Backtrail: Holes In The Ice

Our second run began at the same little dead-end road two miles from the cabin. Peter helped me hook up again, and this time we only needed a little guidance to start moving in the right direction. That initial euphoria of flying down a trail behind a fresh team with the swish of runners the only sound caught in my throat as the field flashed by.

Unable to control where we were going, I just held on as Rsta took us to the left at the end of the field instead of right. We followed a fresh-looking snow machine track across a large frozen pond, over some smashed down, icy cattails and across a series of smaller marshy wallows. I worked my feet on the runners, shifting my weight and getting a better feel for how the sled responded to corners and straightaways and ruts in the trail. The dogs were in a groove, and settled into a nice trot. It was only a few short minutes before I saw powerlines and heard traffic on Ballaine Road. I had seen the "Caution: Dog Team Crossing" sign driving down that road a thousand times but had never noticed exactly where the trail came out to cross. On the trail itself, it was obvious. I don't know how I had missed it so many times before.

I slowed the sled, hoping Rsta would turn to the right or left so we could run along the road and perhaps loop back to the cabin. Instead, she plowed ahead to the asphalt. I stopped the sled and called for her to turn. "Gee ... gee" ... she jumped, banging against her harness straight ahead, not looking at me. "Haw, Rsta, Haw ..." she dug into the snow and inched the sled forward. I lifted my foot for a second to get a better grip on the brake. As soon as they felt the tension slack, the whole team jumped forward, and Rsta was on the road before I could get the claw back in the snow. For the moment there were no cars, but with a 50mph speed limit against us I didn't want to linger. I tried to drag the sled backwards, but realized the futility of this move the instant my foot left the brake again - the dogs were now all in the road and I had the brake set in the last bit of snow before the asphalt. I took a deep breath, let the brake go, and ran along side the sled as the dogs tore forward across the blacktop and onto the trail on the other side.

We ran along what I have come to know as the northern of the two Goldstream Valley trails for about twenty minutes. With a big, wide trail ahead of us and no options for turning, the three dogs trotted along contentedly and I settled into a blissful trance. I was mushing! We had successfully crossed a major road! What could possibly go wrong!?!

When we did get to a major trail intersection, I stopped the sled and tried to get Rsta to turn to the right. I knew there was a major trail along the southern edge of the valley, and I assumed this southbound trail connected to it. It would be a perfect loop. "Gee ... gee." Nothing. I set the snow hook as deep as I could and stepped off the sled. As soon as she saw me approach, Rsta turned around and ran towards me, causing a tangle in the lines. I sorted it out and dragged everyone out straight, then carefully moved the whole line at a 90 degree angle to the sled. I ran back to the runners to pull the snowhook ... and Rsta followed right behind me, pulling Pico and Arwyn around with her. Tangles. Arwyn's foot got caught in a neckline, Pico's harness was wrapped around his belly. Rsta had woven herself between the gangline and Arwyn's neckline. I straightened everyone out and walked Rsta back out front in the direction I wanted us to go. I walked backwards to the sled, yelping "No" at her every time she tried to turn and follow me. Back at the runners, I pulled the snow hook and said "let's go." Rsta immediately turned to the left and pulled us back onto the main trial. I stopped the sled and set the hook again.

The second time Rsta took the sled into a U-turn, I switched her out with Pico to see if he would understand where I wanted us to go. I lined him out and followed the same procedure of walking backwards to the sled while trying to verbally stop him in his tracks. Unlike shy, sensitive Rsta, my yelling "no" did nothing to dissuade him. He dutifully turned and followed me back to the sled, tail wagging full speed. I wanted to scream in frustration. Rsta and Arwyn started to whine with anxiety. I stood on the runners and took a deep breath, trying to calm down enough to deal with the dogs gently. Pico gave me a long look, then suddenly turned and bolted excitedly back down the trail hitting the end of the tug at full speed. It only took me a second to see that Arwyn's harness was wrapped around her belly, but she was running now, too, and I wanted to let us get at least a few yards down the trail now that we were moving. I stopped the sled and managed to get her untangled before Pico had a chance to come back to investigate.

