I was first interested in dog sledding in my early teens. I started by taking care of a neighbor's dog team when he was gone, and graduated to my own team by the time I was in my mid teens. When I graduated High School I ran a trapline with 5 dogs for a year. After that I was in College, and kept the team going (with the occasional semester off to go trapping) until some time after I graduated College. But eventually I started doing too much traveling to be able to keep a dog team (which requires a lot of daily care), so I gave some of the dogs to my sisters (who still run dogs) and sold the rest.
Sledding down Birch Creek, just north of the cabin. Leader: Tonto. Next pair: Ranger (white dog on left swing), King (right swing), Trapper (left wheel dog) and Yukon (right wheel dog).
Birch Creek had severely overflowed (water running on top of the ice), to a depth of more than 18 inches (0.5 meter) about five days before this (I got all tangled up in it when I was on my way up here). This froze and made for a great sledding surface, especially after all the frost formed on the ice (yes, that is all frost, not snow! Really Huge crystals of frost…)
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This page first written 4/24/99; updated 3/07