Dog Sledding!

What a great day!
Glen, Marc, Cristine and Kendra and I went dog sledding today from 7pm-9:30pm. We all got our own teams (Glen, Marc and Cristine and I had 4 dogs - Kendra had 3). We got a briefing on how to control the sled (brakes, drag pad and snow hook) and the basic commands for the dogs (cha = left and chi/chee=right)

Me with my team!

Basically, the dogs know what they're doing and control themselves. There's a network of trails with multiple paths side by side - at one point you'll be riding along side someone and then their path will turn into the woods and it's pretty much you and your dogs (unless you're behind/in front of someone). You get the opportunity to shout your commands when you want to switch trails. I got a really fast, well behaved team. At one point I was at the front of the pack with the lady who owns the teams and we had a race - what a blast!

Everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves. Glen fell 3 times mostly because he switched sleds/teams with Marc and Marc's sled was really hard to control.
It's a lot more work than you'd think it is and we're all probably going to be sore in the morning.

Here's a link to my Flickr set (click). The site is being weird so I haven't had a chance to add descriptions or anything yet.

I can't believe I've been here 5 years and hadn't had a chance to get out there. It would be something neat to do every year.

Temperature: -8C (windchill -13C)
Sunrise: 6:17am
Sunset: 11:29pm