And we were off again. We went down a slight dip in the trail, and crossed a creek. The trail we were following now was well defined with snow machine tracks and went straight across and up a gentle slope on the other side. Pico ignored this, took a sharp left-hand turn and plowed up the narrow, winding creek following a single set of cross country ski tracks that were not only lonely, but looked old. We had been out for an hour already, and I knew we didn't have much daylight to work with. Despite my attempts to make a nice loop and head home, we were headed east again, away from the road. The banks of the creek, after just a few yards, became steep and forbidding. There was no way to turn around, even if I could get the dogs to do it. I let them run.

Five minutes later, craning my neck up to both sides trying to find a likely way out of this mess, I was nearly thrown off the runners as the team took a sharp left turn. I jumped off with one hand on the handle bow to steady myself and saw in a flash or horror that the right runner was skimming over the edge of a blue-black hole in the ice, the size of a small hottub. Unfazed, Pico jumped up a short incline and onto a wide place in the creek behind the hole; a beaver dam or something had formed this small pond and the hole must have had something to do with a little waterfall or eddy where the creek started flowing again. The cross country ski tracks were gone. Pico stopped and turned to look at me, then turned and tackled a startled Arwyn, barking for her to play. More tangles.

I put Rsta back up front, and she was eager enough to head back down the creek the way we had come, giving the hole a much wider berth than Pico. When we got back to the packed trail, I sighed with relief as she turned left, the way I had wanted her to go, south and west in a loop back towards the road. We bumped up over the creek's banks, then out onto another pond. This one was big, and the trail was initially packed hard. A minute later, the dogs feet were sinking into deep snow and the snow machine trail became a faint trace under newer snowfall. Then it was gone. We were at the end of the huge pond, facing the right direction to get home but with no trail to follow.

I was certain the trail I wanted (the south-valley trail, which I had skied the winter before) was just on the other side of a big stand of white spruce ahead of us. Rsta stood still, up to her hocks in snow, looking back at me for direction. I took my foot off the brake and she took two steps forward into the deepening snow at the edge of the ice. She stopped. I pushed the sled. It scooted ahead and she walked forward until the line was taunt again, the stopped and looked back. I pushed the sled forward. Nobody moved, and the brushbow nudged Arwyn's back legs. She balked sideways and dragged Pico with her. I quickly pulled the sled backwards to put tension back on the lines before we could tangle again. Rsta, in the mean time, wrapped herself and her lines around a bush on the edge of the pond. She was now much more interested in some old rabbit tracks than the fact that she was in harness in front of a sled. I walked forward to grab her collar and unwrapped her, leaving the snow hook on the sled.

I was exhausted and frustrated, and had also become convinced that the trail I wanted was just through the trees. Not knowing what else to do, and with my aforementioned propensity for inertia, I let go of her harness and started walking. To my great relief, all three dogs followed me. The snow quickly came up to my knees, and I post-holed on into the forest at a snail's pace. The deep snow and drag mat kept the sled from sliding into Arwyn and Pico. We were making steady progress ... and then we hit the trees. Or rather, the sled hit the trees. Moving over downed logs and small bushes under the snow, I did double-time, walking ahead, then back to dislodge the sled when it caught on something under the snow, then forward again. I was sweating through all my layers, hat and gloves off, thighs aching with the effort. We inched along through the spruce. Back and forth. The trail was just up ahead. I could almost see it through the dense overhang. I plowed on through the drifts, the dogs seeming happy with the new arrangement of follow-the-two-legged-leader. The sled lodged again. I looked up to gauge our progress, and realized I could no longer see the hills, or the sun, or the pond we had left. We were a hundred yards or more past where I thought there should be a trail. Nothing.

Just a few more yards. We moved forward. The sled snagged again. I went back. The drifts seemed to get deeper with every step. I wallowed, looking back at where the dogs were stuck against another sapling, sucking in cold breath, looking through the trees for any sign of the trail I knew must be just up ahead, just past the next drift.

