Backcountry Horsemen take back Tuolumne River park

No, that wasn’t a welcome optical illusion. Horses and trailers were lined up under the Ninth Street bridge along the Tuolumne River throughout the day last weekend.

The equestrian display Sept. 12 was part of an annual Trail Challenge obstacle course put on by the Backcountry Horsemen Mid Valley unit. The group belongs to a statewide and national nonprofit organization dedicated to riding and preserving recreational trails.

This was the first such competition held at Gateway Park in south Modesto. The group hosts about one Trail Challenge a year, but most are held in the foothills or more rural arenas. This year’s location was a nod to all the work the group and other community organizations have put in to clean up the banks of the Tuolumne River through Modesto.

“This is the first time this way because we’re trying to get people to come use this park,” said Backcountry Horsemen member Debra Mason, who also co-chaired the Trail Challenge. “We really want to do more at this location and we wanted to showcase this site so people get excited about the potential here. It’s not 100 percent yet, but you should have seen it before we started cleaning up.”

Over the past year and a half, members of the local Backcountry Horsemen chapter have joined forces with volunteers from Operation 9-2-99, the Tuolumne River Trust and other groups to help clear brush and remove trash from the blighted area. The banks of the river long have been sullied by garbage dumping, homeless encampments and other illegal activities.

The hope is to turn the 80-acre Gateway park into a recreational area with rough trails and open space for the community to use, as well as regular equestrian activity.

“(The) event with Backcountry Horsemen Mid Valley is a perfect example of the types of activities we want for the Tuolumne River and its parks,” said Modesto City Councilman Tony Madrigal, who attended the competition. “The city very much encourages this type of organization and the energy they create by being here. We’re here today to take back this park.”

For the Trail Challenge, more than two dozen riders – from youth to novice and more advanced – navigated a series of obstacles on horseback. The 12 stops had the competitors do everything from drag a tire along a pathway to retrieve a bucket of water from the river and open and then pass through a rope gate. At each stop, a judge rated their performance and awards were handed out at the end by skill-level categories.

Participant Dennise Davis, who splits her time between Twain Harte and Modesto, rode the course on her quarter horse Laredo Loves Salsa. She came to show her support for the group and its efforts to clean the riverfront.

“It’s criminal what we’ve let happen with the amount of trash that goes into this river. It’s shameful we’ve let it deteriorate to this level,” she said. “So we as a group have been trying to reclaim this park. I’m looking forward to using it more.”

The competition attracted riders from the Central Valley, Sierra and as far away as the Bay Area. Riders said it was a new experience testing their skills in the more urban yet still wild environment.

“This is different, but it’s really nice,” said Brianna Noble of Oakland as she rode the course.

Backcountry Horsemen Mid Valley was founded in the late 1980s and has almost 400 members. The group regularly helps maintain and clear trails as well as holds workshops, competitions and group rides. The chapter estimates it has provided nearly $340,000 in trail repair and educational outreach volunteer work last year to the community. Last year, its 22 state units performed $5.7 million in volunteer work.

“It’s part of our group’s mission to step up and do these sorts of things,” Mason said of the Gateway Park cleanup. “It’s working, but we have to stay on it.”

This story was originally published September 19, 2015 at 3:48 PM with the headline "Backcountry Horsemen take back Tuolumne River park."