WHITE MOUNTAIN RANGE RIDERS

WHITE MOUNTAIN

"There must be a little cowboy in all of us . . . "

Thinking out loud, Kirk C. Dunbar, an investment broker from Scottsdale, "jawed," with a group of horsemen making their way along a trail in the beautiful White Mountain country of Eastern Arizona. Kirk, a personable, 52-year-old grey-haired "parttime," cowboy and his fellow riders are members of The White Mountain Range Riders Association who for three years have enjoyed themselves for four days, riding, fishing, working cattle and exploring the cool timberlands of the Whites where some of the most fantastic scenery in the Southwest can be found.Pondering his attempt to determine why men from across the nation will pay good money each year to ride a cow pony, "rough it," out in the open and really enjoy themselves, Dunbar added: "It lets out the Rough-Rider spirit."

No one disagreed with him.

In fact, W. Lee McLane, a Phoenix tax attorney and former professor at Yale University, agreed quickly and said: "It's a dream of most men to play like cowboys"Here we are with some cowboy in our souls, riding through the roughest country, associating with real cowmen and getting a kick out of it as if it were realization of a dream when we were little boys."

Dunbar and McLane were not wrong-they hit the core of the reason why cross-country Western horseback

RANGE RIDERS

In Arizona, the White Mountain Range Riders' trek now has taken its place with the famous Desert Caballero ride from Wickenburg. The White Mountain ride is for the summertime; the Wickenburg trail for wintertime. Both attract a large number of out-of-state riders and some go on both rides.

The White Mountain ride, for example, has attracted a father and son from Teaneck, N.J., an insurance executive from Omaha who now is in Canada and chomping the bit until the time he can get back to Arizona and a cow pony.

Then there are expert part-time cowboys like Lou Wulfekuhler, a vice president of Lockheed Aircraft Corp., in Burbank, Calif., who knows horseflesh like he knows jet airplanes and has made rides all the way from California to Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado.

His partner usually is the famous Monty Montana, a Hollywood star but also a real down-to-earth cowboy who rides and ropes with the best of them. He is a good man to have on the trail.

There are men like Burke Payne, a real estate man, and Joseph G. Rice, a home loan and savings president, both of Phoenix, who actually had the original idea for the White Mountain Range Riders. Both are veterans of the Wickenburg and California rides; handle themselves well in desert or mountain country.

Stock brokers, livestock handlers (cowboys), insur-

Range Range riders, from all walks of life, pause for a breather and to enjoy view.

Below, in the coolness of a mountain dawn, Riders saddle-up for long ride.

Range men, fuel executives, farmers and successful men of any field can be found on a ride like the one into the White Mountains each July.

They do all right too-ask men like Vince Butler and Harold LeSueur, native cowmen of the White Mountains.

The officers of the Range Riders agree the organization is one of the most enthusiastic with which they have ever associated. Bob Reed of Springerville, the first president; Francis W. Pool, of Phoenix, past president, and Ted Hearne of Springerville, new chief, said at the end of the 1955 trek: "This is the best ride yet."

The White Mountain Range Riders is not a large organization-the by-laws limit the number of riders and guests to fifty men.

But there is a reason to the limit on riders. A small number of men can do a lot of things a large group cannot. For example, if a large crowd of men rode into the Apache Indian reservation for trout fishing-the best in the state-it would be hard to find stream space for everyone.

Too, the smaller group enables everybody to become well acquainted and makes camp life close. This atmosWildflowers form a carpet of color in high mountain meadows.

A string of riders emerges from aspen grove into a meadow, bright in sunlight.

Below, during the trek, Range Riders take active part in a range roundup.

There always has been one of the highlights of the ride -there are no strangers.

Of course, fellowship is just one facet of the many attractions of a cross-country horseback ride in the White Mountains.

The cool pine forests, the long view from atop Mount Baldy 11,590 feet high, the lush mountain meadows and cienagas, giant mountain fern, groves of quaking aspen and a profusion of wild flowers of every color are in never ending panorama for men who see beauty in the outdoors.

As most of the ride is in the wilderness area of Eastern Arizona (set aside by the federal government as primitive and no sign of man's handiwork or destruction visible), it is a place where you can ride in country unchanged since Coronado's days.

Fishing is a prime attraction. Fighting creek trout, even Arizona natives, flash at flies or worms in the cold waters of backwoods streams like Snake and Ord creeks, Black River, the East Fork of White River, Benito Creek, and both the East and West Forks of the Little Colorado river.

Accessible only by horseback in most places, the

Little fished streams assure fine catches. Some of the creeks are so small you can hop across them-but the fish are there.

Accidentally, the working of cattle has become a mainstay of the ride. This departure from the normal "dude" type ride came about last year when the Range Riders lunched at Pool's corral and line camp. Two lonesome cowboys there let it be known they had to brand calves, help invited-and they had thirty volunteers.

The swivel-chair cowboys brought more than a hundred head of bawling cattle off the range into the corral; the ropers cut into the herd to drag out calves. Quick-tiring but game "flankers," charged out from the corral fence to trip the calves and spread-eagle 200 pounds of four-legged kicking for branding and medication. Now effort is made for a branding session or a short "drive," on the program of each ride. Working cattle, for the amateur, is a rough, sometimes muddy, and always an exhausting business, but the fugitive from an airconditioned executive office obviously loves the work. It's that "little bit of cowboy," coming out of him.