Hey y’all! 

Congratulations! You’re reading the first 2019 blog of our season! This is exciting! My name is Amber Izdepski (The Z is scary, but I swear it’s phonetic - IS-DEP-SKI), this will be my first year here on the ranch and hopefully it won’t be my last. I come to your desktop from New Orleans, Louisiana but currently, and hopefully obviously, McCoy, Colorado and I can fully state that when the weather here in the Rockies says “100% humidity” - they most certainly are lying, as my skin and vast knowledge of humidity can attest. We’ve had an interesting start to this year’s season with a late winter clinging onto our lands. Clearing trails for our guests is getting done but not in the time frame we’ve been hoping for. The other day Brice could have snow mobile up to pack camp and that was on May 25^th! Coming from the Deep South, the idea of having snow on my birthday (may 4^th) seemed impossible until recently. Yet here we are, late may/early June.

Amy G.. Branden and Kyle went swimming in Missouri trying to pick out and purchase 10 new horses to add to our already humungous list of horses available to our guests. How they manage to learn all those names, I’ll never know but someone has to do it so it might as well be Amy G. Last week over 150 tornados touched down in the Midwest, especially near where they are so they’re having to stay later in order to not hydroplane the truck and trailer trying to get back to us. Wishing y’all all the luck on that 18-hour drive back! [--- Good news! They made it back safely through rain, tornadoes, and then finally snow on the ranch. This was written before I was able to post it due to wifi and the horses arrived on a snowy Tuesday, I'm sure they were confused at such a weather change! We had then covered for the first few days.]

Our first guests came last week in what was a small week for us, which is lucky for me as I train and learn my place in this newfound world of mine as office manager. Don’t be fooled by my office savviness as I can also ride pretty well and will be spending as much time as paperwork allows on the trails or training in the arena. 

We lost Wi-Fi from Thursday before last until last Monday night of our first week, no thanks to Hughes Net who told me twice on the phone that they would be here that Friday. I had a doubt they would make it out on the Monday since that was Memorial Day but they pulled through for us. These things are a bit more common when you’re out as far as we are. As frustrating as that is, gotta keep working and gotta keep positive.

It’s been beautiful with and without the snow, Tuesday before last we spent 14 hours without power during an off and on again snow storm so we spent the day with a fire in the saloon, a beer in hand, and lots of dancing and board games - that whole “when life gives you lemons” type of deal but Black Mountain Ranch style. Then this last Tuesday was snow again but with the guests, snow riding and white mountains for all. Anywho, Bob-o needs me to print stuff and even without Wi-Fi, work goes on - until next time y’all try and behave yourselves. Here are some photos for your enjoyment until you’re here yourself and Nicola takes some photos of you and yours.

My best,

Amber IZ
Office Wrangler 

PS: YES! All photos below were taken within the last two weeks. It’s that crazy this year! Looking like we're in the clear now though. Should be a great summer!