Dog Sledding with Outward Bound
I work at the Voyageur Outward Bound School in northern Minnesota. In the summer we run programs of all lengths, but mostly 20-28 day canoeing courses through the boundary waters wilderness, with no resupplies. Our food packs start out to be about 60 pounds each and we are scraping the mold off of blocks of cheese on day 14. We paddle through lakes and carry our packs and aluminum canoes over portages, sometimes 15 feet/5 meters, up to a mile with 16 year olds.
To work winter you need to work summer so that they know that you are a competent and capable field instructor to be able to take 7 adults and 11 sled dogs into negative temperatures for a week. I, at one point, much like this kayak trip, thought “I could never do winter camping, sounds hard and miserable” and sometimes it is but oh, do I love winter. I think about it all year that I’m away.
We travel across frozen lakes in two cohorts, one of the ski team and the other of the mush team, one instructor plus several students in each. The ski team travels ahead on cross country skis, pulling pulks with their gear, and chops into the ice every now and then to check thickness. The mush team follows behind, with two sleds of 5-6 dogs each sled and two people at the back. The type of mushing we do is expeditionary which means, like people have done for hundreds of years in this area, we are traveling with all of our gear to survive in below 40 degrees F/C. This means each sled can weight up to 500 lbs full of human and dog food, shelters, kitchen gear, personal gear, an emergency hot tent, and other bits. Our dogs are built and bred for this and to live in these conditions. They truly love to work and we love them deeply, they are the best co workers I’ll ever have.
A typical day in the winter might look like this, but every day is different and things change all the time whether you’re expecting it or not:
6:00/6:30 - Wake up, sit up and immediately drink half of the Nalgene water bottle that’s been keeping you warm all night. You need to kickstart your system to start producing heat right away. Put on your layers and heat trapping sock and plastic bag system, put your 5 lb. boots on, get out of your sleeping bag and pack up your personal belongings. If it’s in the negatives this all has to be done as efficiently as possible so you don’t loose too much heat. Us instructors have been already awake getting water from the ice hole, starting a fire to boil it over and cook first breakfast - sausages and English muffins seared in butter. At some point breakfast is brought to you to get calories on board.
7:00 - Start taking down the tarps we’ve slept under, and packing up group gear to be packed into sleds, feed dogs.
8:00 - Second breakfast of granola/oatmeal, hot beverages.
8:20 - Break apart fire, shovel fire remains into woods, put all food in bags, ski team stage skis and pack pulks, mush team pack and tie down sleds.
9:30 - map briefing, ski team departs, mush team harnesses dogs, hooks them to gangline, follows tracks from ski team.
10:30-5:00 - travel, brief stops for food and water.
5:00 - find a bay to camp in, ice screw chain lines into ice and clip dogs on for the night, unload sleds, put things into zones for kitchen, processing wood and shelters.
5:30 - Eat some crackers and talk about the evening plan, three groups of people for three evening jobs, wood, kitchen, shelters. Break sticks off dead and fallen trees, make massive pile for firewood. Fell a dead standing tree, saw into rounds and split with axe on the ice. Chop ice hole (sometimes 1-2 feet thick), fill three pots with water, start fire, boil water, cook dinner, feed dogs, other things. Set up tarp shelters, shovel snow around them for wind block.
9:30 - dinner and drying feet around fire, intentional outward bound curriculum chat.
10:30 - set up beds, put hot water bottle in sleeping bag, active warming exercises, get into sleeping bags.
This last season I co-led our one month course for young adults 18-25, wanting a challenge, to learn how to be more self motivated and to find their path in life. The course was split into three parts. 6 days of skiing and learning winter camping, 12 days of dog sledding along the Canadian border, including a 36 hour solo time, where students collect fire wood, set up a shelter and make their dinner in their spot in solitude, and then a 6 day ski final where the group is moving independently from us instructors and we travel and camp separately.
In between sections while on base, we clean our gear, make food and gear plans for the next time out, pack food and gear, get some rest and go back out. Our longer courses in the winter allow for more interesting route, more challenge and sometimes more consequences the farther out you get. This being a very warm winter, we had barely enough snow to mush on and it even rained on us for nearly three days.
It’s the most rewarding and unique job I may ever have and I’m looking forward to another season this winter.
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