The Adventures of Crewing Devan at Tevis

Auburn, CA        August 17, 2019

A quick Tevis crewing report.  Tevis is run on the same trail as Western States Endurance Run.  If you don’t know the history, the 100 mile horse race (Tevis) was first and run for many years until one year a guy’s (Gordy Ainsleigh) horse was lame so he decided to run it instead. And so the WSER was born.

The trail is a point-to-point 100 miles from north of Lake Tahoe to Auburn, CA.  By the way we flew in/out of Sacramento and Devan rode a friend’s horse, they live in Grass Valley just north of Auburn.  The riders take the trail and the crews drive all over the place to meet them.  There are only certain places that are crew accessible.  Here’s the overview map, the orange is the ride trail and the yellow is the dive that crews make.

The riding and driving trails.

For adventure 1, start camp is in the forest, in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere. The last 15 miles or so getting there are on really narrow roads or dirt roads.  We slept the under the stars on Friday, yes there are lots of bears and some cats in the area so I didn’t sleep very well, Devan slept like a log because she knew I was “on watch”. We only heard small animal rustling and a bunch of coyotes howling off in the distance.

The "before" photo.

Adventure 2; the riders start at 5:15am on Saturday and of course everyone’s up long before that getting horse (the Mighty Mal) and riders ready. Once they took off I got into the 4x4 pickup I rented to go on the grand loop basically I-80 back to Auburn and out on secondary roads out to Robinson Flat.  For the riders it’s 36 miles, for me it was about 125 miles. Bob, Mal’s owner (husband) took the trailer from the start to Forresthill. Heather the other crewmember from Texas and Kathie Mal’s owner (wife) who slept in Auburn, met me at Robinson Flat.

Adventure 3; Mal came in fine, Devan on the other hand was cranky and in a bad mood.  Seems she jumped off Mal somewhere in Granite Chief (mile 15 or so) to adjust her saddle and landed wrong on a rock, twisting her ankle badly.  She was pissed because she did a similar thing at basically the same place a few years ago.  She took a Tylenol some magic lotion and wrapped it but you could tell she was in a bit of pain. After the mandatory one-hour hold they were gone.

Coming into Robinson Flat (Me, Heather, Devan and the Mighty Mal).

Adventure 4 (and heart attack 1); as we were packing up and about 15 to 20 minutes later Devan comes walking back into the aid station crying.  She must have seen my face along with the rest of our crew and Devan immediately said “Mal is fine and I am fine… don’t worry”. Devan had run back (she thinks it was about 1 to 1.5 miles) down the hill back to the aid station as fast as she could. She talked to the officials, turns out someone right in front of her inexplicably rode their horse directly into a cattle guard that was cordoned off and had branches in front of it. How she did it she didn’t know, but the horse’s front legs were stuck and it was thrashing wildly, they needed vets out there immediately. She thought the horse was going to be put down.  The vets raced up there in a van (Devan in the van as well). Turns out that the horse was very banged up and had a lot of cuts, but miraculously ok, although their day was done. By the way Devan ran back because she didn't want to make Mal go back up the hill out of Robinson Flat.

Adventure 5; Heather and I backtracked to Michigan Bluff and waited a long time for Mal and Devan.  But this adventure was more mental anguish. At lots of places there are vet checks that the horse has to pass and Deadwood (Devil’s Thumb) is one of them. It’s located at the peak between the two large canyons. The live results shown Devan “in time” arriving, but while the other people around her were coming and going the tracker showed her just sitting there without an “out time”. Was she pulled? Was Mal ok? Was Devan ok? What could it be?  No way to tell.  For the next hour or so we just had to sit and wait getting more and more nervous, blood pressure spiking, nerves frazzled, hands rattling…  then all of a sudden they had a completely different in time AND to our relief, an out time.  (Heart attack 2.)

Vet check at Robinson Flat.

When Mal and Devan came in to Michigan Bluff after having gone through the two canyons they looked really great. We gave them some water, food, etc. and off they went.  From Michigan Bluff to Chicken Hawk it's about a 3/4 mile walk up a long hill to the main road, then a short drive, and then another 3/4 mile walk.  On trail is’t about 1.5 miles.  In previous years I was able to hightail and get to CH by bumming a car ride up the hill and then running the last 3/4 mile, but this year there were no cars going up.  But every time we plan for this and Kathie was at Chicken Hawk to provide any help they needed. So this adventure was skipped this year.  We all then met Mal and Devan on Bath Road leading into Forresthill.  There is the second one-hour mandatory hold at Foresthill, time to re-group and get ready for the nighttime riding.

About to go out of Forresthill.

Adventure 6; well not really an adventure unless you count unrolling sleeping bags and sleeping for an hour on the grass at the Fairgrounds at the finish line in Auburn while the leaders come into the finish. During this time checking the live results as Mal and Devan click off the vet checks.  Then at about 3am we drove out to No Hands Bridge to watch Mal and Devan cross in the dark.  The moonlight reflecting off the river below was really nice.

Adventure 7; this is the rough one… when Mal and Devan finished I could tell that Mal was favoring her right hind quarter. Sure enough while she pass all of the pulse and other prods and pokes of the vet check, she didn’t pass the trot out.  They give you an hour to massage and work out the kinks if you can which we did, but poor Mal was still gimpy.  Devan had said that she felt a little stumble at mile 95 when they went over a little gully, sort of like when you go down a curb wrong and zing your back. So when we went back she didn’t pass.

Epilogue:

Mighty Mal’s finish wasn’t “official” this time, but she does have 3 official finishes over the years, one with another rider and two with Devan. She is still an absolute BEAST, Devan says she kills the uphills, she may not be the fastest horse, but she's like a freight train, Devan said that they were playing it cool this year, just going for the finish.  Oh yeah, she's 20 years old this year.

Devan has done Tevis four times now. All four times she did the full 100 miles. Two of those times on Mal, passing all vet checks, so she has two Tevis finisher Buckles. Two times the horse (Armon once and now Mal once) didn’t pass that very final check and got pulled at the finish line, while tough, is part of the game. This year, including Devan, there was a total of 5 pulls at the finish line.

So that’s it, 100 miles done, but no “official” finish.  But don’t tell Mal, she still thinks that she did it.

Awesome!  What a great horse and Devan always rides so smart.  I'm convinced mares are great for endurance as they are hardwired I think to take care of themselves with eating and drinking and not doing foolish things stallions and geldings do (boys )

You are 100% correct. Mal drinks and eats like.... a horse.  And she is so smart and does take care of herself.  Devan said this year near Last Chance there were riders and horses on the stitchback up a head of her making noises about stinging ground bees.  Devan said without any prodding Mal stopped for a second or two for the trail to clear, Devan couldn't quite figure out what she was doing, then all a sudden again with no prodding Mal trotted quickly past the bees. Neither of then got stung.

Pays to have a horse that knows the trail.  Devan and Kathie also joke that at the starting line all they have to do is just tell Mal to "go home".

Always fun to see the connection between Tevis and WS.  Thanks for the detailed report.

What a great adventure and effort from all. Mal and Devan had a great support team. Congratulations!

Great report and pics.  A lot of ups and downs for sure.  Sorry that one of the downs was at the finish line, but it sounds like Devan and Mal did great overall.  You too, crew!

 

 

 

By the way, I saw Devan last night and she said that Mal is doing great and enjoying the recovery and rest.  And still eating a lot.

I guess horses aren’t so different than people in that regard