Negative Fifty

I haven't gotten around to updating this site about my dog sledding trip. I had the pleasure of learning to cross country ski a week before I was to leave for my trip and in the process, falling and doing some damage to my knee. I figured if I just ignored the pain, it would heal and I'd be fine, so I proceeded to go on my trip anyway. I must say that I'm really glad that I did. (However, it turns out that I tore my MCL and partially tore my ACL...not something I should have been dog sledding on. Oops!)

I had a great time and more than that, got to test myself physically and mentally in ways that I've never had a chance to do so before. We had temperatures that reached -50F with the wind chill on our last night/day (about -30F raw temperature). The fact that I slept outside in this temperature, open to the elements but for a tarp overhead seems a bit crazy, and had I not been with my guides, I would have frozen to death without a doubt. I learned some cool tricks like doubling up sleeping bags. Of course, the doubled bags mean that there are two zippers to undo and, please note, are really, really difficult to get out of when the zippers are opposing and you have to pee in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, I ALWAYS had to pee at least once each night.

When you wake up and know you have to go, there's a little internal battle, where you tell yourself that you don't really have to go and if you can just fall back to sleep, you'll forget about it and won't really have to get up and put on your boots, walk far enough away from your fellow campers, pull down your pants (damn men who don't have to expose as much of themselves!!!) and freeze your ass before running back to your bed and diving back inside your sleeping bags. Then, there's the whole re-zipping process which is not easy, especially when your zippers are frozen and you have to breathe on them to thaw them before they'll rezip. However, there's the really nice part where you snuggle back down into your bag, get your pillow (a coat or whatever you have stuffed under your head) all situated, the drawstring pulled around your face, your balaklava pulled up over your mouth and nose and down over your eyes and your feet reach down to touch your water bottle.

Ah, the water bottle...the only thing I really cared about each night. Before bed, while we hung our wet clothes by the fire to dry, we would await the last pot of boiled water to fill our water bottles, which we promptly shoved in a dry sock and put in the bottom of our innermost sleeping bag. This little bit of ingenuity warmed the bag before we got in it and kept our feet warm. It was also quite handy to put on our sore muscles, our back or frozen hands to thaw us out enough to fall asleep. Without that water bottle, I'm not sure I would have made it most nights.

I realize I've not mentioned much about the actual dog sledding part of the journey, but that's not really what the trip was about for me. It was more existential than hooking dogs up to sleds, more physically demanding than pushing a sled uphill (although that was kind of painful), and more mentally taxing than trying to puzzle together how to fit all of our gear into the dog sleds. I'm going to just have to leave it at that.