Alaska! Dog Sledding Day 2

When we fell asleep Friday night, the loft of the cabin was cozily warm. So warm in fact, that we were practically lying on top of our sleeping bags. As the night wore on and the fire died down, we slowly retreated to the warmth inside of them. Saturday morning we awoke on our own to the chill of the early Alaska spring air (or late Alaska winter depending on how you want to look at it). It wasn't long before the sounds of Mike making a fire rose up to us, and the warmth soon followed. We finally had the courage to emerge from our sleeping bags and begin our day.

We quickly dressed and packed up our things and went downstairs for coffee, bagels, and leftover pears, yogurt, and pear syrup. After breakfast, we wandered back out onto the lake while Mike finished getting the cabin and the dogs ready for our departure. Our stroll was well worth it. We were greeted by a completely cloudless view of Mt. McKinley. Apparently, we were the first of Mike's clients to wander out on the lake because he didn't know you could see Mt. McKinley from it until we mentioned it. He went out in the morning to verify it for himself. Everyone else must sit around the cabin the whole evening. Boy are they missing out on the fun!

After snapping a few photos, we headed back to the cabin, grabbed our stuff, and headed up to the sleds. We loaded our things and set to greeting the dogs. I made sure I gave all six of mine some love, but at the end of the day Jade still stole my heart. She stole all of our hearts. There may be a fight over her after she retires.

Meagan and Jade

Christina and Jade

Me and Jade (I think it's clear she loves me the most).

Hitching up the dogs was a more lively experience today than it had been the day before. Without Corrine there to help us, we were responsible for a lot. Meagan and I assisted each other, or rather the more accurate representation of that was that Meagan assisted me. I think her experience as a vet pre-EIS was really helpful. I was so afraid of hurting the dogs while putting them in their harnesses, I think I let them get away with too much. She had them in their harnesses in no time. The first three dogs went pretty smoothly, although their excitement to get going was evident by their walking me to the sled as opposed to the other way around. Getting them from where they were chained up for the night to the sled was more tiring than I could have imagined. When I detached the fourth dog from the chain, he took off, leaving me flat on my stomach looking at a dog running off without me. He didn't go far though, and it wasn't too long before he was where he was supposed to be. The next two dogs also managed to get away from me but not in quite as spectacular of a way. It was a bit of a relief to get them all harnessed up.

All ready to go for the day. Notice how some of them are jumping up and down trying to pull the sled forward even though it is anchored in the snow.

The anticipation of starting on the second day was almost worse than the day before. I knew what was coming today. But at the same time, I knew how to handle it as well, or at least I thought I did. The day started off with energetic dogs and a long descent. I was riding the main brake down the narrow path and half my sled went off the lip of the trail. I tried to readjust my weight to stay upright, but my desire to keep my foot on the brake won. Before I knew it, I had tipped over and my sled was pulling away from me. Luckily, everyone was still pretty close, so the dogs and sled didn't get too far. Once I was back on my sled, we headed back the way we had come the day before and then on towards a trail called Moose Alley.

We made our way across a stream and up Moose Alley, and I mean up. The trail had a lot of elevation gain. Nothing too too steep, but it did require helping the dogs out a bit. On the really steep ascent, we would jump off and run next to sled up the hill. The challenge with those was always getting back on the sled. Once everything was up the hill, the sled became easier for the dogs to pull and they would speed up. My strategy was to jump on right at the lip of the hill. I always felt really bad when I missed the foot pads and landed on the brake. By the time we reached the end of Moose Alley, it was time for a lunch break.

The view was great.

Cooling off after the morning workout

Mike handing out lunch to the dogs. They are so excited, yet so patient and well behaved.

Nap time. They all chilled out during today's break, even mine.

