Saturday, 8:a5 AM. -10 degrees, wind WNW, moderate with strong gusts. The sky is clear except for lake smoke on the eastern horizon, but the barometer predicts snow.
Yesterday included a true, wonderful surprise, a phone call opportunity to join John Thiel, owner of Wolfsong Adventures, on a dog sled trip. He had an extra place in a sled and asked if I would like to come along. You can imagine that I hightailed it out to his dogdom on Happy Hollow Road, ten miles west of Bayfield. By 9:30 AM I was feeding and watering dogs, helping to harness them up and ready them for the trail. The party for the morning was comprised of two couples, one from Marshfield, the other from the Twin Cities, John’s helper Tim, John and myself. It was a gregarious and hardy bunch of folks.
John and Mary Thiel are Bayfield entrepreneurs of the hardiest and happiest sort, running a summer sailing concession with three sailboats, the winter dog sledding business with over thirty dogs, and Wolfsong Wear, custom outdoor clothing of the highest quality, sewn mostly by Mary, by hand (this follows my own theory that it takes three separate incomes for independent survival in the Northland). They own eighty acres adjacent to thousands of acres of Bayfield County Forest land, so their sledding adventures take off right from their kennels.
The Wolfsong experience is totally hands-on, every customer being encouraged, one might say required, to feed the dogs, hook them up to the sleds, and drive the sleds at least some of the time. This is an immersion in mushing, which no participant will likely escape. That said, it is not really hard. What it is, is cold. We were faced with low temperatures and a biting wind, but no one was frozen, as the Thiels make certain that everyone is properly dressed, and they have plenty of cold weather gear to pass around, including snow boots for those who aren’t prepared for northern Wisconsin cold. I was happy to have on my deer hunting stuff. By the way, children are more than welcomed, they are catered to, the Thiels having two girls, six and nine years old. The dogs are Siberian huskies, not all that large, maybe averaging fifty or fifty-five pounds. They are sweet, gentle dogs, putting up with all sorts of antics from the humans involved. I found the hardest part of the whole experience to be putting on the dog harnesses, because I am not adept at visualizing how things work. There are collars, harnesses, towlines and more, all of which can get tangled, frozen stiff and difficult. But, eventually the dogs (five sleds, more than thirty dogs), all got fed, watered (a hot soup made from boiled pigs feet), hooked up and ready to go. John went through a brief training session as to how to handle the sled, and then we were off, several of us sitting in the sleds (actually laying down like race drivers) and the others driving, and we are off. The dogs want to go, and are extremely powerful. Hang on or you will be left unceremoniously behind. Down the woodland trail we go, bitter wind on the face, in your eyes, up your nose. Gee is right, Haw is left. The dogs may heed the driver or may not, it is a kind of cooperative venture. Uphill slower, downhill breakneck speed. Average, maybe fifteen miles per hour, but endlessly. These dogs are in good shape! This is like taking a dirt bike on a wild ride as fast as you can go. Forget about snowmobiles, this is truly exhilarating! We stop every once in a while (John and I are in the lead with a nine dog team, really fast) to see how everyone else is doing. Oops, here is a team with an empty sled trying to pass us. Someone fell off! Grab the dogs, wait for whomever to come panting up to reclaim the rig. Off again, going like the wind! At one stop John asks if I want to drive. You bet! How to do this: Keep hold of the bar, or the dogs will leave you in the snow. Keep your knees bent, lean back. It helps to have a low center of gravity and a little lead in your butt, definitely my strong points. To veer left, push down on the right runner, opposite to veer right. If going too fast down hill or into a curve, put your foot on the drag, a tethered piece of snowmobile track between the runners. To really stop, stand on the brake.
When stopped, keep a foot firmly on the brake and a strong hand on the bar, and don’t say anything that indicates we should continue. Any words that sound like go, on, ahead, even good dogs, will be interpreted as a command to run, which the dogs are all too eager to do, and will leave the driver running behind futilely trying to catch up. Actually, I found that I could do this all pretty well, I didn’t tip over, didn’t loose the team, had pretty good balance and found a sort of rhythm to the mushing. Lots of fun, and a real adrenaline rush. The only times I fell in the snow were when I clumsily tripped over the pull lines.
We were served a welcome hot lunch on a very frozen little lake in the absolute middle of nowhere, up to our knees in powder snow. Lunch was complicated by the fact that all the dogs had to be unhitched and hooked up to picket lines to rest (otherwise they get all tangled up, chew up their harnesses, and may generally misbehave) and then all sorted out and hooked up again for the return run. John says women generally do better at all this fuss because they are more patient and follow instructions better than guys. I would say everyone did well, no one lost patience and all, and each and every one had a terrific time. On the way back folks were getting tired, as evidenced by more empty sleds appearing here and there.
Once home the dogs had to be unharnessed, put on their picket lines, fed and watered. These are, I reiterate, wonderful, gentle, beautiful animals. They are kept in shape by constant exercise and training, in every season. Several of our dogs were old, one fourteen, attesting to the care and conditioning they all receive. Time must be spent socializing each dog every day, and it takes the whole Thiel family to do it.
We started at about 9:30 AM and finished at 1:30 PM. We spent about three hours actually mushing on the trail. This was a real adventure. And even an old dog like myself can still run with the pack. I am a bit shy on photos because it was so cold out on the trail that my camera froze up, but it would have been nearly impossible to to take action shots anyway considering huge musher mitts and everything else. For better photos go to Wolfsong Adventures.com
And what about the rest of John and Mary's day? Off on a mush in the afternoon with a bunch of kids, dog sledding for their nine year old’s birthday party.
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