Dogsledding, My First Real Adventure

I am not a winter person. Never like cold weather, never tried skiing.

One night in the fall of 2006, I watched a PBS program called "Great Lodges" (of America). One of the lodges hosted the tour of dog sledding from one lodge to another, in Minnesota, the land of ten thousand lakes. I was always fascinated by sledding dogs since the book White Fang, but also considered it out of reach because of the season, price, and distance.  With the push of the fresh TV program, at least I can  google the tour company.  There it was: Wintergreen Dog Sled Lodge, and the price was very reasonable with different length and size of trip. Totally doable! That's the time I did my first spontaneous travel booking.  Strait ahead to the north!


The town Ely is close to the Canadian Boarder, a four hours drive from Minneapolis. It actually is in the area called Boundary Waters, located west of Lake Superior, where many small lakes gather close to each other.  In the summer canoe season, people would land, picked up the canoe, and walked a short distance to next lake, launch the canoe, and go on. We brought along small accessories like hat, scarf, and thick gloves. The thick pants, coat, and boots can be rented in their shop. The tour company owner Paul Schurke is a veteran of Arctic expedition. First night after dinner, he let us go on a short walk to the dog kennel to give the dogs some snack. When we got close to the kennel, all the dogs started to howl in the way the wolves howl. That made us all excited. We were officially in the wild! We gave them each a chunk of lard, good for the cold night.

Next morning, at the kennel, each team got assigned the team of dogs. Meanwhile, who can resist playing with the pups. All the dogs in Paul's kennel were purebred Canadian Eskimo (Inuit), with great pulling power, natural to be sledding dogs. Our guide brought several of his own dogs, which were not the Inuit, in our sled team. Our practice including pull each dog out, learn to put on the harness and put them in the right sledding position. Only the leading dog was fixed to position at front, the rest of the position were not that critical. I thought about the joke that unless you are the leading dog, all the scene you can see the whole way is the butt of the dog in front of you. December was not that cold yet, at least in those few days of our visit, but the lakes already all frozen over. Paul said he had tested the lakes in our route to make sure the ice was solid. Our whole team consisted of two guides, positioned in the first and last in a single file. In between was three sleds with two persons behind each sled. Each sled got 4 to 5 dogs. And practice we did, on the lake, to use commends to the dogs, Right, Left, Start, Stop. Actually, it was we the people that needed to practice the commends, the dogs were veterans, they had long learned the commends by heart. Everything was white on the lake, the forest, the houses, the shore. We were in the winter wonder land. It's magic to a Californian like me. How much did I miss for not going out in winter and snow?

Orientation on the lake.

By the end of the day, back to the lodge, we got to taste Bernard, the French Chef's cooking. Who would think we could have French food in the American heart land while running the dogs in the day. It's outrageous.

After the day of the orientation, off we go to the other lodge. This time we were not just on the lake, but on the "road". Some of the roads were marsh in the summer, not really passable. Everything was frozen over in the winter, and there were the roads, with bushes and tree branches along the way. Dogs were so short, they didn't have to worry about any obstacles, they simply run and run, while we human beings stood upright behind the sled, had to dodge the tree branches high and low, very much like the incoming flying saucers in the Star War. Yeeeeeee-Ha!!! It was fun. Whenever we had to stop, our leading dog Knud usually very eager to resume the run, he would bark and bark, and look back at us, until we go again. The reason why he got to be a leader. Some of the turns the dogs ran past so fast, by the time the sled had to turn, it became so wide, even I tried to hold on very hard at the sled, still got tossed out of the sled a couple of times. Once I turned my head to warn the team behind us about the turn, just in time to see one of them flew out of the sled. We delightfully shouted: Man Over Board!!!

On narrow path

Our lead dog Knud

Another dog in our team was Moki.  Not a barker, but he was one of the few male dogs still intact, must be a good dog to be allow to breed.  He would look back at us from time to time, then went on running forward. With the coolness in his attitude, I had the feeling that he thought we were the rookies doing stupid things. But he never complaint, quietly took in everything.

Moki

Arrived the other lodge, we tied the dogs on the post, fed them food and water, and they were ready to curl up and call it a day. Sled dogs fight, to avoid injuries, they were separated and chained all the time so they can't reach each other. Many of them had their canine teeth filed down, so that even the fight broke out, no severe injuries would occur. Unfortunately with the chain, they only have limited space to pace around, that means they would easily step on their own waste.  Every dog smell, these dogs smell even stronger.  Running in a team also made the stop and relief themselves impossible, most of the time they just had to do it on the fly.  When we got back to our room, found our gloves got the smell too, had to bag them away so the whole room would not smell.

All the good things eventually come to an end.  The last morning in the lodge before leaving, I was full of sadness, choked back my tears and unable to make conversation with my teammates. Had only been with them for two days, but felt like they were my dogs and I would not be able to see them again.  While in reality, I knew they simply think, another day, another new bunch of rookies to tolerate... 

This trip broke my habit of not going to the snow.  We later visited Yosemite in the winter, with no crowd, cheap hotel, and extraordinary beautiful scenery. And I rode the courage to try new things, went for a kayaking, camping, and snorkeling trip to Baja California, went for whitewater rafting, even though I really can't swim... At middle age, feel like another door was open to me, all thanks to the dogs.