[cdt-l] CDT with horse ?

[cdt-l@mailman.backcountry.net (Joanne Lennox)]

	I have contacted a few people off list but somehow had the cdt list
address wrong and it never got to the list itself.

I have decided to try to do the CDT with a single horse in New Mexico and
Part of Colorado beganning in March and probably ending in June.  I do not
know how much of this is possible, or what routes are feasible and what are
not.  If things proceed well I will probably continue, especially if Oregon
and Washington is under a lot of snow.  I finshed 1,700 miles of the PCT ,
almost all of it in California, this year.  And want to do Oregon and
Washington next year, probably starting in July(depends on snow).

I generally walk as much as I ride.  I am carrying the same stuff that I
thruhiked the PCT with in 1999 (15 pounds), plus about 10 pounds of
equipment for horse.  Most of what I carry is horse feed.  

I have been pouring over The guidebooks and Delorme maps.  And am getting
overwhelmed by the thought of fences, locked gates, and most of all cattle
guards(which seem to be everywhere, are unmarked on maps, and completely
impassible), muddy roads, and the generally paucity of objects to tie a
horse to in the desert.

I badly need some names of reliable persons in the New Mexico BLM community
and National Forest Rangers that can tell me what I am up against, before I
spend a fortune on maps and before I load up the beast and drive off. 

It might be noted that most people have told me that I could not do what I
have already done, so this does not seem to  work very well.  Stony silence
and editorializing on my experiences also appears to energize the
situation.  Specific comments about particular pieces of the trail derived
from actual experience means that the person actually has given it some
thought, and is not simply dismissing me out of distaste for my hiking
style.

Joanne (Goforth)