Nick Warhol and Zion, 1997

My Tevis ride 1997- Nick Warhol

The Tevis- the biggest, the best. The one hundred mile endurance ride from Truckee to Auburn California which ranks as one of the (if not the most) incredible rides in the world, both in terms of tradition and difficulty. The mere mention of the ride name brings about certain emotions which can be truly understood only by someone who has ridden it, and even more so by someone who has finished it. I tried it this year as my first 100 mile ride, although I started on a horse other than my own. I told myself a year ago I wouldn’t make the Tevis the first 100 mile ride for my young horse Shatta, so I leased a horse from longtime endurance rider Potato Richardson of Cool, California. Remember that TV special on National Geographic last year where that rather large TV celebrity rode the Tevis with the local expert? The local expert was none other than Potato. He set me up with a spunky little nine year old Arabian gelding named Zion who has completed the Tevis twice on two attempts. I met the horse two days before the ride and took him out for a spin at Potato’s ranch. He’s a powerful little gray guy at 14.2 hands, but he seemed more than capable of hauling my 204 pounds of me and tack through the Sierra Nevada mountains. We loaded him up in our trailer and headed out to the start of the ride at the Robe equestrian center, out in the forest about nine miles east of the Squaw Valley ski resort.

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