Adventure riders take on Continental Divide Trail

By Linda Bell
Correspondent

In early August, Günter Wamser started off on the first leg of a dream coming true: to complete the entire Continental Divide Trail from Mexico to Alaska on horseback.

Wamser, a German national, and his companion rider Sonja Endlweber, from Austria, had a fine send-off as they left their sponsorship base in Glacier View Meadows at the Straw Bale House Project operated by Gabriele Moritz. Several local riders joined them for the five-hour cross-country ride to the Red Feather Ranch Bed & Breakfast.

From there Wamser and Livermore rider Howard "Buzz" Elden headed overland to Grand Lake where Endlweber joined Wamser to begin their ride south along the Continental Divide Trail. Endlweber said it is a steep learning curve for her, a real departure from doing dressage in European rings.

The riders expect to travel for six to eight weeks, or until the weather closes in, then find winter quarters for the horses. Wamser said they will take the opportunity during winter to travel by car to take photographs, especially of wild mustangs, and possibly return to Germany before bringing the horses back in late spring to where they started and then heading north through Montana to Alaska.

Wamser said no one has ridden all 3,000 miles of the Continental Divide Trail, and he plans to keep at it for as long as it takes, but he's not in a hurry.

"This is not about getting from A to B; it's about slow travel that opens doors to new experiences and people," he said.

In June, Wamser said, he and Endlweber traveled to Cañon City to adopt four American mustang geldings to use alternately as riding and pack animals. The wild range horses were already trained by Colorado State Prison inmates through a Bureau of Land Management scheme that supplies mustangs to the Colorado Wild Horse Inmate Program.

"We have the horses on provisional adoption from the BLM for a year before they become officially ours," Wamser said.

He noted these horses are naturally used to living in the wild and accustomed to all kinds of weather, terrain and water, and they know how to safely forage off the land to augment the packed feed.

"It was hard to pick four from a pool of about 100 fully trained horses, so we looked for soundness, strong legs and chests," Wamser said. "What we didn't know was that one of them liked to run away--the young roan we named Rusty has already run off twice."

For six weeks Wamser and Endlweber worked to get the four young horses conditioned and accustomed to pack saddles, lead ropes, flapping tent walls, hobbles for night pasturing and the various other animals or objects they might meet along the trail, including llamas. They used the Straw Bale House as their base but often camped on adjacent national forest land. Wamser said he also had to accustom his Jack Russell terrier, Leni, to the horses so she would be safe among them.

"She will mostly ride in one of the saddle bags when we're on the trail," he said.

Wamser is no novice to this kind of riding and was delayed leaving Europe by the publication of his book, "Adventure Riding," about his experiences riding from Patagonia to northern Mexico starting in January 1994, after he bought and trained two wild Criollo horses and started a personal journey, which he now calls his purpose in life.

When Wamser is in Europe, he does speaking tours and photographic presentations about his travels through Central and South America. He worked for many years in Frankfurt, Germany, as an aircraft turbine engineer, but he's been traveling for the better part of 21 years, he said.

To follow Wamser's and Endlweber's journey along the Continental Divide Trail, visit the web site www.abenteuerreiter.de, click on English, and follow their travels through the "Diary."