Week 5: Dogsledding!

Sunlight Count: 1h 58min (Sunrise 12:45  Sunset 14:43)

Temperature:  -18 C

This week's highlight was all about Dogsledding!  We splurged and treated ourselves to an early Christmas present with a dogsledding tour through Arctic Chalet, a well-established tourist company here in Inuvik (http://www.whitehuskies.com/).  It was an awesome afternoon. We had a beautiful clear day to show off the 2 hour sunrise/sunset, and it wasn't even that cold... only 18 below!

Words can't describe this classic northern experience, so I'll take you through the day in photos:

Arriving at Arctic Chalet

Adam, getting his groove on with the Mukluks we borrowed.
Notice the bear skin on the wall behind him...

Setting out with the dogs. We each had our own sled and dog team, and learned to 'Mush'!

Adam 'mushing' his team. This was before he tipped over his sled. Don't worry, he only injured his pride.

Sledding together! We could switch back and forth between the two trails by telling the dogs "CHEE" for right and "CHAW" for left. Sometimes they listened.

On the bush trails

Adam on the lake. With sweet sweet wolf-skin gloves (borrowed).

No words for this. It was beautiful.

After the run we got to meet the puppies! They have 2 litters of new husky pups, 5 and 6 weeks old.

They were the absolute cutest.

Even Adam looks like a dog lover here. 

Awwwww....

Best sign ever. And speaking of peeing, the funniest part of the day was when the dogs would try to pee while running, hopping along on 3 legs and spraying all the other dogs as it went. Amazing.  

The all-white huskies were beautiful. In a four-dog team the two lead dogs are typically smaller, often female, and smarter, and then the two rear dogs (called "wheel" dogs) are the big dumb males who just like to run. My dogs were named Nanuk, Maki, Gumboot, and Duke.

When we got back after about an hour and a half on the run, the dogs weren't even a little bit tired. And we had them running at a good speed! (Guessing up to 30km/hr? I didn't think to have my 'ski tracks' app on.... haha) You can tell they are built to do this all day, and it's not hard to imagine how this became such an important mode of transportation for the people traditionally. Really neat to experience it ourselves! Maybe next time I have $3000 and a week's vacation, I'll sign up for the 6-day camping/dogsled tour this company runs between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk.... :)