If you can see Mt. Baker, you are part of The Experience
I’m sailing along on a silver sea of snow.
Prisms of winter sun bounce off ivory birch bark and overnight hoarfrost like carnival lights. The air is as still as ice. Spruce and pine spice the woodland atmosphere. The only noise is the combined huffing of eight sled dogs in delirious effort along a narrow river-bottom trail that seems to head back in time from the noisome clatter of the 21st century.
Isn’t this how humans have traveled the North Woods for thousands of years?
True. But better to focus on the present when you’re dogsledding outside Fairbanks, because the experience is peerless, intense and available. A dozen or so kennels offer dogsledding, and at least four will provide you some basic instruction and send you out on your own into the woodlands. Among Alaska’s many recreational iconic opportunities, this one is perhaps the most appealing of all, and nowhere in the north is dogsledding more entrenched in life and lore than in Alaska.
I lean left with the sled as we leave birch forest behind and veer into open country, a vast field of white dotted with dark green candle-spires. In summer this is a spruce muskeg, impassable to all but moose. In winter, it’s a playfield.
Or a racetrack. Sled dogs are fast. They like speed.
No stately carriage ride this. Standing on the rider’s platform at the back of the sled, I call up the most important instruction from my pre-ride briefing: Stomp on the brake.
“Stomp hard,” kennel owner Eleanor Wirts advised. “They’re pretty strong.”
Like saying elephants have uphill torque. I’m no ballerina, but it still takes determined pressure to reign in these eight slender, wiry beasts.
Yes, that’s an accurate description. Outsiders envision dogsledding behind teams of huskies or samoyeds, lavishly furred labrador-size canids. Most Alaskan sled dogs (that’s actually a distinct breed) are all muscle, sinew and tendon with a tough hide and surprisingly little fur. They stay warm with happy enthusiasm and buckets of chum salmon, the fatty fish on which they have thrived for thousands of years.
They love running.
Especially with people.
Enter a dogsled kennel yard and the chorus of joyous yips and barks is cacophonous. It’s customary to greet your dogs beforehand – after all, you are in their care – and afterward, reward them with high and mighty praise.
Anthropologists figure sled dogs have been part of life in the north for 9,000 years, and for most of that time the dogs have been essential to basic life. Bottom line: Sled dogs can cover in a day what it takes a snowshoe-clad biped a week to travel.
Today, easy-running sleds are not the only conveyances dogs drag through snow. Bored but inventive Scandinavians cooked up a pastime called skijoring, whose participants don Nordic skis and harness themselves to their dogs. This is not for the faint of heart, as speeds are fierce, trails can be narrow and skis are not as stable as sleds. A truly demented version of this sport has sprung up in Montana (of course) utilizing horses. Neither of these are for amateurs.
Dogsledding, by comparison, is a fairly benign, modest thrill in which a high-speed veer at a fork in the trails might pitch the sled up a few inches on one side. The driver counter balances, like leaning a bike over, which I begin to do once I get the hang of it and reduce my heavy pressure on the brake, which is just a bar set to drag in the snow, like a sea anchor.
Then it’s time to chill out, turn my face to the crisp air and simply savor the moment. The dogs know where to go; unless a bull moose rears up out of a snowdrift, mishaps are unlikely.
No one knows exactly how many sled dogs are in Alaska, though dog mushing stalwarts estimate there are at least a thousand kennels. Figure 10-20 dogs per kennel and you have a rough picture of the sport’s popularity. Its transformation from necessity to recreation reflects the fact that Alaskans take outdoor activity very seriously because, well, they must. Or fester frozen.
Although my late morning ride this day takes place at 10 below, that’s a mild midwinter temp for Fairbanks, and the lack of wind and low humidity make the whole experience not just pleasant but remarkable. It’s on par with really good downhill or Nordic skiing, and now that I think of it, I’ve plenty of room for a dog kennel at my island farm and … nah.
I once met a couple operating a small inn in the Yukon, and when pressed to explain why, they advised that it was solely to make enough income in the summer to spend all winter skijoring or dogsledding.
Just this one single morning ride reveals to me the glorious appeal of the sport. So, at the end of 45 minutes on the trail, when we return to the dog yard – me more out of breath than they – I go up to the team and thank each one for the ride.
“You’re awesome,” I tell them.
Yes, we are, they respond. Let’s go again. Now. X
Eric Lucas lives on a small farm on San Juan Island, where he grows organic hay, beans, squash and apples. Even though they are strong enough to drag bulldozers uphill, if asked to haul a dogsled, his two weimaraners would run for the bed and hide beneath the covers.
This omnipresent question arises mostly because of the long, dark shadow of the Iditarod, the thousand-mile trek across Alaska from Anchorage to Nome that has become one of the most conspicuous winter sports events on Earth.
“NASCAR for dogs,” a former Iditarod competitor told me, not meaning it as a compliment. The dogs are not designed by nature or breeding to cover vast distances at high speed; sled dogs regularly die on the Iditarod trail in pursuit of human glory – three back in March during this year’s competition. It is not remotely like anything sled dogs were asked to do for thousands of years.
My own experience with dogsledding at a sane, moderate level leads me to conclude the dogs are ecstatic about doing this. For them, it’s the best work in the world: having fun.
I liken it to horseback riding: Most horses (including those here at the farm my wife and I share) are delighted to head out on the trail, or to the arena, for a sensible bit of exercise. But the extremes to which humans sometimes force horses are entirely different – go watch the grotesque “dancing” that Vienna’s famous Lipizzaner stallions must perform and any thoughtful person will walk out in disgust, as we did.
So recreational dogsledding is just fine. All involved are willing participants in a glorious winter activity. As with so much of life, distinctions make a huge difference. By all means, add in dogsledding when you head north in the winter – you can even take rides after dark beneath the northern lights, which is an incomparable, world-class outdoor experience.
And the dogs know it.