As the trees got even thicker, the snow pack lessened. The dogs were now following just at my heels, then next to me, then suddenly they were ahead and the sled was just out of reach. I ran forward to grab the handle and jump on the runners. Just as I took the first step, Arwyn, Pico and I saw the same thing off to the left. A steep drop off, a creek, and a snow machine trail right down the middle. The two of them leapt off the trail and down the bank, dragging a yelping Rsta and rolling sled with them and leaving me high up on the bank, alone. I jumped down after them, caught my foot in a root and fell hard onto the ice. I looked up just in time to watch the sled disappear around a corner, upstream and heading decidedly away from the road without me. Then silence. I was too exhausted to cry.

Instead I took a deep breath, struggled to my feet and started calling for Pico while jogging up the creek. I cannot begin to describe the relief I felt when I saw the sled parked in snow just two bends ahead, the dogs standing contentedly waiting for me to catch up.

When I reached them, I realized immediately that Rsta was a wreck. She was tangled up in the lines, and shaking hard, trying to pull away from the other two dogs and sled but unable to get any distance. Even after I straightened her out and sat with her in the snow for a few minutes to help her calm down, moved her away from the other two dogs and got everyone pointed in the right direction - downstream - she refused to run up front. I switched her with Pico for lead, but he had lost all focus after his adventure and would only stay up front long enough for me to walk out of reach before turning around to play tackle the two trapper dogs. I tried Arwyn next, but when she realized I'd put her up front she simply laid down in the trail and rolled on her back.

I stood on the runners at a loss. We were going nowhere. It was getting dark. I knew this creek would take us back to Ballaine Road eventually, but I had no idea how far away we were. This was not the trail I had been looking for, and deep in the creek bed I couldn't see the hills for context. Then I remembered something I had read two years before about the way sled dogs were traditionally run on the open tundra where there are no trees or trails. The dogs are hooked up one equal length lines, side-by-side in what is called a "fan hitch." They fan out but pull together, every dog beside all of his team mates. With three dogs refusing to lead alone, anything was worth a try. I un-clipped Arwyn from the gangline and attached her tug , along with Pico's and Rsta's, to the bridle. All three dogs were now side-by-side, none of them bearing the full stress or responsibility of being up front. Before I had a chance to stuff the gang line in my backpack, they were headed down the trail at top speed. I hardly had time to jump on the runners as the sled blew by.

I called Peter from the creek-trail and asked him to meet us at the Ballaine Road Trailhead. I was shaking with exhaustion, both mental and physical, and knew we would be lucky to make it just that far without further incident, much less across the road and through the marshes with their myriad of forks and side-trails. I have never been more happy to see my car that I was when we came around the last corner of the creek. The dogs recognized the vehicle and sprinted up the little hill. At home with the dogs snacked and bedded down and the sled unloaded, I stripped out of my soaking clothes, curled up under a pile of blankets and was asleep before I'd taken a second breath.

Backtrail: Tangles

It is amazing to me that a year ago, I was attempting my first solo run with a dog team. After much strategizing, I decided on a route and a launch-point. I recruited Peter as a handler, and we drove about two miles to a dead-end road where a trail ran down into the valley past a huge field. I had no idea what was beyond the bend at the end of the field, but I figured a trail with snow machine tracks had to go somewhere.

We loaded the two terrified trapper dogs and a frantically excited Pico into the back of the Subaru and strapped the giant loaner sled on top. There wasn’t enough snow at that point to set the snow hook at my chosen departure point, so I had Peter stand on the brake while I wrestled dogs into harnesses (I quickly learned to harness them BEFORE I loaded them into the car) and hooked them to their tug lines. Following Sepp’s advice, I put Rsta, the black dog, up front, and hooked Pico and Arwyn, the white girl, in wheel. It was immediately clear that we were leaderless. Each dog wandered over their lines, got tangled and dragged the sled sideways, heading off towards the trees or a nearby driveway while I hooked the others up. Before we even started, I had to untangle Pico and Arwyn and drag Rsta back to the front where she was supposed to be leading after she circled the sled and headed back towards the car.

