Aspen Trail Therapeutic Riding and Equine Assisted Services

As we gear up to resume lessons, we wanted to take a minute to let you know how your support helps our students. Typical riding lessons can cost $100 -$120 an hour, and more, depending on the riding discipline, and there aren't a lot of opportunities for individuals with additional needs.

We make horsemanship accessible with an instructor and volunteers trained in therapeutic / adaptive riding for students with a wide range of diagnoses. Our costs, including specialized insurance, adaptive equipment, training and continuing education for our staff, and the care and feeding of our horses, would be prohibitive to our students - so we charge only $30 per lesson.

Our hosts are generously providing their property and are financing the new arena and facilities completely on their own - so your contributions will not be used for property improvements. Your donation goes directly toward offsetting our operational costs and caring for our equine partners, so our students can continue to participate at a reduced rate.

If you are a local business and would like to support our students, we would be happy to hang your banner in the new arena during our riding season. Send us a message to find out more about how you can sponsor the program.

All contributions help!

Walk On!

Remember those endless summer days playing in the sandbox with your Tonka Trucks?

This is just like that - well, except the price...

Crushed Fines are all down. We'll spread them with a box blade tomorrow and then pack it to give us a smooth, level surface. This material is really fun to work with!

Please note the date change: we will now be getting together on August 2.

Work Day! Sunday, August 2, 9 a.m. until it gets too hot.

Various projects from cleaning tack to pulling weeds to get ready to resume lessons.

The first three loads of crushed fines were delivered this afternoon - five more coming tomorrow. Once it's all down, we'll spread it evenly and begin soaking it. It looks very much like arena sand, but after being soaked and packed well with a roller, it should form a smooth and solid floor for our sand footing. One step closer!!

The first layer of our arena base material was delivered this week. We got it spread as evenly as we could, and now we're soaking it so that we can pack it down. Once that's done, we'll put down several inches of a much finer material, soak it, and then rent a roller to pack it extremely well. The base will provide drainage while serving as a barrier for rocks. We're hoping to complete the entire base this week, and then we'll be ready for the sand and fence.

We're doing the work ourselves, with only a small tractor, so it's taking longer than we'd hoped. But, it's a labor of love and we are so excited that it will soon be ready for our students!!!

Arena Update: we were out of town for a week and came home to several days of rain - which we welcomed! But, it did delay our work a little. We moved a couple tons of dirt and rocks today and it's really starting to take shape. We need to pick up a thousand more rocks, and then we can put down the crushed base and pack it. We'll then be ready for sand footing.

The arena will be 100' x 200' - perfect for individual and group lessons. We're working really hard to get it finished so we can finally begin riding. Not much longer now!

And, seriously, if you need some rocks, please come see us!!

We were anticipating the fireworks would begin tonight, but we got an even better treat. The aurora made an appearance. What a beautiful way to start the Independence Day celebration!

We made good progress on the arena today. Started by pulling up old fence posts and then began stripping away topsoil. Need to take off a couple more inches tomorrow and then we should be ready for the base.