Lake Carl Blackwell- Official Review

Hey all, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and safe travels over the holiday weekend. I waited until now to post this just because we had a lot going on the week of the camp trip and after the camp trip, so I am just now getting to sit down and give a official review of LCB.

While I have camped here, now 3 times, the last 2 times we were able to go, were shorter trips. This year we decided since we weren't able to get the horses in shape over the summer due to moving, then one of the horses getting hurt, hotter weather than normal this summer, we decided to take our fall camp trip to a closer, easier terrain ride. We still wanted the mileage to ride, so we went with LCB.

We camped from November 19-22. Arrived about an hour early from check in time, which was doable by the way, and after getting checked in and all set up, we decided to ride the yellow trail. The yellow trail is classified as a beginner friendly and 5.7 miles is what the map says. Compared to their mileage and my tracker, I use Equilab, (I also have an iphone and this is the best quick user friendly free app I have found that I liked personally) and we clocked 5.6 miles. So it was pretty darn close to accurate.

The next day, we rode the blue trail. I ended up leaving Denali at camp this day so she could get some experience on how to stay at camp. (ponying gets exhausting lol)

On their map, the Blue trail is classified as advanced and there are a few rocky places but mainly it is sandy. It is rockier than any of the trails I have ridden there, but still nothing you need shoes or boots for unless your horse has poor/sensitive feet. Blue trail says 10.1 mile, but we lost markers after a loop because when you came out of the loop back into the pasture and for the way it winds through the pasture, it was hard to determine which way we were headed, what we already rode and after a while markers were lost all together and we ended up on pink then back to blue where blue runs through pink along the lake on Big Foot Cut off. I still have yet to look at the map compared to my loop to see where we missed. Blue is also really grown up too with a lot of briars. On top of losing markers, we lost the trail a couple of times, but nothing terrible. We clocked 9.2 miles that day.

The last day, I ponied Denali and we rode pink. Majority of Pink is in the pasture, it winds back and forth along the edge of the pasture until you get to the yellow and pink split where you continue to go down along the road to S Cimarron Rd. When riding along S Cimarron Rd, is when you will enter more of the trees. This trail is classified as beginner and it is exactly that. It is also a nice one for endurance riders, because there are a lot of long stretches of access roads that you ride along with the pasture and it is also a 12.5 mile ride and we clocked 12.6 miles. There is a split in the trail that goes around/by a dried up pond, or may be a runoff from the lake, but it was really grown up and they rerouted the trail, but didn't take down the old markers so we ended up going down the grown up trail, then having to turn around and come back to where it split back off. The pink trail has this cool little wooden bridge that you go over. It will warn you that it is a one way crossing, and is advised to do as such. That trail does a big loop so you will cross it one way then cross it back again, come back up S Cimarron and then go off to the East to finish the ride out.

The weather was perfect, we were lucky this trip because the rain was scheduled for our trip then it just kept moving out until well past when we got home. It was cool in the evenings but we were able to enjoy a nice fire for the weekend as well so it was a great trip. For the entire weekend, we clocked 27.4 miles which I did not think was too bad. We did walk majority of it and completed it in a pretty timely manner too for each ride. The first day we completed in an hour and 43 minutes. Day 2 we completed in 3 hours and 3 minutes and day 3 we completed in 3 hours 52 minutes. So id say that is pretty good timing considering it was just walking!

Our next trip is going back to Heaven's Gate in mid March. I am SO excited to go back to Heaven's Gate. It so far is my FAVORITE place to ride at here in Oklahoma!! D'Anna and Colin are the BEST!!! If you have not been to Heaven's Gate it is a MUST!!! However, book your sites a couple months ahead because she sells out fast!

For now I will probably be a little absent on here, just doing day rides at prague lake to continue to get horses in shape. I may go back to thunderbird after a we have a good hard freeze, because the last time I was there, Denali and Mia both got ate up with Oak Mites. So I'm probably going to wait until everything has a chance to die off first before I go back there.

I wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!! Come the New year it will also be 1 year since I have been doing this blog and since Buckskin Trail Blogs has been a thing! So I am super excited, proud, and beyond thankful to have yall as followers!!

Happy Trails!! 🐴🎄🎆