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Slickrock
Laura Crum

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Mystery
Part of the Gail McCarthy, vet series.

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(Horse-packing) Horse vet Gail McCarthy gets involved in mystery while horse-packing in Sierras

Description:
5th in series. Horse vet Gail McCarthy gets involved in mystery while horse-packing in Sierras.

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California backcountry, and horses - what more do you want?, by ponydom on January 13, 2004

I really enjoyed this book - our heroine, Gail McCarthy, equine vet, is spending her vacation on a solo horsepacking trip in the Sierras. Crum's descriptions of the California backcountry are exquisite, and made me long to try the trip myself (I did enjoy locating the various lakes and creeks on a topo map). Although it is a mystery/thriller, truly the main meat of the story just follows her through the granite peaks as she reflects on her surroundings and her current relationship. There are a lot of details about tying the horses, various mishaps that can occur, etc.

Perhaps I just liked it because it was a grownup version of my old favorite, "A Horse for X.Y.Z."

An excerpt:

I'd been here alone before; I knew these mountains. They weren't a place of close, warm, familiar beauty, they won't cuddle up to you as some gentle hills and pretty valleys will. I felt dwarfed, always, by the roughness of this place, by its indifference.
And I felt honored to be here. To be tolerated by these bizarrely lovely mountains — this place not made for man. Only in the meadows, and in those little pockets of meadows on the shores of the lakes, did I ever feel briefly at home, as though perhaps I could really live here.
I clucked to the horses, called to the dog. For now, I was a sojourner; for the present moment, my home was on my back. Or, more literally, on Plumber's back.
I was getting hungry. By my reckoning, it was almost noon. Reckoning was all I had to go on; I hadn't brought a timepiece. By choice, not error. I'd learned from my solitary backpacking expeditions that I could tell time well enough for my own purposes by the sun, and it was an extraordinarily freeing feeling to do without a watch.
We should hit Lunch Meadow between noon and one, I thought. I would eat there and let the horses rest for half an hour, then push on and hope to reach Snow Lake in time to make camp before dark. Today's ride was the longest one I had planned for the entire trip. But I felt that the horses were fresh, and I wanted to get as far into the backcountry as possible right away.