Mountain Adventures: Building an Arena

One of our bigger challenges we faced with moving was our training location. The pastures were uneven with rows from the property being used primarily for corn and tomatoes in the past, and with the high clay content, this is not easy to remedy. So, we opted to build a small outdoor arena. Now when I say small, I mean SMALL. 12m x 24m. 40ft x 80ft. This is tiny by modern standards. Why did we do this? Well, one, we are still waiting to start the main building process until the Raeford property sells (do check it out! A lot of the facility photos on the website are from there, so if you’re looking for a nice facility near Southern Pines and less than a mile from the Carolina Horse Park, please look at our old place on Montrose Road!), two, we wanted to spend more time on the property before settling on an arena location for the regulation-sized covered arena, and three, the land is pretty hilly (it doesn’t look that hilly until you take a laser to it…), so a large outdoor arena would be very expensive.

Attempt number one for the arena put it in the hay meadow on the road side of the bridge. We opted for this space because we figure we’ll be hosting clinics, giving demos, and other activities before we were done building, so it made for easy parking and a good landmark. It’s also insanely picturesque and peaceful. Now why did we pick the size we did? Well, as you probably know, I’ve fallen in love with Rossfechten/mounted swordsmanship over the last few years and have gotten used to using that size of space for that kind of training (it is, after all, the same size as the arena at the 17th century arena at Hofreitschule Bueckeburg, where my Rossfechten mentor trained). So, we figured for a first arena, it would do the trick and not be too expensive.

This is where mountain living is a bit interesting. We built the Montrose property from a falling-apart tobacco barn (now the adorable cottage on the property) and otherwise raw land. We had added to two farms in Indiana as well and built a farm in Texas way back in the day, so building arenas in itself isn’t new. However, each area has different needs. In Indiana, the soil is very clay-heavy, so we could level and compact the clay, add a layer of gravel and a layer of packed crushed limestone for drainage, and then add footing on top (sand, sand/rubber, etc.). In the Sandhills, the soil is 6ft+ of sand before you get to anything else, so it’s a very different concern. Many said you could just ride on the sand, but we found that to be too deep, and grass tends to die off with a lot of traffic. So, we put in a clay base, a crushed granite drainage layer, and then footing on top (sand/screenings in one arena, sand/fiber in the covered arena). Here, in the Appalachians, the soil is all over the place. Ours is heavy clay in some areas and fairly sandy in others. The biggest challenge, however, is that the Appalachians are a rainforest. There are underground springs EVERYWHERE. The water table fluctuates like crazy. So, the first attempt for the arena was to pack and level the clay at our chosen site, add packed screenings as a drainage layer, then add sand.

It failed miserably in less than a year. The water table brought water up from below the arena when it rained, and the screenings melted into the footing. We had to have a drainage layer, as the soil stayed so saturated that the arena would only be useable for a day out of the week during the rainy season (which is 10 months out of the year…). So, we had to rebuild the arena. Thanks to the wonderful engineers from Premier Equestrian, we developed a plan. Our arena has not one, not two, but THREE drainage layers: large gravel/ballast on the bottom, road bond in the middle (like what packed gravel driveways are made of), and smaller gravel on top. This is covered with a geotextile cloth, and then the footing is placed on top. Since we were going so big, and we might as well go all the way, we went with a silica sand and fiber footing on top, following Premier’s plan and using their fiber additive. This way, the horses wouldn’t punch through the sand to the gravel, but the water could go through and drain off. For the ground water, it can’t get above the road bond, so it stays in the ballast layer below. The ballast is protected from sinking into the clay with another cloth layer. Now, we have to worry about keeping the arena moist enough! Thankfully, a pump with a firehose pumping water from the creek waters it down in a few minutes, so it stays nice even if we happen to not get rain for a couple weeks.

The horses love the arena, and so do we. Yes, the size takes some getting used to, but most people come to like it. If we need to school things over bigger spaces, such as extended trot, the far hay field has some gentle slopes and works well for schooling bigger movements. This closely mirrors what would have been done historically: much of the basic training was done in the arena, but then it was taken out to the field for application and for the movements that need bigger space. For battle, this meant that agility was developed in the often-quite-small arena and then was ready to apply to bigger spaces. Many arenas in the heyday of classical riding were extremely small, even 8m x 8m! The Spanish Riding School’s arena was quite huge for its time at 18m x 58m. That’s not to say I’d recommend everyone use a small arena; the frequent turns mean you have to be very aware of your horse’s balance as you school, and you have to be very precise in your geometry if you want to avoid making sudden/sharp turns. However, for us, it works beautifully as a schooling and demonstration arena, and even when we do build a larger covered arena, it will continue stand as a nod to the history of classical riding.