Husky News

As I crested the berm of snow on the side of a seasonal road in the U.P., I saw a patch of ice that was going to be trouble. The dogs think corners are their chance to rid themselves of the musher, and so each corner is a game of crack the whip. How did I get to the point where I was being dragged down the road by a team of 8 happy huskies?

Knowing four-time Iditarod veteran Al Hardman helps.

Hardman has always wanted to get more miles on the dogs at the end of his Iditarod-qualifier, the Seney 300, run in the first part of January in the U.P. But the mushers running the race, and Hardman, are always wiped out by running and organizing the race that they just end up taking two or three days off after before picking up training for the 1,100-mile Iditarod resumes.

What they needed, Al said during a summer conversation about dogs, was a second set of mushers to come in at the end of the Seney to pick up the dogs and go.

I was not only willing but eager to do my part. Running a team of Alaskan huskies over the course of a couple of hundred miles is great. And when I get the chance to do it I grab it.

Al and I decided that his son-in-law Jim Conner would be the perfect driver for the second team so we signed him up.

Conner, a 2004 Iditarod veteran, Conner’s friend Scott Peterman and I headed up to Hardman’s U.P. cabin on a recent weekend to help with the Iditarod training.

We began the sled dog run with Jim and I behind dog teams and Scott opting to take the snow machine (snowmobile to Lower Peninsula folks) on the first leg of our adventure. We almost always take along a snow machine on jaunts like this to run out in front of the teams, mark the trail if need be and let others know there is are dog teams on the trail.

The trail lived up to our initial fears about the rain they had received the week before our arrival. Several spots were glare ice, generally around corners and after generous snow banks we had to jump.

Ahhhh, the corners.

The dogs seem to think corners are their chance to shake the musher from the back of the sled. It’s their version of crack the whip.

And they like it!

The dogs know the trails they train on just like people know the trails they run on, they knew we were headed for home, all I really had to do was hang on.

I could tell when a corner was near, because suddenly our speed would nearly double. We’d be doing a respectable 10 or 11 miles an hour with a mostly empty sled on the fast trails, and all of the sudden I would be hanging on for dear life doing 17 miles an hour. I’d see the leaders whip around the corner, and I’d crouch down on the runners, and brace myself for the unexpected.

My team finally succeeded in knocking me nearly loose around that one corner, with the snow bank and the glare ice. I made it over the bank OK, but then the sled just started to fishtail and pretty soon my sled was perpendicular to the dog team, actually catching them - only sideways. There was only one thing that could, and did happen, the leading, left edge of the runner got caught on an ice chuck and POW, me, my gear, the sled, everything was airborne.

“Damn those are nice gloves, I hope somebody uses them when I’m gone,” I thought.

When a dogsled tips over, the snow hooks fly off the top of the sled and dangle and bounce right about at the same spot on the ground that your face and jugular vein are occupying.

Snow hooks are scary things. Each sled has two, and they’re these heavy metal hooks, (picture a treble hook with only two barbs) with sharp points at the end, a handle and a flat bars on each part of the hook that hold the snow. When you stop the sled you grab a snow hook, drop it into some packed snow or ice and stomp down on it. Then you have to rapidly set the second one, while remaining ready to jump on the sled in case the dogs bolt. They think this is all great fun, really.

So there I was thinking about my untimely death and I remembered the cardinal, quintessential and absolute rule of dog mushing.

Never let go.

Which is hard to do when those hooks are bouncing alongside your vital arteries.

Luck was on my side and the team finally responded to my shouts of “whoa.” It does work after a while, when they realize you remembered rule number one (not letting go).

I righted myself, and the sled. Gave a thumbs-up to Scott. He had stopped just past the corner because he knew it was going to be a good show, and I did not disappoint.

The promised snow finally started to fall in earnest and the trail that had been hard, loud and crunchy became quiet and serene. There are few things in life that are as exhilarating as running a team of well-trained huskies at night, everyone should do it at least once.
Free Shipping at Moosejaw

We finally arrived at Al’s McMillan cabin around 4 a.m. fed the dogs, put our boots and clothes near the fire to dry, had a big breakfast and crawled into bed as the sun was just coming up.

We wanted to rest the dogs a full 10 hours before hitting the trail again. Our task was to run to Al’s other U.P. cabin — we call it Rohn after a famous Iditarod checkpoint — near Grand Marais.

We readied our gear again, this time taking a full kit, food for us and the dogs, sleeping bags, axes, lights, cameras, straw, gas, trail markers, staples, dog crates, and more food.

I ran the snow machine and trailer ahead of the dogs to Rohn, blindly following the blue line on a GPS that Al assured me would take me to the 8-by-16-foot cabin that was to be our home for a night.

One of my jobs was to mark trail along the way, with thin strips of wood with reflectors called lath. And when I ran out of lath I started stapling the reflectors to the trees. So I buzzed up ahead of the teams so they could enjoy the quiet of the night, if there was a corner I’d mark it with two pieces of reflective material in the side where the turn was, then one after to let them know they were on the right trail.

The other job of the snow machine driver is to make sure the teams don’t need any help, we had a pre-arranged signal, if they needed something. I had two dog crates on the trailer behind the snow machine in case they had to drop a dog, they were to wave their hand in front of their light when they saw my lights and I’d wait. No blinking and I took off to the next corner down the trail. We went on in this fashion for seven and a half hours and sure enough that red diamond at the end of the blue line was indeed the Rohn cabin.

I was 20 minutes ahead of the teams after the long climb to the cabin so I made a few laps around to pack down the snow and got to the task of opening up the cabin, starting a fire and getting ready to take care of 24 dogs.

Jim and Scott arrived with their teams in fine shape and the three of us went to work taking the booties off the dogs, checking their feet, heating water and feeding the dogs. About 45 minutes later we headed into the cabin to warm up, get some food and grab some sleep. The plan was to get up and going before 8, get the teams ready and head back to the cabin. What nobody realized at 3 a.m. was with all the windows of the cabin boarded for winter and a pretty tight seal around the door, there wasn’t much that was going to wake us up.

By the time we got going, about 10 a.m., both us and the dogs were well rested and ready to head for home.

On the way back, Jim and I switched jobs. He took the snow machine and I took his team of dogs.

Running the dogs in the daylight is a much different sensory experience than running at night. I always end up goofing around much more when I run a team during the daylight. Taking pictures, shooting video, sending pictures to my friends from my cell phone, eating lunch. This you can do all while under way during the day, simply because you can see the trail ahead. At night you have to be far more vigilant, so I tend to enjoy the experience more because you’re so tuned into the team and ready for anything. In the daylight, at times you can see the trail for miles so you know when it’s a good time to grab a drink or a sandwich. At night I fear for my life every time I open my water bottle or grab a handful of M&Ms. Of course that fear doesn’t stop me.

The 45-mile run back to Al’s cabin again went smoothly. The mushing gods had smiled on our journey, we hadn’t lost a team, the weather was perfect and I was glad to have helped the team in training for the Iditarod. At times I feel like the big race in Alaska is something I want to attempt, but for now I’m just happy to help train on occasion.

Want to try mushing? Ed and Tasha Stielstra run Nature’s Kennel and offer different levels of immersion into the sport. Prior to the Iditarod, Ed takes his main team to Boyne Highlands on select weekends and gives dog sled rides to skiers. At their kennel, near Hardman’s north of McMillan, they offer one- and two-day trips as well as custom adventures for tourists wanting more than their standard fare of trips.

Source: Ludington Daily News