overnight

The next adventure on our plate came unexpectedly. A friend of mine who teaches at the community college is thinking about getting back into mushing, now that her son is five and old enough to hold on to the sled and help out with the dogs. Every year, Jenny takes a trip out to some public-use cabins near Fairbanks. She usually goes with visiting family, or friends with kids, but this year no traveling companions had materialized. She proposed a trip out to one of the cabins with my dog team and her snow machine, both for companionship and to get a feel for if she really does want to put together a team of her own.

This seemed like a perfect match. One of my goals for this winter was to do some cabin trips and some camping, but I was still a little wary of setting out for my first trip all alone. I don't have enough dogs to haul two people and all the gear and food we'd need. But with her snow machine available for most of the heavy hauling - and the company of another adult - teaming up for this first trip seemed ideal. I could bring more gear than the bare minimum, and would be able to see what I really did need without worrying about too much weight. And we wouldn't have the chaos - this time - of trying to cut and haul firewood back to the cabin with the dog team.

We reserved the Stiles Creek Cabin, about eight miles off road in the Chena Recreation Area near Fairbanks. I spent the week before the trip trying to figure out what all I needed to secure eight dogs and keep them fed and comfortable for two nights without dog houses or running water. In the end, I decided to use the drop-chains I had made for the truck, planning to string them together and secure them with the two snow hooks I was now carrying on the sled. I picked up a bale of straw from a local supply store for their bedding, as we are using grass hay in their houses here and it didn't seem bulky enough to keep them warm in the snow at the cabin.

I arrived home at seven am from work on the morning of our trip, and fed the dogs immediately. While they digested their breakfast, I scrambled to pack dog food, moose snacks, water pots, food bowls, harnesses, lines and the sled, as well as food and sleeping gear for myself. (Peter had generously taken care of making and freezing chilli and putting together pancake fixings for us while I was at work.)  One thing that surprised me was the sheer weight of the dog food we would need for just two nights - four meals - away. I began to wonder about the feasibility of longer trips without a place to resupply heavy food. I was going to have to work on getting the team used to hauling a heavier load.

I had decided to bring Pico along on this trip, even though he hasn't been running with the team. I knew that he'd be able to free-run the distance to the cabin with no problems, and I wasn't planning on hooking him up with the team although I did bring a harness for him just in case. When we arrived at the trail-head, however, he and Marley, my friend's one year old lab-golden mix, did not hit it off well. He was uncharacteristically growly with her, and I made a last-minute decision to hook him in with the team (putting Norrin back up with Billie) to keep them separated until they could work out their differences. Pico was ecstatic to be back in with the other dogs, but his lack of conditioning this year showed and he stopped pulling about two miles in. He kept up, however, running happily with a slack tug and wagging his tail whenever we stopped for a break.

And we stopped for a lot of breaks. Even though the trail to the cabin was only eight miles, it was a steep, hilly eight miles. The dogs were carrying all of my gear (their heavy food, bowls and chains were in Jenny's sled) as well as Jenny's son Sawyer who was perched happily on top of my duffel bag taking it all in. I ran up the hills behind the dogs, sweating through all my layers and glad I hadn't put on a parka as we left the parking lot. The views from the ridges were worth it though, the hills of the interior giving way to the sharp white peaks of the Alaska Range further south and everything covered in snow and sunshine. I was happy to stop at the top of each rise to catch my breath and take it all in.

We arrived at the cabin in one piece, Sawyer having ridden like a champ on top of all my gear without complaint the whole way in. We stayed two nights, spending most of Friday on the trails gathering firewood to restock the meager store at the cabin and running the dogs along the ridges further down the trail. Jenny had brought a rickety little sled from a friend, and we tried to split the team in two so she could get a feel for running dogs again. I put Billie and Norrin in front of Devilfish and Parka, but Norrin - again in the unseasonable heat - wasn't willing to pull up the hills and Billie wasn't willing for force him. Although Jenny's chase team of Reese, Pepper and Xtra were on our heels the whole time, it wasn't hard since we stopped every ten paces going up anything resembling a slope. Jenny had fun, but it wasn't a very successful run as far as that goes. I was left pretty frustrated with Norrin, and more sure than ever that Billie does best up front alone.

I let Pico run free with Marley and the snow machine on the trip back to the road on day three. Initially, he ran ahead to the snow machine and then bolted back to the middle of the team, causing some chaos and eliciting lots of yells and frustration from me. But eventually he tired of this game and just ran a few yards up ahead of Billie. This was great for me, as the dogs charged up the hills chasing him and I didn't have to do quite as much work behind the runners. But he tired even of this the last couple of miles, and decided he wanted to be with his pack. Much to the confusion of Xtra and Pepper, he took a place right next to them - no harness or lines - and ran the rest of the way back to the truck head held high, right in the middle of the team.

Overall, I got a good sense of what I would (and wouldn't) need camping with the team, and the whole thing was incredibly enjoyable. The dogs did great camping out. It was clear which dogs had raced before, as the race-savvy crew settled down immediately to sleep when they saw straw in the snow but Norrin and Pico stood confused for several hours before figuring it out. One thing that concerned me, besides the weight of the food, was the amount of time it took to melt enough snow for the dogs on the woodstove in the cabin. It took hours. I knew that "dog cookers" - camping stoves designed specifically to melt large amounts of snow for camping with dogs - were commercially available but prohibitively expensive for our little outfit. I'd heard that DIY versions weren't hard to make, and realized now that this was something I'd have to look in to if were were going to do any more overnight exploring. 

The temperatures were so mild that the cabin stayed warm for most of the night even without a stoked fire, and it felt good to be able harvest and leave so much firewood for the next cabin users - something that would have taken a lot more work without a snow machine and trailer to haul it all out of the woods. The trip re-energized my desire to do more overnights - both cabin and camping - before the suddenly fast-approaching end of the season. We got back to Fairbanks ready for more. My new plan was to spend the next few weeks doing longer runs, hauling more weight and hatching plans to get out again overnight, hopefully sooner than later.