Murphy Monday: In Which Mt. Murphy is Climbed at the Endurance Barn of Our Dreams

Murphy is now at Sonoma Coastal Equestrian Center, aka the Perfect Endurance Barn.

Daisy dubbed the ‘hill’ up to the summer foal pasture: “Mt. Murphy”.

It’s not really a hill. It’s a stair master set to an incline of 10 and strewn with rocks.  A month of climbing that every day will whip the most out of shape rider into being able to ride two-point, no stirrups, for hours.

First, you have to hike down to the gate.  It’s an endurance barn: there’s no starting from the parking lot. You have to hike to the beginning.

We wheezed our way up the hill.

Note the big boulder on left: reference point. Also, so we have perspective on scale, those are  adult horses.

Above looks fairly level after the gate.  FYI, it’s not.

Below is looking back at the barn, before we hit the California live-oak lined section…

…that’s the section where the stair master hits 300,  and we want to flag down a Cable Car. (Totally worth the five bucks.)

Oops, sorry, I was hallucinating. Ran out of electrolytes.

We see this: