boat laden with manure, rocks or fence posts. And sometimes in the winter, they pulled the sleigh, a wooden box on runners.



Thus it was, in late January 1946, that Dad hooked The Grey Team to the sleigh to take his wife, eight and half months pregnant, and two-year-old daughter to a friend’s farm. The Grey Team pulled the sleigh over twelve miles of snow-covered, uninhabited hills to the farm at the edge of the settlement, where Mom and I stayed. Then Dad “sledded” home to care for the livestock. The friends would transport Mom to the hospital for the birth when that time came.

Since there were no telephones, Dad could have only guessed when he should return for his family. In any case, when my brother was two weeks old, Dad returned to pick up us all up and take us home . . . with the sleigh and The Grey Team of course. Bundled up in wool, we snuggled together under cowhides in the bottom of the sleigh as Dad faced the desolate distance once again.

The trip should have been uneventful, but several miles from the Diamond Dot, the weather changed. A sudden blizzard blew in. Snow driven by gale force winds pummeled sleigh and horses, obliterating the landscape and driving them off the trail. Blinded by the icy pellets, Dad fought to keep his bearings, but the storm won. He lifted the cowhide covering his family. “I don’t know where we are,” he told Mom. I can only imagine how he felt.

Lost in a Saskatchewan blizzard, he had only one choice—he must place the lives of his family in the capabilities of the dependable mares in the traces. “Giddap,” he said, as he loosened the lines to the mouths of The Grey Team. “Take us home.” And that’s exactly what they did. Skirting snow-leveled draws and deep buck brush that would have halted the sleigh, over hill after hill of endless white, bowing their heads to the driving, relentless blizzard, they delivered their family home to the little ranch house in the valley.

In the words of my mother, “Those were the days . . . when horses were more than gold.”

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