Wrangler​/Ranch Hand

Most ranch jobs are five months long. This one isn't, and there's a reason.

Our dude ranch season runs May through September. For those months the place is full — 24 guests, rides going out, turnovers, long dinners at the table. Then most ranches go quiet and send their crew home to find something else until spring.

We're going the other way. Day rides through the off-season. Corporate teams out here in the shoulder and winter months for offsites that look nothing like a conference room. Ranch stays and buyouts. A real dude ranch experience in February, not a watered-down version of the one people get in July.

This isn't a season. It's somewhere to put down roots.

• You're filling a gap until the next season starts somewhere else.

• Your idea of ranch work is riding horses only.

• You need a crew big enough to hide in.

• You need to be in a scroll hole on Instagram most of the day. Service out here is patchy and we're not apologizing for it. This is about real-life living.

• February at 8,000 feet sounds like a problem for future you.

• You bring drama with you, or cleaning up after yourself is somebody else's job.

Still here? Good.

Where you'd be

One of Colorado's smallest dude ranches. 138 acres at 8,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies, backed onto 800,000 acres of Roosevelt National Forest, capped at 24 guests because that's the number where a week actually changes someone. 38-plus horses. About a dozen crew. Forty-five minutes to Fort Collins.

A crew this size doesn't get to specialize. You ride in the morning and fix things in the afternoon, and you're genuinely good at both.

Why year-round, specifically

Day rides don't stop. Riders come out when the ranch is otherwise quiet, and they deserve the same ride our week-long guests get. That needs wranglers on the ground in November, not a phone number and an apology.

The horses. We have 38 head and we're still building the herd. In the shoulder season, the same dozen do almost all the work — the bomb-proof ones a beginner can get on without a second thought. They go out ride after ride while the rest stand around getting stiff and green.

The off-season is where we fix it. We've invested real money in these horses, and the work now is moving them along the ladder — taking a horse who's currently wrangler only and bringing him to advanced or intermediate, or working with one of our older guys to make him beginner safe, putting enough miles, groundwork and desensitizing into him that he can carry a nervous first-timer by May.

Most ranches never let a wrangler do that work. Here it's the job.

The ranch. Two decades of deferred maintenance is waiting for us. Fences, buildings, water, equipment, trails. This property has been loved, and it's tired, and it deserves to shine again. The day dude ranch season ends, that work starts.

How we match horses to riders

A beginner gets a horse that will look after them. An intermediate rider gets an intermediate horse, not the deadest broke one in the barn, so they actually get to ride instead of being carried. An advanced rider gets something with enough spice to give them a bit to play with. People come here to feel alive again, and a horse that gives them nothing does not do that.

Safe, all of them. But safe and boring are not the same thing, and we don't confuse the two.

The horse half

• Guide guest rides and day rides, and help match the right horse to the right rider. Nothing else you do all week matters as much.

• Feed, tack, doctor, and keep eyes on the whole herd.

• Work with the Barn Boss and Lead Wrangler to bring horses down the ladder. Groundwork, desensitizing, conditioning, miles.

• Keep the intermediate horses genuinely intermediate and the spicier ones honest.

The…