Ep. 73 - Anna Baglione; Packer, Muleskinner, and Woman of the West

Anna Baglione is a guest that co-host Katie Schrock has wanted to meet for a very long time and got too in Texas during The American! Located in Bishop, California, and a native of central California, she’s one of the grittiest and punchiest people in the world and is a recipient of the 2021 COWGIRL Magazine 30 Under 30 Award.

Getting to Bishop

Growing up on an almond farm in the central valley of California called Escelon. The heart of the central valley, they had a variety of crops and farm animals throughout her childhood in this little farming community. Next door to Oakdale, Anna spent her time riding horses and taking lessons. That was where she got her first unpaid gig as a camp counselor at a horse camp and who knew it would have led her to the adventures that she has been on in her short life.

The coast and the mountains were equal distances apart and Oakdale is the self-proclaimed “Cowboy Capitol of California” because, at one point, there were more PRCA card holders per capita there than anywhere else in the United. States. The ability to go back and forth between the big cowboy country and big ranchers in that area, Anna was able to start going to rodeos and camping.

“We could take our horses and go camping and it was only about a two-hour drive to nice corrals where you could set up and ride out to some nice land,” says Anna, whose mom got them involved with the Backcountry Horsemen of America. “We went out to the mountains and started bringing the horses and I got introduced to packing at [sixteen years of age]… because I liked horses and I liked camping.”

It was the perfect intersection for her to begin finding what she was passionate about!

When Anna turned 18 years old she heard about a job opportunity on the east side of the Sierra Nevada’s but it took a lot of people to convince her to do it. Before that, she had ridden but was also a big time long-distance runner in cross-country. At the juncture of trying to decide if she pursue the path as an athlete or to focus on getting a degree and riding horses - she chose the latter and ended up at Rock Creek Pack Station in 2012!

Rock Creek Pack Station

Located 300 or so miles from Escelon on the other side of a 14,000 foot mountain range, Anna was sent with just her bag, bedroll, and boots by her mom.

“I was thrown right in!” Says Anna with a laugh!

For her interview, she had to meet up with the new boss at the Bishop Mule Days. At that point, Anna had never been to this unique event.

Bishop Mule Days

Bishop Mule Days is a week long celebration of everything that is the mule and was founded in 1969 as a “hold my beer and watch this” competition between packers stuck in the valley. Over the course of the seven-days, there are competitions from wagons, twenty-mule teams, packing competitions, barrel racing, chariot racing, western pleasure, hunter hack, dressage, etc. All on mules, there isn’t any horses allowed to compete outside of certain packing competitions.

"One of the first competitions I watched was the packing and I’ll never forget seeing them out there and thinking, ‘That is so freaking cool!’”

The owner of Rock Creek Pack Station was a legendary, giant of a man and after being told, “go to Mule Days, you’ll find me there,” Anna realized he was 100% right! She saw him in line at the breakfast and so she went over to introduce herself. It was in that moment that she was thrown to the wolves by meeting all of the top mule packers that she had just watched compete in the arena.

“I was nervous, that’s for sure, but that was when I met my lifelong friends!” In fact, Adelle, one of her best friends to date, took her under her wing and was one of the first people that she had met. “It was very intimidating to be thrown into that.”

What is a Packer?

In her first role, Anna was in charge of cooking and all of the people that are on the trip and are in charge of their safety and all of the horses. From feeding stock and making meals, getting horses ready and understanding the public forest service regulations are also her duty. A variety of different trips include day rides or long traveling trips that range from five to 28 days - these are more work intense and take guests riding every day. Base camp trips are a set destination and you ride there, set one camp and you’ll maybe range out around the camp on adventures.

Wearing a lot of different hats, that’s something that Anna has gotten very good at.

How do you Pack for a Trip?

On the long trips, there is a lot of logistical planning. Normally, they don’t take more than ten mules on a trip, which will carry up to 200 pounds usually. The Sierra’s have a lot of rocks and granite steps so they don’t want to pack the mules heavy in that. Those trips also have to have a lot of permits and planning for re-supply’s every three days, both in food and in mules. There is also Wilderness Permits which also designate how many mules per person. Every forest and every park is different with that ratio, and there are even zones within the Eastern Sierra’s that allow “only 15 heartbeats on one trip.” By “heartbeats” they mean all animals and people included.

“It’s all to minimize the impact to these high impact areas,” explains Anna. The first day of the trip is figuring out how many meals you are going to need. In the wilderness, the national rule is that there is 15 people maximum per party. You’ll never take more than that or have more horses than that.

