Summer Staff: 2012

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Hadley Fox

At the Bitterroot we pride ourselves on the quality of our horses and our staff. What else does it take to have an amazing riding vacation besides a responsive mount and really lovely people catering to your wants and needs? Well, you probably want beautiful riding country, which we have in spades, but we can’t take credit for creating that! We have worked hard to develop a horse herd that is filled with good citizens who enjoy their lives with us, both through Mel’s Arabian breeding program and through purchasing the finest horses Fremont County has to offer! Mel and I take a team approach when it comes to hiring our staff. Creating a community of supportive, hard-working individuals who appreciate the natural beauty surrounding us is something Mel and I both take very seriously. Working at the end of a 17 mile dirt road on a family-run ranch is not for everybody…especially when that family is filled with strong personalities! When a staff person fits, she becomes like family to us, and we are so fortunate to have many returning in 2012 for another summer. I want to use this blog post to honor them and get our guests excited about the really special people they will encounter at the Bitterroot Ranch this summer.

Megan, wrangler extraordinaire, is returning for her 5th summer this year:

A high school teacher at a boarding school, she keeps coming back to us our and our Arabians during her summer break. A phenomenal rider, Megan has seemingly endless patience with our young horses, guests and staff alike. She also has a great sense of humor; her witticisms keep the barn staff in stitches all day! She is always willing to volunteer for the jobs other people don’t want…whether it’s an extra morning of wrangling, making the farriers lunch each day or taking the picnic ride when everyone is tired, she does it with a smile (and probably a sassy comment!). She has become one of my closest friends over the years, and we are lucky to have a such an intelligent, knowledgeable woman as a wrangler.

Megan’s cabin-mate and partner in crime, Kathleen, is also returning for a 5th year as a wrangler:

Here Kathleen is hugging Nevada, our dressage-trained Percheron. This is a pretty typical pose for Kathleen (hugging a horse). She has one of the biggest, warmest hearts of anyone I’ve met, her love extending both to animals and people. A geology major from Skidmore College, she also has a wealth of knowledge about the rocks and fossils surrounding the ranch, knowledge she shares excitedly with any interested guest. We have a joke that whenever Kathleen takes a group to Bone Lake, a really special spot near the ranch that has coryphodon fossils, she always gets back to the barn last. It doesn’t matter how much earlier she leaves than the other wranglers– the girl gets animated and can’t control herself around fossils! She would spend all day there if she could! Kathleen’s skills are innumerable: from working young horses, to entertaining guests, to fitting saddles, to handling breeding stock, she’s involved with it all. I am lucky to call her a friend as well as a colleague.

Keeping up with the theme of returning wranglers, we have Chilly returning for her 3rd summer this year:

In this photograph, Chilly is a very happy person. Let me tell you why. Reason #1: She’s with a tiny pony. #2: She’s specifically with a naughty, tiny Welsh pony named Bellboy. #3: She’s just been riding Bellboy, and it absolutely delights the 5’11”, willowy Chilly to ride tiny, naughty ponies. Especially ones named Bellboy. #4: Riding Bellboy makes her think of team sorting, a fun cattle-sorting game that we play in the arena with the guests every Friday afternoon. If Chilly loves anything more than ponies, it’s team-sorting….the ultimate of course being team-sorting on ponies, which is something she does quite frequently. It should be pretty clear from this list of reasons how lovable and adorable Chilly is! She is also one of the quickest saddlers I’ve seen…she rivals Richard in terms of speed and quality of saddling, which is saying something! What talent! In addition to her years as a wrangler, Chilly came to the ranch as a guest for about 6 years, so she is an authority on the Bitterroot experience, both from a staff and guest perspective.

Katie, our French-speaking, cross-country-jumping wrangler will be coming back to us for a 2nd summer in 2012:

Katie comes from a competitive show jumping background and was a great help to us getting some of our younger horses going on the cross country course. She is also wonderful with children, insuring they have a safe experience while also engaging and delighting them. Katie’s a riot, totally her own person. Everyone else is wearing Wrangler Jeans and button-down shirts, while Katie appears in her English jodpurs, her custom chaps slung over her shoulder. She never fails to make me  smile.

It may not seem like it, given the first several paragraphs of this post, but there are actually men at the Bitterroot. Men without the last name Fox, even! One of those ever-so-special men is our irrigator and maintenance man, Steve, affectionately called Steve-O (to be honest I’m the only one who calls him that, but try it out if you come this summer… he loves it!):

The above photograph of Steve was taken not long before we received him at the Bitterroot two years ago (this will be his 3rd year with us). He was the captain of the track team at Susquehannah University, a stellar athlete and student. A delightful man with a huge heart, he fit in immediately at the ranch. Here he is with his special friend, Malaika, which means “angel” in Swahili:

How CUTE is he??? His gentle nature is a gift to humans and animals alike. We adore all 6 feet 7 inches of him, even though we had to buy him some never-before-heard-of size of irrigation boots. Size 17? Does that exist?

