Blazing Saddles

by John Keeble 

He was a good horse, my Blazing Saddle, and it was not his fault that we were both thundering out of control towards a hairpin bend with a 750ft drop for those who did not get round it.

It was just one of those things. A bit of a misunderstanding. My wife and I had booked two horses to take us down, dude ranch style, from the top of a canyon to Supai, the home of the Havasupai native American tribe eight miles away on the floor of the canyon. There is no road to Supai: you walk, ride or get a lift in the supply chopper.

Hilltop - a vehicle parking area, loading places for mule trains and a small helipad a few hundred yards away - is about 30 miles south-west of the Grand Canyon tourist area in Arizona. By road, it is nearer 200 miles, the last 60 on a straight run through reservation land and ending where Blazing Saddle had to decide whether to turn into Pegasus or get round the bend.

It has a laid back air of the work place of people who know about life and how to live it. The mule trains come in, the long climb from the canyon floor behind them, and animals and men relax for a while. Then, casually and carefully, the handlers load the mules: sacks of food pellets for the horses, beans and beef for the people, Pepsi for the hikers, boxes optimistically marked 'frozen' for the unwary.

One of the horses was being admired by all the handlers. Its owner had layered its tail. How had he done it? Did he have a special tool? A slow smile crossed his face; he was pleased with the praise. "No, just scissors." It was not until, back in Britain and looking at the scene again on a screen with the knowledge gained by the visit to the tribe, that the significance struck: he had layered the tail to represent a waterfall, the sacred image and sign of the tribe.

A small helicopter took off as we all peered at the tail. It clattered into the canyon but no one looked up except us. It had a load slung beneath it in a net. Loading started again on the mules behind a sign which read: No waiting: Mail deliveries. Mail in and out of Supai goes by mule train, the latter bearing the stamp to prove it.

 Elaine, the shy and laconic Havasupai manager of the site, came out of her little cabin-office. June, my wife, wanddered over and they eased into conversation. And slowly they struck up an interesting exchange about Supai medicine and ways of life.

he Havasupai - which means 'the people of the blue-green waters' - are like that. They are not instant friends but slowly you come to realise what a warm, friendly people they are. A lot of them, anyway.

 Elaine pointed out the man who was going to take us down and we ambled over. He had been there for some time, resting his animals and loading up the mules.

 He was more abrupt than friendly and there lay the mistake that could have killed us. He asked June: "Can you ride?" She started to say: "Yes, but..." And he grunted and gave me one horse and June another.

 It was a fairly big 'but' that he did not hear. She hadn't ridden seriously for 40 years and my equestrian expertise amounted to being led for half a mile at Petra and getting in a hopeless muddle with a horse on a Tunisian beach.

 Anyway, he whistled and the horses took off at a fast trot - with me in the lead, June behind and him heading the mule train at the rear. With that Mensa leap of intellect, I realised this was no dude ranch operation. It was a working mule train. And I hadn't got the faintest idea about what I should be doing.

 Blazing Saddle - I gave him the name: it seemed to fit both my efforts and my medical condition at the end of the ride - suddenly turned left and (gulp!) we were on a steep rocky track with nothing that I could see at the end of it.

 "Turn him right! Turn him right!" shouted the muleteer as we neared the hairpin bend to the next section. I did my best. The rest were crowding behind but the precipice turned out to be a mere 50ft drop.

We got round, onto another steep track to the next hairpin bend, and just when I thought it might be all right, three things happened simultaneously. I realised there was nothing but a 750ft drop ahead and very little on the right, June's horse decided to make a bid for leadership and tried to crash past us on the inside, and my horse bolted in a determined effort to stop it.

 By halfway down the section, Blazing Saddle and I agreed we were fairly uncomfortable with the fact that two of his legs were in mid-air over the precipice (no, not really, but not far off that) and he horsefully leapt ahead, crushing his rival and its impetuous rider against the rocks.

 We all tangled, separated, and crashed into the bend. I don't remember how we got round. But it was down to Blazing Saddle. And we were off again, the chase on for the lead and the next section held a joy beyond anyone's adrenalin fantasies ... the big drop on the left, solid rock on the right, the track narrowing at a point where an overhand was head-crushingly low and there was a sharp bend straight after it.

 I could hear June shouting. Apart from the fun of the chase, she had been bruised in the crushing, lost her stirrup and was trying to keep a shoe from flying into space. But there was no stopping, no slowing, no helping.

We got nearly to the bottom and Blazing Saddle and his rival battled it out in a gallop, the muleteer urging them on ... it was really good fun. Honest.

 Half an hour later, on the canyon floor, we slowed. And walked through some of the most amazingly beautiful country we have ever seen, sometimes with red walls stretching up hundreds of feet, sometimes looking down 50ft into river beds.

 Blazing Saddle and I kept the lead, June and her horse 100 yards behind - the muleteer, fed up with these rookie riders, hanging back to yak to some pals he had met on the way.

 It was a peaceful time, when Blazing Saddle and I got to know each other and went through bonding rituals like pissing in the wilderness (with it hitting the hot stones, I could have done without that but it meant a lot to him) and, when we took a wrong turn, he looked back for guidance and I gave him a pat and a shrug and he jumped four feet down from one rock strata to another.

 We entered Supai village, nearly four hours after leaving Hilltop, with brave smiles that did not fool anyone and, at the lodge, I sat astride Blazing Saddle saying to myself: "It may appear impossible, but I can do it. It will not beat me." I was trying to find the strength to get off.

*****

 Life in Supai village is slow. The canyon has a population of 800 but the people and the homes are thinly spread and in the village itself, maybe 100 people are on the streets, and the village centre has a small general store, tiny post office, cafe, church, medical centre and a sparse visitor's shop. Oh, and an airport. It's like a small sports field with two small helicopters; check in is by the wire fence and, if it is critical, you get weighed before flying out at $70 a time.

The young mums and babies congregate near the airport, the mule trains tie up and unload outside the store and post office and sometimes there is a 'bus' service for those who need help on the dust roads: a small electric vehicle with a trailer for passengers. Everywhere are dogs, friendly and glad to walk a bit with visitors.

 In the cafe, there is nourishment for the mind and soul too: local art depicting Havasupai beliefs: the waterfall for the giving of life, and the completeness of the basket; the seasons and day and night; and the ancestors lingering ghostlike to help the living.

Further down the canyon, a four mile hike along tracks that touched the cool blue-green river, were the sudden and spectacular drops at the Havasupai falls and the Mooney falls with their impossibly blue pools, all the more beautiful against the white of the cascading water.


A long way down, there is a camping section where hikers can pitch their tents in shaded riverside haunts and beyond that the waterfalls that lead the adventurous, eventually, to even greener places

By the time we got back from five hours of hiking and messing about at the waterfalls, we were contemplating the prospect of riding back up to Hilltop the next morning.

 So we chatted to the helicopter controller, stuffed money into his hand, and went for our bags...

 First published in VISA issue 45 (spring 2002)