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Pack station owner Seth Diemel has been working in the mountains since his early teens.
Actually, this is my first rodeo Diemel’s advice for rookies “really depends on what they’re doing.” The hourlong horseback rides, he said, are “like going and buying a movie ticket.” Pack trips, on the other hand, involve “a more select customer base,” he noted. “You’re going into a wilderness area by yourself. You’ve got to be a person that knows how to take care of themselves a little bit.” Want some help? Just ask! “A lot of people hire us to take care of all the cooking and do the whole camp and everything, so they don’t have to worry about anything.”
On the trail Single-horsepower transportation awaits at the pack station
Story by Kevin Hecteman • Photo by Lori Eanes
If you’re hankering for a slow day—or week—in the woods, Seth Diemel has something that might just be your speed. Diemel runs a pack station in Pinecrest, along Highway 108 near Dodge Ridge ski resort. Diemel and his crew have about 100 horses and mules—the horses carry people, while the mules carry people’s stuff—and visitors can partake in a wide range of offerings amid the towering trees of the Stanislaus National Forest. “We do everything from hourlong little trail rides to two- week-long, fully inclusive catered pack trips, and every- thing in between,” Diemel said. “We can do normal drop trips—just taking fishing, hunting parties in—half-day tours, basically anything you can think of along that neck of the woods on a horse.” It’s been a lifelong passion, as well as vocation, for the 29-year-old. “I started working in the mountains when I was in the eighth grade,” Diemel said. “I’ve been there ever since.”
Self-reliant operation With no stores selling saddle gear up his way, Diemel and his crew do all their work on site—horseshoeing, minor medical care, leather work, building equipment. Nobody com- mutes, either. “Everybody lives on site for the whole summer,” Diemel said of his seven-days-per-week work- force. “Everybody eats there. It’s like a big family; we live together for five months of the year.”
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May/June 2022
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