What it is
Koli Equestrian Center is the stable at the western end of Wild Horse Pass, on Broken Ear Road behind the Sheraton Grand, and it belongs to the Gila River Indian Community in the way the rest of the pass does: the land is the Community’s, the horses graze on it, and the rides are run by a Community member who has led them for nearly a quarter century. Rides go out daily from 7 AM to 6 PM, mostly an hour long with ninety-minute and two-hour options, across open desert toward the Sierra Estrella, the range that closes off the western horizon. An estimated 1,500 wild horses live on the Community, mostly out toward those mountains, and the pass is named for them.
The two rides people book are the Margarita Sunset, which heads west as the light goes and finishes with a drink, and the Early Bird, which leaves at first light to beat the heat from May into September. Horsemanship 101 is for people who have never been on a horse; there are lessons for children, and from March through June there are evening wagon rides, one for families and one for adults only. Riders must be six.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Scottsdale has rental stables, and good ones; our horseback riding note covers MacDonald’s Ranch on Scottsdale Road and the Cave Creek outfits. What none of them can offer is this land. A Koli ride is an hour on a sovereign nation’s desert, with a guide who grew up on it, past broken pottery that his ancestors made, toward a herd of horses that nobody owns. The scenery is comparable to Cave Creek’s; the hour is not comparable to anything.
The practical version
Forty minutes from Old Town down the 101, 202 and I-10 to Wild Horse Pass Boulevard, then west past the casino and the Sheraton. Book ahead, especially for the sunset ride, and check in fifteen minutes early. Long trousers, closed shoes, a hat and sunscreen. The center can arrange transport from the Gila River casino hotel if you are staying there. The Sheraton Grand is five minutes away for a shower and a drink after, and Kai, its Five-Star dining room, is the way to end the day if you have planned it.
When to go
November through March is the season for the Margarita Sunset: the ride leaves in late afternoon, the Sierra Estrella go orange and then purple, and the margarita at the end is a reward rather than a necessity. Spring, March into June, adds the wagon rides, a family ride before sunset and a 21-and-over moonlit one, with the wranglers telling stories; they run seasonally and the dates post on the Wild Horse Pass events calendar. Summer is the Early Bird or nothing: the ride goes out at first light, the desert is cool for exactly as long as it takes, and the afternoon belongs to the Sheraton’s pool.
Weekdays are quieter, and a weekday private ride is the one most likely to be routed toward where the horses have been seen.
Which ride
- Margarita Sunset. The one to book. Toward the mountains, ending at dusk with a drink.
- Early Bird. Summer’s answer, and pleasant in any month if you are a morning person; the light on the Estrella at seven is the day’s best.
- Private ride. Four or more of you, your own wrangler, and the ride can go where the herd is. Ask.
- Horsemanship 101. A lesson before a ride, for the genuinely nervous. There is no shame in it; the horses are calm and the wranglers are patient.
- The wagon rides, March through June, for children under six and for anyone who wants the stories without the saddle.
With kids
Six and up ride their own horse on the regular rides, and the wranglers are used to it. Under six, the spring wagon ride is the option. Bring water and hats for everyone.
What you will see
Creosote flats and washes, saguaro and ironwood, the Sierra Estrella ahead and South Mountain behind, and, if you are lucky, the horses. The guides point out some of the pottery sherds along the trails and leave others unmentioned, to protect them, which tells you how they think about the land. Ask questions; the answers are the reason to come.
The story
The horses came first. The Akimel O’otham have kept horses since the Spanish brought them, and a feral herd has ranged the Community’s western desert near the Sierra Estrella for generations, numbering about 1,500 today. When the Community laid out its resort district at the I-10 crossing in the 1990s it named the place for them, Wild Horse Pass, and when the Sheraton opened in the early 2000s a stable went with it, offering the thing a resort on tribal land could offer that a resort in Scottsdale could not: the land itself, with its people as guides.
The rides have been run for most of that time by Chuck Pablo, a Community member whose Chuck’s Trail Rides and Adventures operates Koli; he has led them for nearly twenty-five years and talks, as the rides go out, about the Akimel O’otham and Pee Posh who live here and the Hohokam whose broken pots lie along the washes. The center was named one of 250 sites in a national digital guide marking the country’s 250th anniversary, a recognition that a trail ride is also a history lesson here. It remains a small operation, horses and wranglers and a tack room, which is what you want.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s horse culture, the Arabian show, the Parada del Sol, the stables on Scottsdale Road, is a settlers’ culture, a century old and proud of it; our Western heritage note tells that story. The O’odham horse culture is older and quieter, and Scottsdale visitors mostly meet it by accident, watching the Salt River wild horses from an inner tube on the Lower Salt, which our tubing note describes. Those horses belong to the Salt River Community’s side of the Valley; these belong to the Gila River’s, twenty-five miles south, and a Koli ride is the one way to meet them from the saddle rather than the river. Do both and you have seen the Valley’s two wild herds in a weekend.
Getting there
Loop 101 south to the 202, the 202 west to I-10, I-10 east toward Tucson to the Wild Horse Pass Boulevard exit, then west past the casino and the Sheraton Grand and follow the signs to Broken Ear Road; the stable is at 6940 W Broken Ear Road. Forty minutes from Old Town with no traffic, an hour from North Scottsdale. The center can arrange transport from the Gila River casino hotel. There is no transit, and a rideshare each way costs about what the ride does, so this is a car trip, or better, a night at the Sheraton with a dawn ride booked.