Moonlight mushing

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Last night at about ten o'clock, I could hear our neighbours dogs barking and noticed that they had turned on the lights in the kennel. I wonder if they thought there was a wolf or a moose around at first. I'm sure it didn't take them long to figure out what was going on though; it was us. We were hooking up our dogs.

Jenn gets home from work at around 2140, so I have to wait until then to take the dogs out. Any sooner and the baby has to come with me. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem but I don't want to go on the trail with her in the backpack in the dark. It's one thing for me to get whacked with a branch, but for her, quite another. Lately, the temperature has been too mild for going out with any daylight, so last night found us getting ready to go at ten.

The baby was not even close to sleeping. She was not even tired and Jenn hasn't been out with the dogs at night before so we decided to make it a family trip. Jenn harnessed the dogs while I got the sled ready -- laid out the sleeping bag for Jenn and the baby, straightend out lines, that sort of thing. Once we were all hooked up, Jenn climbed into the sled with Hunter and we were off. We took all our dogs, except Ruby, Hudson and Bluegrass. Ruby and Hudson had good reasons to stay home, but Bluegrass was left behind because I don't have enough sections of gangline to take seven dogs out and because we were going for a twelve mile run and I wasn't sure if she was up to it yet. I have since made another gangline section and I will put her in the team next time I go out. It is easier to rest when there are more dogs.

Heading into the bush



The moon was out and almost full, so it was quite bright. In fact, for nearly a third of the run I didn't even use a headlamp. This proved to be fortunate, too, because even though I put new batteries in my headlamp before we left they were nearly completely drained by the time we came home. I think it is my halogen bulb that does it -- it draws a lot of juice. I really only used the headlamp when we were going through the bush sections in case there was a low hanging branch or an animal on the trail. Jenn was able to take some photos, and this is what it looked like without a light on:

Taking a break



On our way again



There was a south wind blowing, which we hardly noticed going through the bush but once we got to the lake, we could feel the warmth on our faces and when we arrived back home the temperature had climbed four degrees to -8C.

I have mentioned to Jenn on several occasions now that I would like to have a hand-held GPS unit so that we can better gauge our distances and our speed. For recreational mushers, I don't think that speed is that important, but since we want to get into racing it would be nice to know how we are doing. Regardless, we made pretty good time on the trail. We were on the trail for just under two hours, arriving home at 2355. Normally, it takes me an hour and twenty minutes to an hour and a half to do that trail with a moderately loaded sled. However, with Jenn, all my gear still and Hunter, the six dogs didn't slow down all that much. It was a very good run.