No Denali Highway Around Here

Read an interesting article in the Fairbanks News Miner. It can be found at the following link, http://newsminer.com/2007/12/20/10498/ . From here on I'm assuming you've read the article.

The major challenge I've had training my team this winter has been finding a long trail. You've read in this blog that I've done laps and on a few occasions have been able to run my dogs on a 45 mile trail (round-trip). Folks don't realize how far 50, 30, or even 20 miles actually is. In Rural Alaska all trails are essentially snow machine trails. Snow machine trails are made as people travel between communities or by folks just out having fun. The trails made by those having fun don't make for good dog trails. Trails made by those traveling between villages require frozen rivers. We are just now starting to get a good ice layer on one small river. The larger river isn't frozen solid yet.

It's really not something to complain about, you can only do what you can do. But clearly mushing in Rural Alaska is different. The fact that we don't have 100's of miles of road connecting us to different areas of the state can be seen as a disadvantage. When it comes to finding long trails to run the dogs on it may be, but our dogs are used to a variety of trails. My dogs only have one run on what most would consider a good trial. I'm not worried about deep snow, slush and slop, glare ice, anything really. The dogs are used to tough trails.

When the rivers are frozen and trails between communities well traveled, we have more trails then a musher would know what to do with. Problem is, that usually doesn't happen until February or March. I think a professional distance musher would probably have a difficult time consistently preparing for races. There would be years where they would have lots of trails and could condition the dogs well and others where they would struggle mightily to get miles on the dogs. I wouldn't say I've struggled mightily, but it's been a challenge. Just last year there were many more trails established by this time.

So we don't have anything like the Denali Highway near Dillingham. There are no 135 mile trails constantly being packed down by snowmachines. That's fine. If all mushing consisted of was running dogs on a road, I probably wouldn't mush anyway. I prefer the wild, true wilderness where a musher and a good team of dogs can travel the way they always have. We use a trail when we have it and make our own when we don't. That's mushing.