Sled dog chow? With that burning question out of the way, if not settled, we got ready for another day of mushing through the Alaskan bush. But three days of running your own dog team through the woods is no lope across a suburban parking lot, either. By the time we had manhandled our sleds across odd mile of forest and frozen river under the guidance of Chugach Express Dog Sled Tours, we were beginning to get an idea of what dogsledding is all about. We eyeballed the sleds. There were five tourists, including us, two mushers and three sleds.
That meant at least one of us would get an instant introduction to mushing. Yvette shrugged and volunteered, stepping on the back runners and experimenting with the spring loaded metal claw that is the brake.
The dogs, by now, had gotten the idea that departure was imminent. They whined. They yapped. They howled. They strained at their lines until their eyes actually bulged. We cut into thick woods immediately, sliding around curves and bouncing off snowbanks.
If you think dogsledding is a spectator sport, try it from the runners sometime. It is a never-ending battle between you, the dogs, the sled, the track and especially, the trees. The idea is to keep the lines tight and thus control the front of your sled. If the lines slack off, the dogs could tangle and get hurt or start fighting.
Staying on the track-a hard thread in a sea of soft snow-is like running a tightrope, with the sled threatening to slide off at any second. Yes, there are lots of trees in the way. So we were careening around this curve with Yvette trying to figure out which foot to put where, when all of a sudden the sled ran into, up and nearly over a 5-foot spruce.