Finally they were in a relatively straight line and I quickly switched places with Peter. I let off the brake and the dogs took off … into a nearby yard, leaving the road and trail altogether. Peter ran after us and grabbed a confused and reluctant Rsta’s collar, and dragged her back around to the road and towards the trail. Pico and Arwyn, undaunted, began pulling hard in Rsta's new direction and quickly overtook Rsta and Peter despite my standing hard on the brake. More tangles. Eventually, we made it to the trail and stayed untangled for long enough to get some momentum. Peter ran alongside Rsta for a few yards, then let go and with no option but straight downhill trail in front of her, she took off at a dead run and we were on our way.

We flew down the side of the field, and I was elated! I was mushing! I whooped and all three dogs broke stride to look back and see what on earth had just happened. I barely hit the brake fast enough to avoid running into them, but I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face. Two hundred yards later we were following the trail right around the end of the field. Then Rsta took off down a moose trail, dragging the team and sled with her and I spent the next ten minutes untangling the dogs and getting everyone pointed in the right direction again. Rsta had lost some of her initial drive, and when we got to a huge no-trespassing sign across the trail (and in the middle of nowhere, as far as I could tell) I decided we'd had enough for our first run. I stopped the sled and tried to get the team turned around. The situation deteriorated rapidly.

With the sled sideways in the trail and wedged against a spindly black spruce, I would untangle one dog, turn around, untangle the next dog, then turn to find the first dog tangled around the third dog's line, and on and on. It wasn't long before was sweating and swearing and wondering if I would be pulling the sled back to the road. Once everyone was untangled and straightened out, it became clear that Rsta had utterly lost confidence in me and was not leading anyone anywhere. She sat in the trail, and refused to budge. I put Pico up front. Pico ran about fifteen feet, turned around and dove into Arwyn, trying to play. A ball of lines again. More swearing, and some tears.

I put Arwyn in lead. and she stood happily wagging her tail while I got Rsta and Pico sorted out ... until the moment she realized she was up front, and alone. She laid down on the trail and rolled on her back, feet in the air, then flopped on her side and refused to budge. I switched her with Rsta, who was now getting ansty that we had been on the same twenty feet of trail for over half an hour. I had sweat through all my layers at this point, and was freezing cold and rather disheartened. To my utter relief, Rsta took off when I pulled the snow hook and backtracked us all the way to Peter and the car. We were out for over an hour. I later mapped our little jaunt at barely a mile and a half.

But for all the swearing and screaming and crying and sweating and frustration and despair, those few untangled minutes of abandon with the dogs racing down the trail and the icy wind on my cheeks had me hooked and I knew as soon as we slid in next to the car that I was gone far beyond saving.

Backtrail: Mountain Dogs

It is hard to believe that it was just a week ago Friday that I was following Sepp's bobbing headlamp down a narrow, wooded trail to his cabin. It was about half a mile downhill, and I was bundled up way too much for the mild November night. We came around a corner, and a huge home loomed out of the dark. In the starlight, it was a giant shadow against the snow. As we got closer, I saw that it was only half-built (though beautiful) and on reaching the porch, saw that it was straw-bale construction.

Sepp opened up the conversation by telling me that his dog team had hauled all the supplies here over the last seven years. In the wan light of our headlamps, he showed me the sled he was going to lend me. It was old, several pieces were lashed together with string and duct tape. Two major sections looked like they had been carved out of tree branches with a large, dull ax in the dark. The brush-bow was only attached on one side. Sepp tipped the sled up and tapped the white plastic. "Runners are good. Almost new." I shrugged. "Looks great." Beggars can't be choosers.

We hauled the sled outside and brought a much newer, nicer sled into the cabin for storage while he was out of town. Back outside again, we walked down another trail. I heard dogs bark. "The others are gone. Only two left." There was a black dot against the snow, a butterball of a dog who leapt on her house to give Sepp enthusiastic kisses between suspicious barks at me. This was Rsta. The other dog was on the other side of the yard, a faint movement on white-on-white. Arwyn. She didn't bark, but paced suspiciously and didn't take her eyes off me. He told me he'd be back sometime in March to collect them.

"So ... you'll come back tomorrow morning and take them?"

"Yeah. I just ... I need to find some dog houses."

"Ok. Ten o'clock, I think it is light enough."

"Sure."

"Can you find your way back to the road."

"Yeah." I wasn't sure, but he clearly didn't want to walk back out.

