Record-breaking rainfall in late September forced the organizers of the Chattahoochee Hills Horse Trials—scheduled to run Oct. 30-Nov. 1 in Fairburn, Ga.—to cancel their event. The Chattahoochee event was scheduled to run a CCI**, a CIC* and beginner novice through intermediate divisions. Those who entered will receive refunds.
In April, the Chattahoochee Hills venue, owned by Carl Bouckaert, ran its first event at novice through intermediate levels. In May, they ran beginner novice through intermediate, a CIC**, and the USEA Area III Championships. The 2010-12 American Eventing Championships have been awarded to the Chattahoochee Hills facility.
“It’s a stunning piece of property, and we’re mad and heavy into full-steam-ahead construction. Good old Mother Nature isn’t making things as ideal as we’d like. In the month of September, we had more than 30″ of rain,” said Ritch Temple, who organizes the events along with Mindy Friesen.
“We literally had the all-time largest amount of rain recorded in a 24-hour period, which was more than 20″. A portion of the cross-country course was under water. We did end up losing about 30 fences, because we had absolutely no notice.”
ADVERTISEMENT
The waters receded within 36 hours.
The Chattahoochee Hills team has completed construction on 120 of the 240 planned permanent stalls and is ready to finish construction on the two 250′ x 350′ competition rings.
“We’re madly building the advanced track. We have the equivalent of about 250,000 board feet of timber ready for custom milling. We do all of our own harvesting on the property, which is 8,000 acres. Dan Starck is our custom builder, and he’s now a full-time employee of the farm, as is Alan Poor,” Temple said. “We were always planning on building like crazy this winter—now we’ll plan on building like crazy plus 30 more jumps.”
On Oct. 13, Poplar Place Horse Trials, to be held Nov. 13-15 in Hamilton, Ga., announced that they had agreed to add CCI**, CCI* and intermediate divisions to their schedule.