After lunch, we headed back down through Moose Alley. Hmm... Rested dogs and a descent, I'm starting to sense a theme. I think I hadn't realized that the Moose Alley trail was winding and narrow on the way out but things weren't moving all that quickly because we were going up hill. It was really apparent on the way back out. There were many instances of near misses with trees and near turnovers of the sled, but all in all I was doing pretty good. At least that was the case until I hit another section where the struggle between balance and keeping my foot on the brake once again became an issue. I'm not sure why keeping my foot on the brake always wins because it is clearly not the right move. This time me and my sled did not end up on our sides, but I did stumble off. I was holding on so tight when this happened that one of my mittens was pulled off by the sled as it pulled away from me. I started running after it, but it and the dogs disappeared in front of me rather quickly. Meagan was behind me and offered me a ride on her sled to catch up to the dogs. With some slight hesitation, I stepped onto Meagan's sled. She stood on one foot pad, and I stood on the other. With every downhill or sharp turn, I jumped off because I just didn't feel stable. Inevitably, we hit a sharp turn followed by a steep downhill. I jumped off and Meagan came off too. We both started running after her sled and dogs, laughing as we went. We rounded a corner to see Meagan's sled complete with a heap of Christina somewhat tangled in the dog's lines. Apparently, when my dogs came up on her, she had turned around to tell me to slow down because my dogs were getting in the way of her sled only to realize that there was no Erin on the sled. She stopped to wait on me and shortly there after saw Meagan's sled coming around the corner with no Meagan. She lunged to stop the dogs and ended succeeding, but not without a little sacrificing of her body in the process. We all had a good laugh and kept going trying to catch up with my dogs. We finally caught up to Mike, who had stopped them. Luckily, no one got hurt during the ordeal, well except for maybe a couple of bruises on Christina.

Meagan and her sled

The only running water we saw along the way.

The ice bridge we crossed to get to and from Moose Alley. That crack was not there when we went out.

The crack up close.

Both days my dogs would start out really energetic and fast and slowly lose speed. After lunch, they would be fast again and then lose speed a bit more quickly. Their lack of an ability to pace themselves caught up to them the second afternoon.

A break to let us catch up

We took a couple of breaks to rearrange the dogs to even up the pace. It turns out one of my lead dogs was the problem. It made me recall the day before when Mike said she was in training for the lead dog position and didn't know anything. He also mentioned that some people take puppies (I imagine puppies that are close to a year old) out with the snowmobile to start training them. It is fascinating to think about what goes into preparing a dog to be able to run 30 miles a day for many days in a row. The short training runs early in the season with a slow build up to major distances... anyways, I digress.

Once we had the dogs sorted out in a way to even up the speed of the sleds, we took a detour off of the main trail to check in on a climate change station set up by researchers from the University of Florida. They were preparing their team to come up to Alaska for their annual data collection trip and had asked Mike to report on the height of the snow drifts at the drift fences they had set. Sadly, their were no snow drifts because Alaska had had so little snow this year. I'm not sure if it is sad because the researchers might not get good data this year or because it may be a real sign of global warming. I'm going to hold out hope that it was just El Nino.

View from the research station

The terrain from the research station back to the trail was rough. As you can see from the photo above, it was a mix of snow and barren tundra. Since it wasn't actually a trail, the snow was deep and loose and the scrub on the tundra was not packed down like it was in more well traveled areas. The dogs were sinking in the snow and it was hard for me to get a good footing to help them out as well. I was really happy when we finally made it back to the main trail.

It was obvious we were getting near the end of our journey because there were starting to be signs of the outskirts of civilization. We were approaching the house in front of Mike's and had one more hill to climb. The hill was muddy and without snow. I jumped off to run up the hill next to the sled. Right at the crest of the hill I tripped during my efforts to jump back onto the sled. I had a good hold of it and found myself on my knees being pulled behind the sled. In my efforts to pull myself up, I soon found myself being drug behind the sled with my feet out behind me. From the waist up, I was dangling from the handle bar. From the waste down, I was collecting mud. I did a quick assessment and realized what was happening to me did not hurt, so I decided I was not going to let go. I was going to pull myself back up to a standing position (yeah, right). Because of the drag (pun was not intentional but quite fitting I must say) I was creating behind the sled, the dogs eventually stopped. I was able to pull myself up to my knees, but as soon as I tried to get back up to my feet they started going again. I found myself laid out being dragged yet again. By this time, Christina had caught up to me and tried to squat down on her sled to help me stop mine. Here's the tricky part. Since I was moving, Christina couldn't stop her sled and help me. She needed to be moving at the same speed as me. It was so tricky, that soon Christina was being drug on her knees behind her sled. Both of our sets of dogs finally stopped long enough for us to stand up and get back on the sled. Naturally, by the time this happened, Mike had turned around to check on us and witnessed the whole thing. Meagan had come up behind us to see it too. We all had a really good laugh and Mike proclaimed it the best finally to a trip. I can only imagine what he thought of us. After that and all of the running around the lake we had done the previous night with the sled, he surely must have thought we were a bit mad.

We were sad to get back to Mike's. We unhitched the dogs and said our goodbyes and then headed back to Earthsong Lodge to return our borrowed gear. It was such an amazing weekend.

It was nearly 7PM by the time we headed back to Anchorage. With 250 miles to cover at a maximum speed of 60 mph, we had a long drive ahead of us. I'm so glad it stayed light out until nearly 10 because we got to see some spectacular views on the way.

We pulled into our hotel in anchorage around midnight. We quickly showered, reorganized our things for the trip home, and went to bed. Our flight wasn't until 11:30AM, so we were able to get a good night's sleep before beginning our long journey home.

Thanks Meagan for organizing this trip - it was incredible! Thanks to both Meagan and Christina for making it such a fun weekend and letting me use some of their photos and video on my blog.

Alaska! Dog Sledding Day 1

We were supposed to be at Earthsong Lodge by 10AM to start our dog sledding adventure into Denali National Park and the surrounding areas. While it was only about a 10 minute drive from our hotel, we got up at 8 to give ourselves plenty of time to finish packing for the next two days and miss a couple of turns along the way (not that there were a lot of turns to miss). It took us a bit longer to get on the road than anticipated and we needed to get gas, so we didn't exactly get off to the best start. While at the gas station, we also looked for an air pump because the low tire pressure light had come on around Talkeetna the previous day (if I am remembering correctly, there weren't any services between Talkeetna and Healy, at least none that were open this time of year). Since the tires looked fine, we figured the pressure change was just due to the decrease in temperature. We figured we could top off a bit and be good to go. The gas station didn't have an air pump, or at least not one that we could see. We convinced ourselves that it wasn't a big deal and things would get back to normal when we got back to Anchorage and the temperatures were higher. I don't think we were more than a couple miles from the gas station when we hit a pot hole and our ears were filled with the sounds of a flat tire.

Christina called the rental car place to find out what we should do while I started putting on the spare. Turns out the rental car place was not helpful. Because we were in a remote area (5 hours from Anchorage and 3 hours from Fairbanks), there wasn't anything they were willing to do for us. So much for Dollar roadside assistance. Our options were apparently to buy the exact same tire (had to be the exact same) and have it put on or stay under 60 mph with the spare the rest of the trip. Seeing as how there wasn't really a place to buy a new tire, we opted for the latter option.

Yes, that is all of our stuff on the side of the road behind Christina.

It didn't take long for a couple of guys to pull over and help us change our flat.

I guess the decrease in temperature wasn't the problem after all.

After getting back on the road, we did end up missing the one turn we needed to make to get to the lodge. We drove several miles out of the way before we decided that we must have missed it and headed back. After all of that, we didn't arrive too horribly late at Earthsong Lodge. We were met at the gate to the kennel by a guy named J.J. We said hi to the dogs while he finished tending to some of the dogs, and then we made our way back to the shed where they store all the gear.

There were puppies!

It must have been nap time.

This one reminds me a bit of Yoda.

J.J. set us up with snow suits and boots and then led us down the road to where our guide, Mike, lived. After meeting Mike and his girlfriend Corrine, we spent time saying hi to his dogs while they finished getting the harnesses and sleds ready.

After the harnesses were all ready, Corrine took Christina into the dog yard to get the first dog for her sled. The dogs went nuts! They knew they were coming in to get some of them to pull the sleds, and they were so excited. Imagine your pet dog when you mention going "bye bye" and multiply that by 30. If dogs could talk, we would have been amidst a chorus of "Pick me! Pick me!"

A brief glimpse of the excitement.

Corrine teaching Christina how to harness the dogs. I think that is Jade.

Meagan's lesson from Mike. (As public health folk, we were super happy to see Mike wearing hearing protection). Greyling is the dog. They were all so good.

My turn.

Jade ready to go. She is such a sweetheart. We all want to adopt her after she retires.

Greyling's chants changed from pick me to let's go!

After the dogs were all harnessed and ready to go, we got a quick dog sledding how to. Usually, people have a training day before going out on an overnight trip. On those days, a guide goes with the person in the sled and is there to help them out if they get into trouble. Because of our work schedule, we didn't have time for a training day. Our "training" consisted of how to set and remove the anchor for when we got off the sled and how to work the two different kinds of brakes. One is like a mat that you step on to add a little bit of resistance, and the other is a two pronged claw like thing for when you really want to slow down or stop. Corrine reassured me that there really wasn't much to it and that we'd be fine. If she says so.

Mike was in the lead and once we were all ready, he set off around the bend. Christina soon followed and then Meagan. I was ready, but my heart was racing. The dogs were so excited to get going that they were jumping up and down trying to pull the sled forward with all of their might. I planted myself on the main brake and removed my anchor from the tree and set it in the basket of the sled. As I watched Meagan pull away from me, the anticipation of what it was going to feel like once the dogs were released was building. I slowly stepped off the brake and we shot forward. Even with the brake still half on, we were moving pretty fast. I forgot to mention we started out on a slight decline. I kept my foot on the brake until we got to the corner and started turning away from Mike's property. What an adrenaline rush! We made our way away from the few houses in the area and across some tundra that didn't have much snow on it. It was a pretty bumpy way to start, especially since I didn't really have my bearings on the sled yet. It didn't take too long before we got onto a nice wide snow covered trail. We stayed on this for a while and that helped me relax and get comfortable. We were dog sledding! It was so incredible!

