ORANGE : Equestrians’ Troubled Trail Tale

River Trail Stables in Orange is, as its name suggests, a bucolic stone’s throw from the banks of the Santa Ana River--7 1/2 acres of tree-shaded horse stalls, bordered by a narrow bridle path that meanders beside the waterway.

Flocks of nesting ducks, terns and an occasional blue heron glide along the air currents above the marshy riverbed. Vincent, the stable cat, stretches out atop a weathered picnic table near the training ring.

“This,” said River Trail owner Nancy Shipley, “is our little haven--our little country, where you can almost forget you’re in the middle of the hustle and bustle.”

Almost. The rattles and clunks and roars from a nearby carpet foam factory provide a syncopated reminder of all that surrounds River Trail Stables.

After Shipley bought River Trail Stables in 1985, an industrial park overtook the last of what was once orchards and fields. And with the encroachment has come competition for the river trail itself.

“Our main problem is with bicycle riders,” Shipley said. The Santa Ana River marks the 28-mile course for two bike and equestrian paths from the Orange County line near Green River Golf Course to the Huntington Beach shoreline. For the most part, the asphalt-paved bike path is some distance from the dirt bridle trail.

“But right here, the paths are together,” Shipley said. In fact, the two paths converge at the end of the river bank.

Many bike riders don’t realize when a horse is walking quietly along the trail, a sudden noise or movement can spook it, especially from behind, Shipley said.

“If a horse can see something, they can pretty much handle it,” Shipley said. “It’s the element of surprise that is so dangerous.”

Every rider at the stable has a horror story about cyclists, she said. One often-repeated story involves a cyclist who slapped the rump of a horse as he sped by. The horse spooked and reared, but the rider hung on. One of the stable’s trainers, who was along for the ride, chased the cyclist. And soon, a posse of other riders on the trail joined the pursuit until the bicyclist was caught and told how nearly disastrous his prank had been. Sheepishly, the cyclist returned and apologized to the shaken rider.

Not all bicyclists are a problem.

“Families are usually very considerate,” Shipley said. But the serious, spandex-clad cyclists who use the trails for conditioning and to practice for racing events are another matter, she added.

“It’s not just my thinking,” Shipley said. “We almost think there should be a speed limit.”

Some county workers charged with overseeing the trails agree that problems sometimes occur where the paths converge.

“I’ve clocked some of them going 35 to 45 miles per hour--with their heads down, not watching where they’re going,” said Ron Broadbelt, a county bike trail maintenance worker. “It’s crazy.”

But a speed limit would be almost impossible to enforce, Broadbelt said. A more practical solution would be to separate the trails--a design plan that is part of the much-delayed Santa Ana River Flood Control project. Terrie Medeiros, a project manager with the county’s Environmental Management Agency, said the plan calls for widening the river near River Trail Stables and creating a new equestrian trail.

“That’s the only real solution,” said Jean McIntire, a county transportation planner who has been riding horses out of River Trail Stables for several years and has had her share of run-ins with cyclists.

But construction along this stretch of the riverbed isn’t scheduled to start until April, 1994, with completion of the area estimated at mid-1995. In the meantime, “if (cyclists) could just not reach out, slap the horses or shout,” Shipley said, then most riders, in turn, would try to keep their horses out of the way of the bikes.