Wilderness excursion

My friend and I recently returned from a three-day trip to the Holy Cross Wilderness area near Eagle Colorado. It's a gorgeous area, but the trails we chose turned out to be extremely difficult -- lots of slick rock, deep, rutted trails with very jagged rocks in them, and muddy bogs. And most of it was very steep. We spent almost as much time leading our horses, and allowing the pack horses to just follow on their own, as riding. And when we were riding, it was very cautiously, letting the horses pick their way as carefully as possible.
Still, all went well. No serious injuries to horse or human, except one badly sprained ankle on my part.
Also, I brought home an uninvited guest -- Giardia.
It hit a few days after we got back and it wasn't a pleasant experience. Finally went to the doctor and got some medicine that knocked it out. But I lost about 10 pounds in a week through dehydration and being unable to eat much of anything.

I'm not sure how it happened, because we took both Iodine pills and a water filter to treat all of the water we drank. But something obviously was not enough.

But I'm back to feeling human again. I think we'll look for another location for our backcountry horse trip next summer. One where the trails are quite so rough and both riders and horses can enjoy themselves a little more.