The season's changing colors of Provo Canyon beckoned me for a short ride today that I couldn't resist. Though it was still a little warmer than I was hoping for, the trail up to Big Springs would have made a quick and beautiful ride if it wasn't for this:
Piles of horse dung like this littered the ground, at times making it nearly impossible to traverse the
trail unscathed. For the first half of the trail it was seemingly impossible to travel more than ten feet without coming upon another load of fresh stinking crap. It made what should have been a beautiful trail into this:
To make it even worse, the horses rip up chunks of trail with their shod hooves and fill up the entire single track, forcing bicyclists and hikers to quiet move off the trail to avoid spooking the stupid beasts. The horses aren't the only ones to blame though. As anyone who has come across a horse on a trail knows, the horses are merely under the control of their riders, and those riders are all pompous and inconsiderate snobs who have an intelligence only slightly above the mammals they are riding. While we can easily expect a dog owner to kick aside the feces that their pets squeeze onto a trail, these horse riders wouldn't even think of condescending to clean up the mess that their only-good-for-glue-and-gelatin animals drop all over the place. These horse riders are so full of themselves that they don't even need to be on horses to feel they are more important than the rest of the world. Today, a bunch of them stood around the trail head blocking my access while I repeatedly asked to let me get through. It was only after shouting and practically pushing my way between them that they started to open a passage for me.
If these horses are allowed to continue using these trails with their riders being uncaring of others, our beautiful views in the mountains will be reduced to this:
