Our second run, on November 1st, was again a mixed bag. With the trails near home too torn up to run and the pond ice still a little sketchy, I decided to try something new. A few miles from our house, the Alaska Dog Musher's Association has a network of trails that they maintain for sprint races throughout the winter. These races (and the trail system) run from three to twenty miles in length, in ever-expanding loops on flat ground north of town. Although there's only as much snow there is at our house, no ATVs are allowed on the trail system in the summer.
I wasn't sure if the trails were even open, so I drove by first to see if there were any signs of recent use. As I approached, I saw a musher with a four-dog team and a huge freight sled heading towards his parked truck from the trails. I pulled into the lot and spoke with him for a few minutes. His sled was truly a DIY job. He had bolted a piece of hard plastic between two runners, and bolted a reinforced rectangle at the back of the sledge as a handle bar. The whole thing was done with what looked like lumber scrap from a construction project, and the basket was about six feet long. The brush-bow was essentially square. The whole thing was angles and hard corners and heavy wood and thick bolts. It looked to weigh a couple hundred pounds all by itself. He had four mid-sized freight dogs hauling it, and he looked like he had just run a marathon himself. He confirmed that the trail was firm enough for a small team, and after a polite exchange during which he mostly caught his breath, I high-tailed it for home. Sunset was in an hour.
By the time I had loaded the dogs and the sled and returned to the ADMA trials, it getting on to sunset but with clear skies, not nearly dark. I hooked up and was amazed, again, as Leo took us across the broad field between the parking area and the trail start, taking my directions past several other enticing trails.
The dogs trotted happily at a nice clip down the first mile and a half while I struggled with the snow hook. This giant piece of metal which holds the sled and team like an emergency brake on a car has sharp points and needs to be secured while we are en route. I didn't like the way the previous owner had his snow-hook secured, so I'd been trying different things on the sled. The new placement was not working, and the line between the hook and the dogs kept running up under the runners, creating sudden off-sided drag and making the sled careen to the side of the trail with no warning.
The dogs were looking good, trotting even and fluid on the flat groomed trails we glided down the outbound route. Unfortunately, in my rush to get the dogs hooked up and running before dark, I had neglected to find a trail map. I don't know if I had ever even seen one. I soon realized my mistake when we started passing promising looking but as-yet-unbroken trails crossing ours ... about every minute. I had no idea which one was the three-mile turnaround, and the trails were not well marked and certainly had not been run since the last snow.
Eventually, we hit marshy pond and I decided to use the wider area to turn around and try right-hand turn that I thought would take us back towards the trail head. It took some discussion, but eventually Leo figured out what I wanted and we swung around to our back trail. When we got to the turn I wanted to take, however, I waited too long to call the turn and we missed it. I probably should have just run back on our outbound trail at this point, but I was feeling exploratory and wanted to try the whole loop. Or what I thought was the whole loop.
To make a long story a little shorter, there was a lot more discussion before the team did another near-U-turn to head down the trail I wanted. We got to an intersection and made a left ... and ran ... and ran ... and ran. After several more major intersections that did not look right, I realized we were now running on a snow-machine trail, which meant we had left the ADMA trail system and also meant I had no idea where we were in relation to where we wanted to be. Like the rookie I am, we just kept running. And running. And it was getting dark.
Eventually we hit a road, and I turned them down this until we got to a road-sign. I recognized the road, and figured if we ran up it, we would eventually rejoin the main road to the trail head which also has a snow-covered bike path. With only four dogs to control and the road sufficiently snow-covered to not destroy the runners, we made good on this plan.
I felt bad when we got back to the parking lot for two reasons. First, we had run a lot longer than I had intended. Although six miles isn't much, it was still a lot more than I had intended. I was really worried at first, because Sawyer seemed to collapse into the snow the instant we stopped next to the car. I realized later, though, that this was just her veteran racing-dog kicking in; Hey, we're not running. I'm gonna chill until you're ready to go again. At the time, though, it just added to me guilt at the getting-lost and running-long. Second, due to my rush (and the lack of a routine) I had no snack for them waiting in the car. That's a bit of a breach of contract for these guys.
The discoveries I made on this unexpected detour were 1a) Dottie is just as bad as Pico at trying to play with dogs we pass instead of passing on by 1b) Leo is stronger than Dottie, and Sawyer is stronger that Pico ... so we stayed on the road despite their loud protests in the direction of potential playmates. 2) The adjustments I made to my sled work (more on this later) and it steers like a little race car instead of a last year's school-bus of a sled and (probably most importantly) 3) Leo is a lead dog, and I had no idea how much I was missing out on last year without one. He is the only reason we made it back safely to the car running on roads & side-walks. And I really believe now that we are running, now that he is getting to do what he lives to do, he is warming up to me a little bit more.
Finally, there are a few things I need to work on if we are going to be forced to run trails from the car instead of from home. 1) Come up with a system for snacking & watering the dogs at the end of the run so they don't have to wait to get home for a belly full of warm, meaty, watery reward for a job well done. 2) Find with a better way to control access & egress from the back of the Subaru so I don't end up with loose dogs at the trail head. There is more, but that is plenty for now.
There is still no new snow, and I'm considering a trip north of town to the White Mountains tomorrow. I am hoping there is a little more snow on the trails up there. What I am really hoping is that I wake up to several inches on the ground and more pouring out of the sky ... but I try to have a variety of hopes so not all of them will be dashed by the reality of living in a plenty cold but ultimately very, very dry place.
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