Adventures in Alaska: Life with Sled Dogs

By Peg Billingsley

Being dragged, face down, across a frozen Arctic lake behind a team of sled dogs, was the start of my 30-year love affair with mushing. Over the past three decades of adventure, the dogs have provided lessons about love, teamwork, humility, humor and sometimes even death.  This is a collection of some of the stories I wrote for an older blog..

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peg Billingsley
• Release date: Jan 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393334095

Book preview

Just a couple of thoughts

This book is a compilation of journal entries I wrote in 2007 and 2008. I try to tell a story when I write. As if you and I are sitting down having a cup of coffee together. As if we have been friends for a long time and I am writing you a letter. There is no need to be formal.

It’s been great fun to re-read these thoughts of mine and it has helped me to see again that despite present fleeting circumstances, my life has been very, very good.

I suppose a book needs some sort of dedication and that is a special kind of dilemma. Naming one person and not another can create hurt feelings, so I’ve really had to think about this and I finally arrived at an answer.

This book is dedicated to my Nana who was a gifted storyteller in her own right. She had an adventurous spirit that never quite got to fly. She told me once that she lived adventure through me.

This book is also dedicated to Caleb, the best dog in the world. He was my shadow for almost 10 years and I was most definitely unworthy of such devotion. Nana loved dogs and they loved her. She wouldn’t mind sharing center stage with the weirdest border collie cross in the world.

Peg

www.ouralaskalife.com

In the worship of security we fling ourselves beneath the wheels of routine-and before we know it our lives are gone.

Sterling Hayden, Wanderer

The Beginning

Dave shouted, Whatever happens, do not let go of the sled! At least I think that's what he said. It was impossible to hear clearly over the cacophony of the maniacal sled dogs in front of me, who howled and lunged into their harnesses. The rope that ran from sled to post was so taut it sang. Or it would have if it could have been heard over the uproar.

And it wasn't just the dogs in my team who screamed. The 30 others in the dog yard behind me leaped and twisted and barked and howled. The second they had seen the sleds dragged from the shed, the entire yard had erupted into chaos and I questioned the wisdom of my decision to learn how to run a dog team. The noise these dogs made thrummed in my chest and adrenaline coursed through my body.

The night before, Dave and his wife Kristen, had given a crash course in sled management. Stand on the runners with knees bent a little. Move with the sled, not against it. Use the brake, especially right out of the yard, to control the team. And most important, never, ever let go of the sled because the dogs will just keep going. It all sounded simple enough and I had been lulled to sleep, snug and cozy by the fire, with visions of Togo in my head.

Reality sunk in the next day as I wrestled each dog into their harness and to their place in front of the sled. I was sweating heavily after the second dog and had removed my jacket even though it was 20 below zero. The team was finally made ready and I planted my feet on the runners of the wooden sled. I pulled my hat down and my neck gator up so that only my eyes were visible. There was a fog that hung over the dogs from their collective breath. I gripped the handle of the sled as best as I could with hands that were encased in large, oversized gauntlet mitts that went half way to my elbows.

Remember! Don't let go of the sled!

Did Dave know something I didn't?

Use the brake! Are you ready? Dave shouted.

I nodded weakly and when Dave pulled that anchor rope, my team and I shot out of the yard, down the hill and onto Great Slave Lake. Why were we going so fast? And then I remembered the brake. I lifted one foot and stepped down on the brake. Sort of. The toe of my boot only caught the edge of the horizontal metal bar with its downward pointing tips and it slipped off in the blink of an eye. My foot hit the ground and dragged behind me, which jerked my other foot off its runner and pulled me downward.

My hands gripped the handle bar of the sled for several seconds as my knees plowed snow. I desperately tried to get my feet back on the runners, but simply wasn't agile enough in my bulky winter gear, and in a few moments my grip on the sled loosened and I found myself being dragged face down behind a runaway team. Somehow, on the way from handlebar to ground, my mittened hands had landed on the brake bar, and I was hanging onto it, as if lives depended on it. And they sort of did.

A team separated from its musher can find itself in all sorts of trouble. Tangled. Lost. Stomped by angry moose. Fights. A separated musher is suddenly without sleeping bag, food, tent, stove, cookwear - all safely tucked away in that sled that disappeared on the horizon. Smart mushers carry a simple fire-starting kit in their coats, but that is shallow comfort when chasing a team down a trail.

In this case though, Kristen had stopped roughly half a mile ahead of me with her own team, so the worst results of losing a team was not in my foreseeable future. Still, letting go would have been to admit defeat, so I hung of for all I was worth.

