Catching up.

I was able to take the dogs out for a short run yesterday. We go in the morning before Jenn has to leave for work. I had them all harnessed up and we were gone by about 0830 and although Jenn suggested I do an abbreviated run since they hadn't been out for a few days the trails were fast and hard so I took them on a 16 mile run. Things were great for about 14 miles and then, just after we had come off the lake, my dogs jumped off the trail and tried to follow some tracks in the snow. This isn't normal for them; usually, they will turn their heads at the new scent or animal trail and continue on past. Not so yesterday. I had a huge tangle, which is saying something because I only had six dogs. While I was trying to sort out the dogs, Scroggie chewed through his neckline, some of the gangline (I use coated aircraft cable in hollow braid rope for the gangline, so he wouldn't have been able to actually cut the gangline in two) and almost all of his partners neckline. Scroggie has some chewing issues that we are going to have to work on. I have to hook him up last so that he doesn't destroy the lines in his excitement to go. That is what he is all about -- "go! go! go!" He is so excited to go that he gets all worked up and unless we are running, he has nowhere to channel this energy.

Anyway, I got the team sorted out and I am still not sure what it was that made them go off the trail like that. I have seen caribou there, in much the same spot on previous runs this winter, but the dog were only twenty yards or so away from them and we passed by without so much as a head turn. Later, I found out that a musher from just down the road was out the evening before, in pretty much the same spot as I was, and was followed and then cut off by two skinny wolves. She had to yell at them to get them off the trail and they continued to follow her until she got to the road another two miles away.

Other than that and the breaking of my driving bow (the thing I hang on to when I am on the sled) when I was at the half-way point in my run, it was uneventful.

There is not much else to write about today. It was too warm to take the dogs out (+3C), so I used my time to catch up on some kennel chores. I fixed the driving bow, which was a fairly simple proceedure since I already had some UHMW plastic laying around. I then spent about an hour making new neck lines for the sled. I have made extras because I know that I will need them with Scroggie around.

I also took all the dog-yard scoopings over to the trench that our neighbour dug for his dog-yard waste. This would normally not really need to be commented on, but as I was walking over I noticed that there were four dog trucks parked near the neighbours kennel, a dozen or so people milling around and two reporters not knowing which way to point the camera. As it turns out, Lance Mackey had just arrived at Hugh Neff's place, which is a few miles down the road from us. They were at my neighbours because they were dropping off a dog for him. The reporters were on their way down to Carcross to William Kleedhan's place to interview him and just happened to spot Mackey and Neff so they followed them to maybe get a second story.

Since I have the pictures downloaded now, I thought that I would post a few that I had taken during our last cold snap.

I think that for most, the word "Yukon" is synonymous with "cold." During the winters here in the early parts of the last century, it was not uncommon for the temperatures to fall below -30 Celcius in December and never rise above that until mid-February. Now, however, it seems that there is only about a two week period that sees these sorts of temperature drops. Ours this year was during Christmas where it was -50 or better for several days. I don't know exactly how much below -50 it got because, as we found out, our thermometer bottoms out at -50.0.



This next picture is what a morning at -50 looks like. Normally the sun isn't this bright at this time of the year, especially when it is early and behind trees. What made it so much more noticable was the ice fog in the air. When the temperature gets cold enough, the moisture in the air freezes and these frozen particles of ice just hover, much like regular fog. In Whitehorse, the city proper, it was nearly impossible to see much more than ten to fifteen feet in front of you because of the ice fog. It was much worse there, I expect, because of the river; which, incidentally, hasn't completely frozen over yet.