Shortly into our trip, we spotted our first heard of caribou.

Mt. McKinley came into view shortly after that.

My sled and four of my six dogs.

Christina with her sled and dogs.

Meagan's dogs and sled.

We stopped for a snack and to give the dogs a rest after a few hours. Mike gave them all a piece of meat and we partially unclipped them from the main tow line. That let's them know they are on a break and can chill out for a while.

Cooling off after a hard run.

Christina's dogs were very good at chillin'. Mine, not so much. They managed to get themselves tangled around a pine tree and one of them chewed through another's rope to get them all free from the tree. He was running around on his own for a bit. He said hi to all of the other dogs and then came to hang out with us. Mike took him back to the sled and got him reattached.

Christina's dogs

Biscot

My buddy. Biscot started out next to me, and I was petting her. She kept inching closer and closer and eventually decided she was going to be in my lap. Such a sweetie!

Me with Thing, one of the dogs pulling my sled.

All ready to go again!

Awesome pictures Christina and Meagan took with their little point and shoots while we were sledding. I only had my big camera, and it was not so one-handed photo taking friendly.

I think this is my favorite photo. Way to go Christina!

Meagan got some awesome video of our frozen pond crossing.

Meagan, where's your sled? Only a slight misstep, no injuries.

Come along for the ride! Way to go Meagan!

Thanks Meagan for taking pictures of me!

All in all there was only one real mishap that involved flying off the sled during our first day. There was a rather sharp turn that Christina wasn't quite ready for. Her dogs were, so they and the sled made the turn, and well, Christina didn't. Inertia was not her friend. Mike was right in front of her, so he was able to quickly stop the dogs and the sled. The one nice thing about dog sledding is that when you do fall off, you land on something relatively soft. Christina was up and back on her sled in no time (only slightly bruised) and we were off again.

After somewhere around 25 miles and 5 or so hours of sledding, we arrived at the cabin we were staying at for the night. We chained up the dogs, unloaded the sleds, and headed into the cabin. It was really cute. It had a little dining/kitchen/sitting area down stairs and a sleeping loft upstairs. The lakeside of the cabin had huge windows overlooking the lake. There was no running water in the cabin (not surprising), but there was a gas stove hooked up to a propane tank. There was also a wood burning stove to heat the place.

Our cabin

Mike went out to the lake to cut some ice for drinking water while we got settled. We quickly noticed that the Census had been by. We were quite impressed given how remote of an area we were in. Mike said that they delivered his form on cross-country skis - awesome!

I love the address - Dave's ATV Trail.

The cabin had a bit of a fly infestation hanging out around the front windows, so part of our settling in went towards trying to deal with it. They were incredibly slow moving, so Meagan went after them with the broom while I used a little non-electric vacuum to sweep them up. As we were finishing up this task, Mike got back with the ice and set to making coffee. (He also told we were on vacation and should be letting him do everything - I don't think that is in our nature). By the time we finished drinking our coffee, new flies had replaced all of the ones we had just done away with. We resigned ourselves to the flies. It turns out they didn't really leave the windows, so they weren't that big of a deal.

After our coffee, we decided to go out and play in the snow. Our first order of business though was to get some photos with our gnomes.

Christina's gnome Geronimo. He didn't really come dressed appropriately for Alaska.

The cabin had a sled inside the front door, so we had brought that with us. There didn't really seem to be any sledding hills around, so we did some experimenting with the best way to go fast.

We tried running and pulling the rope with the hopes of sling shotting the sled forward, but that didn't work out so well. (You'll have to tilt your head to the left for this one.)

Then we decided we would clear the snow off of the ice to get to a slicker surface. We figured we didn't even need the sled at that point and could go with the slip and slide method.

That didn't work out so well either, but at least it didn't hurt.

The third time seemed to be the charm. We realized pushing was the way to go, and once we discovered the snow mobile tracks, it got even better.

After playing for quite some time, we headed back in for dinner. We dined on salmon and spinach ravioli with pesto sauce. Desert was yogurt with pears and pear syrup. It was all delicious. We made our way upstairs for bed between 10 and 11 and were so exhausted that we were asleep in no time. What an awesome day.