Grand Canyon - Mule Ride

Despite the overcast day, I was looking forward to my mule ride adventure with Canyon Trail Rides.

We stood around in an icy little huddle. Hunched and shuffling, we did the kind of stupid things you do when your brain is half frozen and half asleep, like trying to blow on your hands even though you're wearing gloves. The wranglers bustled around us, businesslike in the misty chill, cinching girths and fitting bridles. One of the wranglers sorted us onto mules based on our amount of riding experience.

"Have you ridden before?"
"Mules? Never. Horses? A lot."
"A lot?"
"Yes, a lot. At least one, maybe two or three lots."

The wrangler didn't even smile. If my fingers were still responding to messages from my brain they would have crossed in the hope that this woman wasn't going to be our guide.

My mule was a particularly splendid animal, tall and slim framed and evenly coloured, with lovely long furry ears. His name is Mike, and he's a very good mule.

Despite my inability to cross my fingers, my wish came true and the unamused lady wrangler was not our guide. Instead we had the charming, and delightfully humorous guidance of Swanny, a genuine cowboy. He was terrific company and full of little jokes. When I sneezed he asked if I was allergic to mules. When I denied any such allergy Swanny said: "What about cowboys?"

He also shared interesting little tidbits of mule lore. Mules are excellent animals for steep, narrow trails of this sort because they tend to have stronger shoulders than horses. Swanny described mules as having 1.25 horsepower. I knew that a mule is a cross between a horse and a donkey, but Swanny gave more details. A mule is the result of breeding a male donkey with a female horse. Mules can come in as many shapes and sizes as the horses they're bred from. In our group we had mules bred from narrow shouldered thoroughbred mares, solid chested quarter horse mares, and Fred below, bred from a stocky draught horse mare.

I asked Swanny if mules were generally bred by artificial insemination. He said that they're usually bred by mating the two animals. I was surprised. "How do you mate a mule with a draught horse?" I asked. "With a stepladder?"

Swanny glanced at the young Australian girl and was suddenly bashful. "Mules are ... can I say ... blessed? That's never a problem."

The mules carried us steadily down into the canyon. The best views came just after we dropped below the tree line. The distinctively coloured rock strata are clearly visible from steep, narrow trail. Swanny turned out to be an amateur geologist as well as a professional mulologist and told us about each new layer as we passed through it.

Swanny stopped us after a while and walked back up the path, tightening our girths. He stumbled, squeezing past on the narrow trail. "Cowboys aren't known for good walking skills."

I laughed. "Pretty well known for good drinking skills though."

Swanny laughed even harder. "Maybe those two are related."

As we rode further into the canyon, the weather became gradually nastier. A light mist of drizzle hardened into a cold, steady rain. Ponchos had been forbidden because of the risk they would frighten the mules. So our jeans gradually soaked us to the skin and chilled us to the bone. By the time we were two thirds of the way to the end of the ride I was shivering uncontrollably. I have seldom been so rain soaked and never been so cold for so long.

We reached our stopping point and prised ourselves painfully off our mules. We'd all stiffened up horribly with the combination of unfamiliar activity and the excruciating cold. We staggered on numb legs up a short trail to huddle in the slight shelter outside the pit toilets. Swanny produced a sack lunch for each of us, with a sandwich, a small bag of chips, a drink and a single serve packet of two mini oreos. Despite the unfortunate atmosphere and my uncontrollable shivering, I ate every crumb.

The rain had thoroughly settled in and I was now truly soaked, even under my waterproof layer. My shirt had wicked up water from my drenched jeans and was almost as wet as my socks, which were filled with water. I had taken off my gloves to eat, and couldn't have pulled them back on even if I could bear the thought of their cold, wet pressure on my skin.

Swanny tossed us all back up onto our mules where we clung miserably as they climbed steadfastly back out of the canyon. Visibility had dropped to almost nothing and we rode up the narrow path through a dense cloud.

As cold and unhappy as we were, it was an interesting view of the canyon that comparatively few people ever get to see. The rock walls flowed with sudden waterfalls. Sometimes the path was cut into the rock face like a tunnel with the outside wall missing. Water ran down on the outside and our mules clip clopped patiently through this cave behind a wall of water.

I had been soaked and chilled to the bone for hours, was shivering violently, couldn't feel my extremities and had a nightmarish headache, but my sense of humour was still intact.

Swanny tried to keep our spirits up with jokes. "I expect to see you all walking normal when you get off."

I could still raise a sort of strangled chuckle. "We'll be walking as well as real cowboys."

When we finally made it back up to the trail head Swanny hauled us bodily off the mules and solemnly presented us with certificates.

We were also allowed to keep our branded water bladders.

They are two of my hardest won and most valued souvenirs.