4-H trail ride, with an accident

Wade and I run trail rides for our kids 4-H club every spring and fall. These are fundraising ones. We made over $400 on Sunday. Usually everything goes smooth. Not so for this one.
First of all, Wade woke up sick as a dog Sunday morning. But we loaded Tom anyway. Then as we were leaving, Taegan decided she did want to ride after all and I had to send Brennen out with her to catch Freckles. So finally everyone is loaded and we leave.
Then we are almost ready for the riders to leave and Wade decides that he can't ride after all. Not good, cause I don't really know where we were going all that well. Usually he rides at the front and I make sure we don't lose any slowpokes. Luckily we had another parent help out, plus an older guy who knew where we were heading.
3/4 of the way to the lunch stop, Brennen's horse Sandy throws a fit and starts bucking. I was hollering at him to get her head up. He did and got her stopped. It looked like she was going to start again, so I yelled at him to get her nose to his knee (I was a few horses behind him with Vamp, but making my way up to him while trying not to set her off again). While Sandy was bucking, one of the horses behind me decided to have a roll in the sand. The kid riding her got off and tried to get her horse up. When she did leap up, the kid got the reins pulled out of her hands and the horse trotted away from her.
So here we are, trying to quietly catch one horse in our group and trying to get Brennen's horse calmed down (he says Taegan banged into them and that's what started the bucking). Then a woman come galloping back towards us from up ahead. She had heard us and figured we were in trouble. And as we all know, galloping at people in trouble is just the thing to so (I wish sarcasm worked better in print). Now, this horse she was riding is not a nice sensible animal in the first place, so why she thought she'd be able to help was beyond the 5 adults who already had the situation under control. Brennen was way more upset about her coming toward him than he was about Sandy bucking. And we were yelling at her to slow down, but she came right at him. He could have reached out and touched her horse, that's how close she came. You could see Sandy tense up, so I put Vamp in front of her. Once the lady went back to our own group, everybody got going again and went great. We stopped for hotdogs and drinks. Brennen actually asked if Sandy had actually been bucking, cause she was so smooth her thought it might just have been crow hops.
So we started on the last half of the ride. We had a big hill to go down and Taegan was a little scared, cause Freckles figured they should trot down it, so I hooked a lead to her and ponied her down.
We had to wait for the slower ones to come down the hill, so we wouldn't lose anybody. While we were waiting, one girl's horse reared straight up and she came off. She thought her horse had landed on her, and her back hurt, so we called Wade, who was up at where the trailers were parked. He figured he wouldn't be able to get right up to us cause of a creek. Turns out he was right. We ended up calling in an ambulance cause she was in alot of pain. Lucky thing one of the riders was a nurse. I ended up sending most of the riders up with TwoEyedChelly, cause we were going to start losing light. Ended up with 3 horses, the kid who was hurt and 6 people left in the valley, in the only 1/2 mile of the whole ride that couldn't be accessed by vehicle. It was getting pretty cold. We ended up piling most of our clothes, plus clothes that were left by the other riders on the hurt kid.
Finally a gator got to us. We got her on a back board and got her across the creek and into the ambulance. There ended up being 2 quads, the gator, a fire truck, the RM emergency van, the ambulance, a tractor to smooth out the creek, and 2 trucks all down there to help out with the kid.
As soon as she was loaded, the 3 of us with horses headed up the hill. It was getting pretty dark and things were not looking real familiar, but I got us back in one piece. It was pitch black and we were freezing cold, but safe and sound.
Turns out the kid had a badly bruised hip, plus other bumps and bruises, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
Taegan had her own near miss on the back up. They went along an electric fence and Freckles hit it, took a few good jumps and was shaking her head. Taegan was out of her saddle and hanging over her butt, holding onto her reins and a saddle string. Freckles jumped again, but Taegan held on and got back into her saddle. She was real proud about staying on. Glad I didn't see it. I might have had a heart attack, but Wade insists that if either of us had been there, we would have warned her not to go near the fence.
The crappy part was once we were back up to where the trailers were, Wade was saying if he'd thought about it, he'd have come got us with a trailer. Nice of him to think about that after I darn near froze my butt off.
Sorry this is so terribly long. At least no one ended up seriously hurt.

holy crap!!! what a ride you had. thank gawd no one was SERIOUSLy hurt!!!

Good Heavens, I am glad you all made it safely out. Sounds like quite an adventure.

That was quit the atventure.. I am happy everyone got back safe and only bruised.. Goodness, things could have been much worse..

I saw the girl who came off on Wednesday. She's fine. You'd never even know she was ever hurt. But better safe than sorry. And Taegan is quite proud that she stayed on when she hit the electric fence. She's been telling everyone. Which is good, cause she didn't want much to do with the horses for a while.
But we did learn to make an emergency plan for the spring ride.

wow sorry about everything that happened!

geezers! glad everything eventually turned out okay!