The Core

Fair enough... hehehe Everyone up here calls them snowmachines, everyone outside Alaska seems to call them snowmobiles, and "sled" is the only term I know that works cross-border. hehe

Outsider: "Snowmachine? What's a snowmachine? Is that so you can make snow if you don't have enough?"
Me: "*argh* Snowmobile. Sled. Whatever. You know what that means, right?"

That dog picks up some good speed, doesn't he? lol

Ahhh! Indeed. hehehe

See now, nobody says just "sledding" if they're talking about mushing/dog sledding. Just "sledding" either means children sliding downhill in little snow sleds, or riding snowmobiles... I'll teach you to speak Alaskan sooner or later.

Although as a (dog) musher we called it 'dog sledding'... and just 'sledding', in context... because we ride a (dog) sled, so that makes sense as long as you aren't talking to a snowmobiler.

See, I thought of that after I posted, but then I've never been privy to the secret language of mushers, so I wasn't sure. lol

Bombing the backcountry...



...thats what a 500lb sled looks like, sideways, as it goes around a hairpin turn at about 30mph. heheheeh this picture doesn't do it justice.  That is the second turn.... the first turn is straight down the face of a Black Diamond ski run in Snowmass CO.

Mivox, then you are the only one that could possibly understand how badass we were back then:  we weren't allowed to carry hooks because when we flipped (I flipped 8 times that season) the passengers would likely die if they rolled over a hook... so I had to make all 10-14 dogs lie down, on command, in order to get off the sled to do anything:) Even Amazing Ben's jaw would drop if he ever heard that:)

BTW, for those that don't know, that is a snow hook I'm holding in my right hand:

...and they are dangerous as hell.  Especially when you are dragging on your face, bouncing off trees in the middle of the night, with a headlamp... how about it Mivox?  With real big teams, I take 2 hooks. And you never walk on the same side as you set the hook, in case they pull it and it starts cartwheeling as the sled comes by you. (Another reason 2 hooks is dangerous, but 1 hook wont hold anything more than 10, so it's the lesser of 2 evils.)

>stop when he yelled at him
Now THAT is a lead dog!!!  I never had a leader that would just slam on the brakes and let a pile up happen ...and yet that is the very thing that you really need them to do in that situation.  Instead, I used to tie myself to the sled... which is arguably dumber than even getting on a big team in the first place... in case I lost them in the back country.  I figured being drug by a dislocated shoulder was better than what was behind curtain number 2.

BUT... when I was out in CO... I flipped in the that first turn on the big slope, and dumped out my passengers, but the dogs kept going and the sled uprighted itself with no one driving it.  Knowing I could never catch them, I ran to the edge of the ski slope and just jumped, landed on my butt, and slid all the way down to where the dogs would eventually meet me (after they did the hairpin alone.) The timing was perfect and as I got to my feet, they ran by and I stepped on the runner, like I was Indiana Jones:)

>video proof
Before I showed pictures, you all just believed me, with just the slightest of eyebrow raising... now you want videos?!? hehehehe I have some pics at home that I keep saying I need to get scanned. Maybe I do...

>I'm kinda glad he'd switched to snowmachines
Yeah, I think you are right.  When things go bad with dogs, they can go very bad.  I took some precautions but just about everything I did was against the book.  If I didn't come home no one would even think about going to find me for 4 days, and if they did, they would have no idea where to even to begin looking.  Who am I supposed to tell?  I ran dogs 9 months out of the year; who wants to listen?  I knew I was without a net most of the time (which I obviously thrived on) but it really was inherent to the sport if you are going it alone.  Basically, sledding was THE most insane thing I could even think up at the time... and 15 years later, I still haven't seen it's equal.  I don't think there is one.  It is a superlative.

>& had to hike after their tracks for a couple hours at -30
...exactly, and that story could just as easily ended up with everyone dead. You run, you sweat, you go hypothermic, your feet freeze, you dig in to make a shelter and you never wake up... and your dogs end up in a ball, tangled in lines and fighting.  Yeah, unless you are a sprinter on a closed loop trail, you need either a leader that will either stop on command, or that can pull a u-turn on command... or a 3 foot section of mainline, looped around your non-hook hand:)

I lost the team" runaway dog story
yeah, I've never met a hardcore driver that didn't have a story like that. I think it has to be the absolute biggest fear among drivers.  The dark, the isolation, ground storms, getting lost, whatever, pale in comparison to the fear of letting go of that handlebar.

...I dunno. The dogs in that first video Rupert posted don't look too worried. Maybe they have it right after all;)