"Ok. See you."

I started walking, kept it uphill, and eventually found the road and my car.

The next morning found Sepp hooking his dogs up to the wreck of a sled and sending me running behind them all the way up the hill back to the road. He put Rsta in front, saying she would do better there, although, "neither of them are leaders." At the road, he gave the station wagon a long look. "They've never been in the back of a car before ... they have hardly seen cars or been around them much. They will be very afraid. So, hold on tight or they will run."

He explained that these two-year-olds had been with him in the Brooks Range on his remote trap lines for most of their short lives. No cars. No houses. No other people. Just Sepp and the mountains and the trail. Everything was going to be new to them.

We got the sled strapped down to the roof of the Subaru and he followed me to our cabin. I wasn't sure if his gentle handling of the sled was due to care for its well-being or concern that it would fall apart. On ensuring that both dogs were secured in our yard, he gave them a quick scratch behind the ears, gave me an imploring look, and was gone. He had a flight to Santiago in three hours. And Chile had an earthquake in it's future.

Backtrail: Unexpected Beginnings

::: I am going to try and write up an account of last year's dogsled adventures on my 24h shift days. I will post-date them to reflect the day I was stuck at work with no internet access. ::

In April of 2009, I brought a five-month old husky mutt home from the pound. I was hoping to turn him into a skijoring dog. Since I know that Alaska isn’t our permanent home, at least not yet, I had not caved into the temptation to start a sled dog team knowing I would have to get rid of the dogs once Peter got into Med school. This single pup seemed like a fair compromise. I spent some time that summer getting the pup familiar with a harness and pulling, but it wasn’t until Thanksgiving weekend that year that there was enough snow to take him for a trail run with skis. My friend Toni went with us to Creamer’s Field, and although it wasn’t a perfect two-miles, Pico figured out right away what was wanted of him and pulled like he was born to it.

After we were done, I drove to a local coffee shop to pick up cup for Peter and warm up a bit myself. In line just in front of me I recognized Sepp, a man I had run into several times when I was a tour guide to Coldfoot & Wiseman up in the Brooks Range north of the Arctic Circle. An old German trapper that makes his living on a dog sled, running hundreds of miles of remote trap line in the all-winter-darkness of the far north, he stood out even in the eclectic crowd of Fairbanks with his generously patched clothes and the ragged fur trim on every item from his home-made boots to his coat lining.

Uncharacteristically, since I was sure he had no idea who I was, I said hello, mentioned that we had met on a couple of occasions at the truck stop in Coldfoot and asked how his trapping season was going. In fact, I was curious as to why he was in Fairbanks at all, as trapping should be well under way. He responded brusquely that the trapping was terrible, snow conditions were the worst in years, and that he was going to Chile to stay with friends for the winter. He turned and shuffled forward with the line.

After a moment, he half-turned back towards me, “In fact, I’m still looking for someone to keep two of the dogs from my team while I’m gone. I am a bit worried, since I am leaving on Monday.”

It was Saturday afternoon. My heart was in my throat. I nodded sagely and let silence hang between us for a few moments while my mind raced.

“I might be able to keep them.”

He whirled around.

“But I don’t have a sled or dog houses at the momenet, and I need to make a few phone calls …”

He was already scribbling his phone number on a napkin. I took it and told him I’d give him a call that evening. And scramble I did. I called every dog musher I knew to see if anyone had a sled I could borrow. Asking to borrow a sled is like asking to borrow someone’s car. Worse, because sleds are expensive and take a beating, it’s like asking to borrow someone’s car for six months and promising to bring it back with plenty of door dings, cracked CV boots and thoroughly misalligned. I got no takers. I called around looking for spare dog houses, too. Nothing. Peter, at least, was supportive if skeptical. I called Sepp that evening, and told him that I would love to take his dogs, but that I had no sled and that without a sled there wasn’t much point.

“Oh, well I have an old sled you can borrow. It doesn’t look like much, but it ran the Iditarod in the ‘90s.”

I started scribbling furiously as he gave me directions to his house. Even though it was after dark, and the instructions involved parking at a dead end and hiking a half mile through the woods, it never occurred to me to hesitate …