Glenmont woman named Top Trail Rider of 2021
Lisa Jamison, who lives in Glenmont with her husband and three children, managed to log 2,780 miles riding her horses last year, making her the Top Trail Rider of 2021 by Top Trail Horse, a website where members track trail rides and pit their mileage against other members around the country to win prizes.
A couple of years ago, Lisa Jamison, who lives in Glenmont with her husband and three children, heard about Top Trail Horse, a website where members track trail rides and pit their mileage against other members around the country to win prizes. In 2021 she decided to sign up.
“I’m competitive,” Jamison said. “I do like to win things, but my goal was I wanted to ride my personal horses more.”
Jamison has two horses of her own, but she also trains horses for others. She specializes in trail training, so she spends a lot of time riding. “I thought, 'I bet I can ride 2,000 miles a year,' and I told my husband that, and he kind of laughed a little bit,” she said.
But her husband isn’t laughing now because Jamison managed to log 2,780 miles last year, making her the Top Trail Rider of 2021.
It’s an impressive accomplishment for any rider, but trail riding has always been an important part of Jamison’s life. She got her first horse at age 9 and spent her childhood years having horseback adventures with her friends.
“There was a big open field we were allowed to ride in, and we would ride there all day,” she said. “We’d pack a lunch and everything. I don’t even know what we did because it was only about 50 acres, so we’d kind of just go in circles. We just rode and rode and rode. I loved the freedom.”
Jamison didn’t have any formal training until she was 16 when she got a job as a wrangler at a summer camp for kids. “About all I knew about horseback riding was how to stay on,” she said.
The owners took Jamison under their wing and taught her horsemanship skills, and she spent the summer taking camp kids on trail rides and perfecting her riding skills.
Twenty years later her love for the trail hasn’t disappeared. Jamison rides just about every day, usually by herself but sometimes it’s a family affair. Her husband is an experienced horseman in his own right. In fact, he bought her engagement ring with money he earned training horses. Despite his busy work schedule, he is supportive and joins her on the trail when he can.
“He’ll go out with me on occasion,” Jamison said. “He doesn’t love it as much as I do, but he still enjoys it.”
Jamison’s children — age 14, 12 and 10 — also ride from time to time, but she never forces them. “I want them to do it because they love it, not because Mom wants to get more miles,” she said.
Jamison also has a network of friends nearby that she can meet up with for rides. “Having a friend to ride with definitely motivates me to get out on the trail more,” she said. “Doing anything with friends that enjoy the same things as you, it helps.”
As for her equine companions, Jamison has two riding horses of her own, each with their own riding style. Her main riding horse is a 14-year-old Quarter Horse mare named Chica. “She’s the one I can pull out and ride as long as I want,” Jamison said. She also has a grade Quarter Horse named Jasper.
When she’s not riding her horses, she keeps her husband’s horse in shape. And then she has her clients' horses in training. She logged her rides on all of them.
“I accomplished my miles on several different horses,” Jamison said. “I did a lot of small rides because a lot of the young horses I had in, I was only doing 2 or 3 miles on. They couldn’t really handle any more than that.”
Summers are hot and humid in Ohio, and winters bring frigid temperatures and snow, but Jamison rides year round.
“As much as I like to try to talk friends into riding with me when it’s 10 degrees out, I don’t really get a lot of takers,” she said. “But I actually do quite a bit of riding through the winter. I put drill tech (similar to borium) on the bottoms of my horses' shoes so I’ve got a bit of grip. If it’s really icy, we have to stay off the roads.”
No matter the weather, Jamison is fortunate to have lots of places to ride. Her property is at the end of a dead-end road, surrounded by a forest of oak and hickory. She can ride out on rural roads or trails through the woods. She described the terrain as hilly and rocky.
“It’s not terribly rugged, but I have a lot of different options. It depends on what horse I’m riding and what their needs are for that day,” Jamison said.
Jamison has 15 acres, but her neighbors also allow her to ride on their properties, giving her hundreds of acres to explore.
“I really have a nice group of community here. They’re very happy to let me ride on their property,” she said.
There also is a Rails-to-Trails area — the national initiative to convert abandoned railroad lines to paths for hiking, biking and horseback riding — nearby, and she also can haul out to several nearby state parks.
Jamison is logging her miles on Top Trail Horse again this year. Not even two months into the year, she’s already ridden nearly 400 miles.
“I want to do at least 2,000 miles,” she said. “But I’m very competitive, so I have to try really hard not to be like 'I’m gonna ride 3,000 miles this year.'”