His "shining armour" was made of blue gortex....
It all started with this stump. A little 4 inch in diameter stump, maybe sticking 8 inches out of the snow. Sounds pretty harmless, right? Normally it would be…..
The turn off to head to the Bowl consisted of a steep short banked curvy drop, with a couple of trees to bounce off, immediately followed by a little less steep, short curvy climb. The stump in question was right out of the dip, on the way up, in the middle of the single snow-mobile trail.
What happened is that Hilda deeked right, and the point dogs caught the stump on the gangline at their tugs, bringing us to a stop, and piling the dogs up. Against the forward strong pull of the team, I wrenched and wrestled the sled backwards until finally the gangline popped free, only to have it get caught again behind the team dogs in their tugs. Another stop, another wrench and wrestle side to side and it popped free. The wheel dogs missed it, but somehow the angle of the line to the sled made it possible to hook up on my gangline right at the point where it attaches to the bridle of the sled, by a large carabineer. More wrenching and wrestling backwards against the full pull of the team forwards, some twisting side to side of the sled and finally we popped free and the stump was behind us, and I was roasting in my coat!
Now the trail became fun and technical, requiring a lot of concentration. There were a lot of branches sticking out of the snow, and as this was mostly a gradual uphill climb I realized these would be dog and thigh smackers on the way out down hill, so I decided to cut back what I could get the dogs to stop long enough for. The scenery was so utterly breathtaking that I must have been beaming when I finally popped out of the trail and into the bowl, where Rick was waiting for me. “Well?” he asked and “WOW” was about all I could manage to express, such was my awe.
Rick then explained to me that this was the lower bowl, and if I looked off into the distance, there was another valley, the upper bowl, that could be accessed by climbing up the side of the mountain to a narrow pass off to the right. He explained that only advanced Snowmobilers will go in there.
And the wheels started to turn…… hmmmmmmm….. I wondered…….
I could see a faint trail heading up the side of the mountain, so I looked at Rick and said “I’m going to have a bit of a look” and headed off. I didn’t intend to actually traverse the pass, I only wanted to have a look at how far and how steep I’d have to side-hill to get through it.
Climbing up a very steep hill I started to make a plan in my head, knowing that coming back down would be a disaster if I didn’t de-tug the dogs. (Take their tug lines off to minimize the pull).
Then the point dogs River and Chip got into a tangle (this is where I see River’s youth coming through) so I started looking for a tree close enough to the trail to tie off on. Nothing doing. I was getting concerned about the tangle so I decided my best bet would be to toss out my snow hook to the side and snag a tree. I picked the hook off my sled and just as I went to wing it, I noticed that it was no longer attached to my gangline, rendering it useless to me. ‘What on earth?’ I thought, ‘how did that happen?’
With no time to think about it, I saw a tree coming close to the trail and managed to lasso it with my quick release line, and stopped the team. Magically upon stopping the dogs managed to untangle themselves, so I decided to take the opportunity to reattach the mysteriously unattached snow hook.
In retrospect, although we were still climbing hard, I should have de-tugged the dogs here, and just pushed or pulled the sled myself. But I didn’t know I’d run out of trees, and I didn’t know that Hilda would decide she would deek left and turn the team around on a faint snowmobile created loop. Suddenly we were turning around and as the wheel dogs cut the turn, the sled flipped and I went up to my waist in snow. Now the dogs were facing down hill, the sled was perpendicular on its side and I was up to my crotch in snow, floundering around.
Well they took off, I grabbed the sled and they started to drag me. All would have been fine except my head slammed into something buried under the snow, and I let go of the sled. #1 rule of mushing….. NEVER LET GO OF THE SLED!!!!
‘OH CRAP’ I thought as I started to push myself upright watching my riderless team heading down the mountain. I looked down into the bowl to see Rick still playing there and with relief noted that the light on his snowmobile was white indicating he was headed towards me and would see the team. I hoped he would have the sense to catch them at the bottom, that there would be no injuries to the dogs on the way down. (a very real possibility in this situation) and I started slipping and sliding back down the mountain, picking up the gear being pitched out of my sled as it hurtled down. With great relief I noted Rick had stopped the machine and caught my dogs at the bottom, and when I arrived all were safe, although horribly tangled. Rick kindly parked his snowmobile for me to tie the sled off to while I sorted out whose lines belonged where and after about 10 minutes had the team nicely lined out again and ready to go. 5 minutes of this was done while the dogs were shrieking and harness bashing to go, so I am sure Rick was as glad as I was when I finally pulled the release and off we went.
Later I heard that Rick had seen the sled coming down the mountain and thought ‘That was fast’ and then ‘OH CRAP, that sled has no driver!’
Thank you Rick for catching the run away team!
Footnote #1: upon seeing the little wayward stump on the way out I realized that this was why I had lost my snow hook connection, as when the sled was hooked up on it, my twisting from side to side must have been enough to release it from the carabineer.
Footnote #2: Rick and I have had some discussion about the best way to tackle that climb up to the pass to get into the upper bowl. Together we're putting together a plan, and I hope to tackle it again this season. This weekend the avalanche warnings are high, so we'll see about future weekends. In the meantime I am very grateful that he has my back; it empowers me to step up my mushing abilities and see if I cannot conquer this trail. Apparently the views are more than worth the effort. Stay tuned!
Wow, that looks amazing.
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