Daily Schedule of a Horse Guide in the Canadian Wilderness

Being a horse guide in the Canadian wilderness sounds awesome and fun. It is but there is a lot more involved in the job. Days are long, exhausting and keeping your focus for 16 hours a day while looking after people and horses can be very tough. Don’t get me wrong, the feeling of empowerment, freedom and being in charge of my destiny can’t be over-shadowed, although the job is tough.

Horse guides and guests wake up at 5 to go and get the horses, usually staked and hobbled 20 minutes away from the camp. So, we start the day hiking up the hills which is a great nature connection and start in the day. Then we need to find all our horses, some like to go on adventures, pull the stakes from the ground or hop away with their hobbles on. As horse guides, we work as a team to find the horses, saddle them and bring them all back to camp. We can have a maximum of 7 guests for 2 guides, with usually 2 pack horses (11 horses in total). Once at camp, we give the horses oats then make breakfast. We try to eat around 7.30, and after all the usual cleaning we are ready to go on the trails again. On the first and last day we pack the pack horses with all the stuff we need, which takes about an hour, sometimes more when we have unusual loads like the chainsaw to pack.

During the day rides, that’s when I feel the most empowered, looking at my surroundings. It is dramatic, huge, beautiful and makes me feel alive. On the horse I feel safe and ready to face anything. That’s also when I am the closest to wildlife. I have witnessed deer peacefully eating grass, grizzly bears devouring soopolallie berries and mountain goats watching me from their mountain throne. And this is nature, this is reality, this is what I was looking for being as horse guide. I believe that understanding my surroundings helps me to understand myself better. In a city I feel restrained, I have to follow what everyone else is doing otherwise I don’t fit in anywhere. Here the rules are simple: live with the sunlight as it is the best source of light and my body needs it, eat well, work physically and mentally to find my balance. Nature is the facilitator to all of it, nature is where I feel alive.

After the day ride, we come back to camp, give the horses oats, then ride them out to the meadows with our guests. We have the stakes, ropes and the hammer tied to the saddle. Finding your way through the bush, zigzagging, making sure all the stuff stays on the saddle, that your pack horse follows you and doesn’t run free… and that you take your high side out, feet out just like on any other rides. All our horses wear bells so that we can find them the next day in case they run free. We do everything we can so that it doesn’t happen though. We stake them meaning we hammer a stake down with a rope tied to it and to the horse’s leg. We make sure there are no poisonous plants in the area where they are staying for the night, no trees they could tangled up around, no cliff they could fall off, no water they could slip into… and that the horses can always see the other ones but can’t run through another horse’s line! The rope is more like a mind set, they are tied up so they stay, because in reality, any of them could pull off the stake no matter how we hammer it. Horses are stronger. So, we usually stake 2/3 of the horses and hobble the rest of them. This is when we tie their front legs together, so they can run free but not too far. It takes at least 2 hours to do that, and from my perspective it is the toughest part of the day.

When we get back to camp, we cook and do any work needed to improve the camp (building a table, raking the horse poop…). After dinner we have our paperwork to do, and then we hit the pillow around 10 PM on the good days. There are so many variables, no one knows what tomorrow will be like no matter how much we plan it. Thinking about it in advance allows us to see all the possibilities and we make the decision last minute, when all the variables are known. I was afraid my work here would be boring, well I am not disappointed, everyday as a horse guide is a new adventure worth experiencing.

By Célina B., France