Sled Dog Tours in Fairbanks, Alaska

Part 2: At first the trail was perfect (well, OK, there was more ice and an open-water creek crossing) but mostly it was smooth sailing), and then a serious blizzard kicked up! By the time we got to our cabin, the winds were incredibly strong. Like, so strong that we couldn’t feed the dogs in their dishes because they would blow away. So we fed soaked meat and kibble on the ground, and the dogs became quickly, comfortably buried in the blowing, drifting snow. (Trust me, if you’re ever in a blizzard, curl up into a ball and let the snow encase you. It’s warm and cozy in there!!) By late morning, the wind had died down and we felt good about the 3 runs we had had, knowing we still had another 40 mile run home - through a now possibly very drifted trail. We departed around sunset, and had a strong run home. The last exciting experience was when the dogs sensed a wolf pack about 6 miles from our house. We stopped to discuss the tracks, and the dogs all started barking, and a few of them tried to turn around and run to me for security. Guess the wolves were closer than we thought!

Thank you, thank you, thank you, to @ldreese for the snow machine support and to my mom, Julie Fetting, for literally keeping the home fires burning while we were away!

sleep deprivation ✔️
all night runs ✔️
heat (sun) ✔️
heat (dog menstruation) ✔️
dog fight ✔️
open water ✔️
ice ✔️
wind ✔️
camping around unfamiliar dog teams ✔️
random skijor visitor at the cabin ✔️
trail breaking ✔️
blizzard ✔️
getting buried in snow ✔️
sleeping outside in new sleeping bag ✔️
wolves ✔️ ...

Our White Mountains trip is complete! And boy-oh-boy did we get a little bit of everything!

Part 1: After a 2 hour nap on Sunday night, we departed at 3:30 am (yes, AM) with our friends Richie Beattie from @wildthingzdogmushing and @ldreese on snow machine support for the first 40 mile run. We arrived at Crowberry cabin at sunrise and stayed for just a few hours, excited to take in the beautiful views during the daylight hours of our next 40 mile run. And it was pretty! But it was also HOT. My thermometer read 40 degrees for the first hour or so, and the dogs moved slowly on the “mashed potatoes” trail. Eventually we got some good cloud cover and the temps “cooled” to 20 degrees, but that was still hot for the dogs. Our run to Windy Gap cabin took us longer than we wanted, and handed us some difficult trail conditions including soft trail, major elevation gain, miles of ice, open water holes, and a twisting, winding, ungroomed trail. (Sadly, our friend Richie also seriously injured his knee on this section of trail, and had to mush out to the parking lot for a pick up the next morning…) So we stopped to break after sunset. After caring for our dogs, we slept for 2 hours, and departed the cabin at 11:30 pm, knowing it would take us 6 to 7 hours to get to our next cabin, and hoping for better trail conditions… ...

Update: KattiJo won’t be running in the Willow 300 this week. They’ve recently received rain, freezing rain and some pretty warm temps… Instead, we’ll be taking our own multi-day camping trip into the White Mountains, where conditions are near perfect! 👌 Well, we may find some unbroken, wind-blown sections, but that’ll be fine Iditarod training. Stay tuned for more photos when we return on Wednesday!
#iditarod2022 #sledogsofinstagram #runlong #blacksprucedogsledding ...