Today I decided to take young Erin up to Golden Ears Provincial Park for a run. This is a 5 min drive from my house and an incredibly beautiful spot. And old friend and I did a lot of hiking in this area, a few years back and it has to be one of my favorite places. However, it is completely unsuitable for running dogs in, there is a paved road through the park, and I cannot run dogs with an ATV, on pavement there in the fall. The only time I can run dogs is when it snows and they close the main gate to the park. I have permission to tie off to the gate, and then I am in my glory, and I like to run the dogs all the way up to the end of the paved road and then to Gold Creek. This is about a 20 mile run, and what I intended to do today with Erin in the basket.
When I got to the gate at 7:00am it was still dark, and I spent some time doing a little recon on the conditions. I warned Erin that this was going to be a bumpy ride compared to the groomed trail of last weekend, but she was game to try it. From the initial scouting it appeared that there had been some vehicle traffic right at the gate, badly chewing up the snow, and then perhaps one truck had driven up the road when there was about a foot of snow down, but nothing since. So the single tire tracks were full of snow, but there was also a crusty hump in between the tracks. I managed to wipe out and land on my butt while hooking up, and Erin commented that she wondered if this a reflection of how the run would go today. Little did she know she was foreshadowing.
After a dust up with the hormonal girls on New Years Eve, which saw Hilda in surgery to get some holes stitched up in her face, today I'm only running six dogs, and will run six until Hilda gets her stitches out next weekend. I decided to put Ellie in lead with Impi until the snow got too deep, at which time I would switch her out with the larger and stronger Chip. Ellie is a leader in training, so I thought it would be interesting to see what she did. We were not 100 Meters from the gate when the leaders decided to try to switch ruts and while trying to muscle the sled over the large snowbank I dumped it, and Erin started to laugh while she wiped the snow out of her face.
And so it began. The snow got deeper, the banks got crustier and we literally slogged our way along. The dogs were constantly jostling each other to try to stay in the single tire track. It worked well for the boy-girl combinations as they were able to for the most part hold the track. The two boys in back, however, were not so fortunate, and spent the better part of an hour body slamming the other to try to knock each other out of the track. At least Stryder's tugline was tight the entire time, Jovo did not work nearly so hard. With the sled slightly wider than the track it was a feat to keep the sled level and straddling the snow banks on the sides of the tracks. I lost count of how many times I had poor little Erin on her side, snowplowing along while I desperately tried to fling my weight to counter hers, and muscle the sled to keep the runners level. I'm going to feel this tomorrow, I'm sure! Erin and I discussed the importance of not losing the team, a distinct reality as the conditions called for some tricky dog driving. She surprised me when she said "so, if you lose the team while I am in the bag, should I fling the snow hook out and hope it catches?" SMART GIRL!!!! And after I recovered from my astonishment I told her of the first time I was in that situation, when my friend John dumped the sled and lost it, and I careened down the trail until we hit a turn and I came out of the sled, but managed to grab at it and was dragged along behind until John's team finally stopped. First rule of Mushing.... NEVER lose your team.
This is a moving shot of Erin being snow-plowed through the snow.
It was when I almost lost little River up to her ears in the deep snow, and the boys were plowing through snow up to their shoulders that I finally decided enough was enough and we were turning back. First of all I had already dumped Erin and myself AGAIN, and getting the sled turned around proved to be quite a challenge, as the sled is 8 ft long and quite the barge to snow-plow around in a 180 degree turn to face the opposite direction. When we did finally get turned around, we just couldn't get it upright. Erin in the bag and me trying to balance on one runner would fling our weight to the left, only we were not flinging in sinc, so all we were succeeding in was getting dug in deeper. Finally between gasps of hysterical laughter I said "on a count of Three, Erin, heave!!!" and we managed to get upright. 
Heading back was a little easier this time because the sled had widened the trail a bit and the dogs found it a bit easier to run. You can see the nice carved bank the sled made, or should I say Erin made as I snowplowed her along! At one point we caught another bank while the dogs were switching ruts and over we went again. This time it took multiple counts to three to finally heave it upright, and get going again.
I was very glad to see my truck in the distance, and I have to say Erin was a great sport about the whole thing, even though she spent her entire trip either bailing the snow out of the bag, or getting her face washed as I snow-plowed her along.
My little leader-in-training, Ellie, never did get switched out, and did a remarkable job in ugly conditions. I later told Erin that if this was in days of old and I was delivering mail, or running a trap-line, I would have donned snow-shoes and gone ahead to break trail for my dogs. I didn't have snow shoes with me today, the dogs did it all.
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