Then there are those who break our hearts and move on. Danielle. Sweet, sweet, Arabian-loving Danielle. She is one of the best young-horse riders we have ever had:

Her family raises goats on a ranch in New Mexico, and she weaves gorgeous cashmere scarves from their coats. She has one of the best work ethics of anyone I’ve met, and she has incredible equine instincts. We (and our horse herd) are better for having had her work with us. Sadly, her family’s ranch needs her too much for her to spend another summer with us, but we have faith that she will roll up our dirt road in her shockingly ancient car for a visit this summer. Right, D?!?

Last, but certainly not least, there is Kristen. Kristen, Kristen, Kristen! I have never been at the ranch without Kristen! My first year she worked in the cabins, and since then she has been wrangling with me. She grew from a college girl to an equine professional during her time with us– she is an exceptional woman:

We received regular and repeated comments about how she enhanced our guests’ vacations– she really touched the people she met. Not to mention the fact that she was a part of our Unbeatable Team-Sorting Squad (Chilly, Kristen, Mel and I)! To be announced who replaces her this summer!

I hope you have enjoyed these sketches of our employees, both the ones who will be coming back to us and the ones who have moved on. We feel strongly that the Bitterroot Ranch has a spirit all its own, and when we get it right, the people we hire reflect that spirit, that happy energy of the ranch. These people are all shining examples of that, and I hope, for your sake, you get a chance to know them this summer.

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Butch Cassidy at the Farm

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Hadley Fox

For those of you who have been to the ranch, you have almost certainly seen the Butch Cassidy Hideout, an old cabin in which Butch Cassidy and his crew stayed when they were running from the law. It is a small, well-hidden cabin a few miles from the ranch. It is Bayard’s favorite ride and for good reason– you wind along creeks, climb steep gorges, ride by dramatic rock formations, have some nice canters, and then you ultimately drop down into a secluded little glen to see the cabin. Tucked behind a hill with a little stream alongside, it is easy to imagine why the outlaws chose such a spot.

Mel and Bayard learned about the Butch Cassidy Hideout from John Finley, one of our neighbors on the East Fork Road whose family homesteaded our area over a century ago. John learned about the cabin from his grandfather, who used to bring Cassidy supplies when he was holed up in the hideout. It is a fascinating place with a lot of charm and rich history.

On our farm, where Richard and I live in the winter, there used to be an old stagecoach stop that was quite busy during Butch Cassidy’s era. Now little remains of the stop besides a small cemetery that has been surrounded by a chain-link fence to protect the graves. We had always heard that Cassidy had a hideout near our farm as well, which would have made sense, given the proximity of the stagecoach stop. This past summer, Jim Dewey, one of our farm employees finally found the old cabin that was rumored to be Cassidy’s. Excited to see the cabin, we invited John and Monie Finley out for the day, to have lunch with us and check out the spot.

Much like the hideout at the ranch, this cabin is very well-hidden. In fact, we were all doubting Jim as we headed through open terrain covered in greasewood. Where on earth could a cabin be hidden here?!?

Eventually, we dropped over a little hill, and there, built into the side of the hill, was the cabin. While small compared to our guest cabins, it is much bigger than the hideout at the ranch. While you can only crawl into the hideout at the ranch, you can easily walk into this cabin:

In addition to two doors (we pondered over the mystery of the two doors for quite some time! Why two doors? Any thoughts?), there is a large window:

Here you can look through one door and out the window on the other side:

From the perspective of the above picture, the second door is on the right-hand side of the cabin. Mel thought perhaps it was a get-a-way door, though I thought it was too close in proximity to the other door to serve that function. Someone else thought maybe they had been thinking of adding an extension, so they put in a second door at the beginning in preparation for the extension that was never added. One thing is certain and that is that someone worked hard on that cabin. All the interior logs have been leveled by hand with an axe. It is amazing that so much of it is standing after all this time.

I thought the most exciting part of our excursion to the cabin was discovering the many etchings knifed into the door-boards. There were all sorts of different brands marked into the wood, a crude portrait of a man with a prominent nose and various geometric shapes. We enjoyed attempting to decipher the brands and drawings. It was special to hold the fallen boards in my hands and know that men had passed the time carving them over a century ago.

We had beautiful weather, and the wind stayed quiet for us while we explored. The soil near the cabin was soft and sandy, so by the end of our adventuring, Whistle and Penny had dug a veritable pit in which to rest. They were a cute pair in their pit!

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