HOME RANCH PRE-Visited
BY JAMES WAINWRIGHT Te
article in the July/August edition #142 about the “Home Ranch Revisited” brought back a lot of wonderful memories of the trip I took on horseback many years ago. It was in 1966 to be exact. As
wonderful as it was, the idea of doing it again riles up my old saddle sores, making the trip by quad sound pretty darn good. For Christmas in 1965 I was given the first of Rich Hobson’s books, Grass Beyond the
Mountains and I was hooked! I hit the Kamloops library and soon read his other two books about the Chilcotin ranchlands and the frontier life in the 1930’s. My buddy Bob McTavish, who was living in Clinton BC at the time and was also an avid outdoors man who accompanied me on many trail rides over the years, was equally as captivated by the books. On weekends and holidays we would load up our trailers with horses and equipment and head off into wilds of the Kamloops and Caribou country. Of course, we had to include our wives in our adventures so they would begrudgingly come out with us to our starting point, help us unload and saddle up, then they would leave us to our own devices. You know it is true love when there they were at the end of our trips with the trailers waiting to take home a couple of hairy, stinky cowboys and their equally stinky horses. As we both had the love for our horses and exploring BC’s backcountry, the Home Ranch seemed like the obvious next adventure for us. As we began making our plans, my father-in-law got wind of it
so he and my 16-year-old brother-in-law wanted to join in on our adventure. On a side note, I have to say my 59-year-old father-in- law had guts to join us on what ended up being a 10-day, 150 mile trip through the bush, as he had only ridden a couple of times at his place in White Rock, BC. Needless to say his butt was pretty sore for the first few days. Bob and I decided not to use our own horses on such a long trip so we made arrangements with a local rancher near Anaheim Lake to rent his horses, four for riding and one to
use as a packhorse. He happened to be the same rancher who rented out his horses and equipment to Pan Phillips and Rich Hobson in the 1930’s when they first came out to look for their homestead. Since we wanted to follow the same route they did, I got a hold of some topographical maps of the area, loaded up our horses and set out. On another side note, once again about my father-in-law, he brought his beloved black lab with him who loyally accompanied us the whole way. Needless to say the dog wasn’t the same fat city slicker dog he started out as by the end of the journey. Te perfect bootcamp for overweight dogs. No cans of gourmet Alpo. Every dog for himself! Tree days later we were setting up
camp across the river from the ranch. Since it was late and they didn’t know we were coming, we thought it might be wiser to wait until daylight. Aſterall,
Left to Right: Jim Wainwright’s horse, Pan’s son Rob, Pan Philips, Lou Larsen, Val Larsen.
28 RVT 144 • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011
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