I decided to try Billie up front first (he is supposed to be a lead dog, after all) but without the distraction of intact (and probably going in to heat soon) Pepper right behind him. I would hook up the dogs from back to front once Billie was installed in lead and see what happened. He would only have to ignore Pepper while I got Norrin, a much smaller interval of temptation.
Billie surpassed my expectations! Once he was up front, he pulled his line tight and sat down, watching me over his shoulder and never budging from his post. Maybe I've underestimated this dog, as well. I hooked everyone up and sent Peter to the trail head in the truck.
Launch went well, except for Devilfish and Parka. I realized two runs ago, when Parka ended up on the right side as we left the yard, that Parka is a left-side dog. She only wants to run on the left side of the line, and will do whatever it takes to get there once we are moving. This time, I had made sure she was on the left when I hooked her up, but without necklines on my wheel dogs, it was easy for Devilfish to make a lane-change a few seconds before I pulled the snow hook. Parka backed away from him, running with the brushbow nearly clipping her hocks, trying hard to get enough space to jump over his tug line and the gang line. But on our narrow trail from the house, she was having a lot of trouble. I ended up stopping the sled completely about two hundred yards out, and without the momentum of the team she got herself over the lines and it was smooth sailing the rest of the way out. But stopping the team so soon out of the yard is confusing and frustrating for everyone, and Parka's determination to never, ever run on the right side of the gangline puts her in a potentially dangerous situation so close to the sled. I'll have to remember to be sure she is in the right spot from the beginning, from now on.
Peter helped us get around the corner with no problem - once Billie and Norrin saw the trail, and with Peter giving them some momentum, they were full-speed-ahead down to Rosie Creek without a glance back. The trail across the creek was clear, and the overflow by the banks was frozen and crusted over with just enough snow that Norrin didn't notice it. (I learned on our few runs last spring and several walks on the banks of the Tanana this summer that he is terrified of water.)
At the intersection with the main trail system, the dogs again didn't want to turn right, away from the more straight-ahead looking left-fork. As soon as I realized my calls for a turn were getting us nowhere, I set the snow hook and hauled the leaders around in the direction I was determined to take. Too late, I saw I had stopped too far back down the creek trail and my sled was going to head straight for a birch tree when they got their momentum going around the corner. For a second, I thought I could guide the sled around it, but in that same second the sled lurched forward and my hand - or more specifically my pinky finger - took the brunt of the force of the team as the sled bounced off the slender tree with my hand in the way.
I stowed the snow hook and shoved my throbbing finger into my mitts - no use worrying about it at this point. We flew down the trail, and I watched for the slight left-hand turn the trail takes up into the hills for the loop. We ran on, and I saw that my snowshoes and the extra snow hook were starting to bounce loose. I don't have a real sled bag, at this point. They have to be custom made, and given our ever-shortening tenure in Alaska the expense hasn't seemed worth it. Instead, I have a duffel bag with extra layers, first aid supplies, rudimentary camping gear and a small hatchet lashed down in the sled basket. Now that the snow is deep enough to sink in to, I've added snow shoes but the lashing wasn't keeping them in place on the bumpy turns. I stopped several times to readjust, but nothing save a complete reworking of the load seemed to do the trick.
After several stops to adjust the snowshoes, I started realizing that the trail didn't look familiar at all. We should have been climbing the switchbacks through the birch by now. There were no switchbacks, and no birch. Just alders and spruce and unfamiliar corner after corner. I had no idea how I had missed a trail that had been the ONLY trail option a month ago, the last time we'd taken this route. But here we were, following a clearly packed snow machine trail and veering more and more east.
When I looked up again, I saw that Billie and Norrin were coming out into a clearing and then realized that the clearing was a road and they were in the middle of it. I yelped and hit the brake but they were already there. I occured to me in that instant that they might take my stopping them in the middle of the road to mean I wanted them to turn down the road, and if they did that there was no way I'd be able to stop the sled and get the team turned around again. I let off the brake nearly as quickly and yelled for them to go straight. They obliged and I was relieved to see that the road was both empty of cars and not the big 50 mph main road out of our neighborhood - just a little neighborhood side street in the more populated area closer to the highway.
I let the team go a few yards up the main trail, then stopped them and checked my GPS. We'd gone just shy of four miles, which would give us about the right distance I'd wanted for this run anyway. And I knew the next road this trail would cross was that big one - and soon. I turned the team around (and this time, the extra snow hook held!) we headed (more carefully) back across the road and home.
Once the dogs were settled in, the yard cleaned up and gear put away I came inside and took a look at my throbbing finger. Only the pinky had gotten caught between the sled and the tree, but it had taken a good hit. It wasn't bending all the way and was starting to show a nice colorful bruise. But it was just one finger - and not a very important typing finger at that. I could just as easily have smashed my whole hand.
The cold snap hit as predicted that night and settled in for the long haul. The local paper reported that we are on track to have the coldest overall January since the 1970s, and the fifth coldest in over a hundred years. In the days since our last run, we've seen some of the coldest temperatures since we moved here six years ago. We've been spending most of our time stoking the woodstove and cycling dogs into the house to defrost. Although their thick winter fur and houses full of fresh straw keep them warm even in these frigid temperatures, ice builds up on their coats as they exhale and eventually diminishes its insulating ability.
Although I'm not adverse (well, mostly not adverse) to taking the team out for a run in temperatures like these, I don't have enough cold-weather gear for all of them. Unlike larger, thick-coated northern freight dogs (Malamutes, MacKinzie River Huskies) Alaskan huskies are bred to race. If they had the crazy-thick coats of their northern counterparts (which would keep them warm outside their houses in these temperatures) they would easily overheat in the average temperatures they encounter on winter race trails. When the temperatures drop like this, mushers use coats and boots to keep racing dogs warm. When temperatures rise much higher than ten or fifteen above zero, extra breaks must be taken on the trail to keep the dogs from overheating.
At any rate, we won't be going anywhere except to the woodpile for a few more days, at least.
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