On the periphery of my vision, the seven-pound snow hook - a razor sharp, metal, claw hook whose purpose was to anchor a team - bounced just off the trail again and again, never gaining purchase on the wind packed snow. A small part of my brain briefly considered what would happen if those hooks landed in my arm, or my back, or my head. I quickly dismissed the thought and focused on the challenge at hand.

Despite me being a 155 lb drag, my team moved with athletic ease and at an impressive speed. My arms and shoulders burned with the effort of hanging on and my hands cramped. My futile cries of Whoa! Dammit! Whoa! fell on selectively deaf, furry ears. Snow built up inside the front of my jacket and snow bibs. My hat had fallen off and snow was packed between the lenses of my glasses and my eyeballs. I felt my grip loosening on the brake and right about the time exhaustion was going to force me to let go, the team had suddenly stopped.

I got to my feet and stomped on the brake with astonishing speed, given that I had just been unceremoniously dragged on my face for about half a mile across a frozen lake. Kristen had hold of the front of my team and Dave stomped up behind me.

You didn’t let go! That was great! he exclaimed. His team had closed the distance behind me, mostly because their musher was actually standing on the runners. You ok?

Freaking great! I shouted.

And I was. I didn’t know it at that moment, but that event would herald a 30-year love affair with sled dogs and mushing. Three decades of adventure and running dogs in some of the North’s remotest places. We’ve traveled modern and historic trails and even sometimes been on land where nobody else has wandered. I am grateful for the people along the way who have shared a place by their fires, food, wisdom and sometimes a kick in the ass.

Mostly though I am forever indebted to the dogs who taught me how to love, live and eventually die.

Sled Wreck

It wasn’t even close to the fun run we were hoping for. Darrel and I were looking to explore a new route, off the Yukon Quest trail, which is a bit busy these days as mushers train for some important upcoming distance races. I hooked up a five-dog team and Darrel harnessed six.

After mushing out of our yard, there is a 90-degree left-hand turn featuring a birch tree that must be avoided - or not. I knew I was going to eat it even before it started to happen. It was like being in a slow motion car wreck. I hit the tree, flipped the sled and landed hard on my right side. To describe it as the big hurt is an understatement.

I hung onto the sled’s handlebar with all I was worth. The dogs were lunging; I was being dragged; and I couldn’t get the damn snow hook, which serves as an anchor, freed up. Finally I had the snow hook planted and began to consider whether I was dead.

I lay there in the snow for a few minutes completing an assessment of my body parts. Could I feel my toes? Check. Legs? Check. Was my back hurt? Nope. How many fingers was I holding up? Can’t see a thing without my glasses on. My hip hurt but that seemed to be about it. I had escaped relatively unscathed. Or so I thought.

The next step was to stand up and determine how bad my hip hurt and that’s where things began to fall apart. I couldn’t get on my feet. I flopped from side to side; tried to get on my hands and knees; attempted to haul myself up by using the sled; but I simply couldn’t do it. I radioed Darrel, who by this time was a couple of miles away, hooked down and wondering where I was.

Honey I’ve fallen and I can’t get up! I almost laughed. I’ve hurt myself bad and I can’t get on my feet. You have to come back.

He spent the next several minutes trying to figure out how to turn a maniacally fresh team around and convince them to go back home instead of heading into adventure. I spent that time rolling around trying to stay warm. I suppose I could have dragged myself to the house, but you know, the thought never occurred to me. A musher doesn’t leave her dogs.

Darrel finally got back, quickly put the dogs away and then somehow managed to get me on my feet. I stood on the sled while he played lead dog and pulled it up to the house. I was freezing and hobbled into the bedroom, stripped down to my skivvies, turned the electric blanket on high and crawled into bed. My hip hurt bad and I couldn’t seem to get warm.

We probably should have called an ambulance but without health insurance all I could think of was the giant medical bill. I decided to just rest for a while and see how I could manage the pain. Darrel, bless his heart, made me a crutch.

For five days now I’ve been hobbling around, turning black and blue and wondering just what an x-ray would look like. I have to go to the doctor tomorrow for some more vaccinations and I think I’ll have him look at my hip.

I did some research on the internet about this injury - the net is free, the doctor is not. I think I have fractured the top of my pelvis by tearing away the muscle. We’ll see what the doc says tomorrow.

Doing chores is pretty slow. Takes me twice as long to feed and I swear the dogs in the back of the yard keep looking at their watches. The injury isn’t as sharply painful today - simply aches