Mules wear special packing saddles that have the crossbars or “x” at the top. Usually two hitches are tied; the box hitch for boxes or boxy loads and the diamond hitch for fluffy items like bed rolls and duffle bags. There are different equipment to put those on the mule from different bags and tarps that you utilize. There are many other hitches and many variations on them that really experienced packers use for unique loads and shapes.

If you are a good packer, that’ll hold all day and won’t come undone.

Raising & Finding Pack Animals

Some pack stations will breed their own packing animals and others will use a horse sourcer. For the horses, they are looking for the draft crosses that have big feet and can carry big people and have to like to eat as they are grazed. As a private commercial outfit, they have to do more with less. The Forest Service in California gets to use really big mules, but Anna’s crew has noticed over the years that the big mules can’t handle the large packs and will suffer from a variety of issues. The smaller, sporty mules, are more desirable for the Sierra’s. They have smaller feet, a little more athletic, and if you have inexperienced packers they have a tendency to overpack large mules but they are less likely to do so with the smaller mules.

Mules vs. Horses in a TRUE Working Environment

“Mules are more agile than the horse. The donkey part of them helps them navigate rocks better and they’re going to make better decision in rocky country,” says Anna who says that horses can do it, but that mules are smarter, they don’t need as much feed, and overall require less to do more. “They are just smarter, that’s the biggest thing. They know when they have a pack on and how to dodge obstacles. They aren’t going to make stupid decisions that will endanger the entire pack string as often as horses do.”

“The mule is the Cadillac of the mountains!’

There are a lot of different styles of mules and Anna has handled a variety of different types but their go-to’s are the one’s that come from mammoth jack stock and are over 13 hands.

“My favorite mules at Rock Creek Station are the dopey mules that … do whatever and just have fun,” says Anna. “We have riding mules for the guests to ride - they’re sportier and slimmer, not as wide backed or fine boned. Those are our riding mules. Our pack mules are generally bigger but the cool thing is that we have a lot of mules that do both.”

Having as many double-disciplined mules as possible is the best. If you have a pack mule that can be ridden so a guest doesn’t have to walk in the case of an emergency, that would be the best for everyone.

Mule Lingo

Mule Skinner - Applies these days to anybody that raises mules. It originates from the pioneer days when people were moving across the plains. It would be when they had to skin the mules and sell the hide. There is a debate, some people say that the people whipped the mules so hard it skinned them.

Packers and Land Conservations

Historically, packers have tried to capitalize on being a steward of the land. They learned a lot from their indigenous brothers and sisters, their life’s way, and their maintenance of the meadows and trails - they work hard to carry that on.

“We have too, for a multitude of reasons [conserve the mountains] but the big one is that we care and that we love our mountains,” says Anna. “Conservation is obviously paramount to us … and preserving that for future generations… I think we play a vital role in playing that.”

Whether it’s locations that aren’t easily reached, the whole idea of “wilderness” is not a thing as evidence of humans in these remote areas can be seen for thousands of years. In western civilization, there is this whole idea of “hands off” and that “we shouldn’t be touching it.” The packers realize that isn’t possible and that the indigenous people first cared for it and now the packers, and that they have to keep doing that.

Working the Seasons as a Packer

Early May is the start of the season for the packers as snow slows them down in the Sierra Nevada’s. August is the busiest month and they begin to trail off for the first of September with October being the last day.

“It didn’t use to be that way as the … drought allowed us to get in there and get more use out of the mountains because there was less snow,” explains Anna who states that it’s both a good thing and a bad thing. “We are really expanding into the area because there is no snow.”

Anywhere you go requires going over a pass so if the pass is snowed in, you can’t get into the back country. As the climate warms, they are able to get in earlier than they had in the past.

Story Time from Packing with Anna

“Here is a good one and I tell this one a lot because it’s just so funny. We were camping at this place called Gladis Lake, it was a 10-day trip and I don’t know why but I wasn’t feeling that good that afternoon. I had told my packer that I was cooking that I wasn’t feeling that great and that I was going to go to bed early… For context, in the Sierra’s bears are a big problem….

“I take great pride in that I’ve never had a campsite ransacked by a bear!”

“That night I went to bed early, we had let the mules and horses out to graze, and my packer had gone over to the picket line with the mules to hangout. I had got into my bedroll … and was about to go to bed and had put the cover over my head and was about to fall asleep…

“I hear this stomping and at first I thought it was the mules or the packers coming back for dessert so I flop open my bedroll and what do I see but a bear heading right for my bear boxes… It was not a small bear, several hundred pounds at least, and I grabbed my boot… and I overhead chucked it at the bear.”

“It hit a chair, and the chair hit the bear and the bear took off running! … It didn’t bother me for the rest of the night and the next morning some hikers were like, ‘This bear came into our camp and wouldn’t leave us alone!’”