Stranded horse rescued from ravine
Published: June 5, 2007
More than 32 tense hours after he slipped some 200 feet down a steep, sandy ravine in the Cleveland National Forest, Jim, a 14-year-old sorrel, was reunited with his owner Monday evening.
A Riverside County sheriff’s helicopter lifted the horse off the ledge where he had been stranded since about 11 a.m. Sunday after stepping off a path miles off Tenaja Road west of Murrieta and the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve.
Jeff Massie, 56, of Menifee, and several other riders set off on the trail about 8:30 a.m. Sunday. He often rides Jim in the area, Massie said, but this was his first time on that path.
“He’s a good horse,” Massie said. “He just made a wrong turn.”
Massie said the group ended up in an area along a ledge where the ground is soft off the path. Jim tripped and fell and the saddle shifted, Massie said. Massie was able to slide to safety but Jim stepped off the path.
The horse slipped, slid and rolled down the embankment, at times on his back, until his saddle horn got hooked on brush. Massie followed the horse down the hillside but it was too steep and the ground too soft for either to make it back up.
Massie was down the hill with Jim for hours Sunday trying to get him into a safe spot.
Eventually, a helicopter carried Massie to safety Sunday but it got too dark and too late to rescue Jim.
Massie’s neighbor, Wade Denny, hiked to where the horse was stranded early Monday to comfort him and bring him some water. Denny spent the day there, said his wife, Georgia Denny, at the trail-head staging point.
By Monday evening, rescuers organized by Renee Power, of Norco Large Animal Rescue, had arranged for a sheriff’s helicopter rescue team to lift Jim to safety. Jim, carried in a sling at the end of a long cable below the helicopter, touched town at the Tenaja Trail Head about 7:30 p.m.
His legs were cut and bleeding but otherwise he seemed OK.
Massie has owned Jim, a thoroughbred-quarter horse mix, since the horse was born. In fact, he said, he has video of his birth.
“He’s homegrown,” Massie said. “Some people are horse traders. I’m not.”
Massie was overjoyed but exhausted Monday night, he said, after just a few hours of sleep the night before.
But that’s nothing, he said. “I don’t think Jim slept at all.”
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