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After the storm, now THIS is what it's all about!

Gail P
December 17th, 2009, 10:47 PM
After all the digging out, packing trails and just dealing with the amount of snow that came down, finally it was time to play :D

Ryan48
December 17th, 2009, 10:49 PM
I'm totally jealous. You live in such a beautiful area. Not sure where you are but I'd leave Mi in a heartbeat for such heaven.

RM

Gail P
December 17th, 2009, 10:53 PM
A few more. Oh yeah, this was my first time ever hooking up 6 dogs together. Last winter Dru was too young and this fall I had to wait for snow since I can't safely hook up more than 4 on my dryland rig, it's lightweight and doesn't have enough stopping power for more dogs. Even with 4 they can drag it with the brakes full on, but they're pretty good about listening to "easy" and "whoa".

"Gee!"
60723


60724

60725

Ryan48
December 17th, 2009, 10:55 PM
How do they know where they are goin? I'd have to put a giant steak at the end of the trail for my guys to follow the road....home :(

Rm

UTANRO
December 17th, 2009, 10:59 PM
The second photo in the first post, and the last photo in the second post are AMAZING! Both of those could be Hallmark cards!

Gail P
December 17th, 2009, 11:01 PM
I'm totally jealous. You live in such a beautiful area. Not sure where you are but I'd leave Mi in a heartbeat for such heaven.

RM

I'm in the heart of cottage country in Haliburton County, Ontario. You might not have been jealous if you were here on Thursay or Friday, or even on the weekend. We got 4' of snow in 2 days and were snowbound. Then a couple of days later the roads were cleared enough for travel (though lots of people were still working on clearing driveways so they could get in/out), but as it got milder the snow lost some of it's fluffiness and got heavy. We lost power for a while both Monday and Tuesday, probably due to trees on the power lines.

Dee-O-Gee
December 17th, 2009, 11:02 PM
Wow you all look like you had a blast! :crazy: snow but stunning pictures GailP

Is this near cottage country (Gravenhurst area?) I heard that's were the brunt of the storm went last week.

hazelrunpack
December 17th, 2009, 11:07 PM
Man, that looks like fun, Gail! :cloud9: The dogs must be happy to be hitting the trails again. Do you have any races soon?

Gail P
December 17th, 2009, 11:10 PM
How do they know where they are goin? I'd have to put a giant steak at the end of the trail for my guys to follow the road....home :(

Rm

Partly they just follow the trail. Any dog that will keep the lines tight and run at the front is called a trail leader. But, then there are the gee/haw command leaders that really take the team where you want them to go. Once they're trained, as you're approaching a side trail or intersection of the trail, you just call out "Haw!" if you want to go left or "Gee!" if you want to go right. Also "on by" or "on through" if you want them to pass by a side trail or go straight through an intersection. Lightning is a good command leader and Rain is picking it up and so is Flurry. My trail has multiple loops so we work on the commands quite a bit when running at home, but if I'm running them on a longer trail that is straight out however far I want to go and then back, when I call "haw around" Lightning will do a 180 and turn the team with him. We're still working on "gee over" to keep over to the right side of the trail so if we meet other teams coming the opposite way we don't collide head on. Also much safer if I'm on any roads or trails with ATV traffic when I'm doing dryland runs.

Gail P
December 17th, 2009, 11:16 PM
Wow you all look like you had a blast! :crazy: snow but stunning pictures GailP

Is this near cottage country (Gravenhurst area?) I heard that's were the brunt of the storm went last week.
We're a little east of there. I guess south east if you want to be specific.

Man, that looks like fun, Gail! :cloud9: The dogs must be happy to be hitting the trails again. Do you have any races soon?
In Ontario on the sprint racing schedule there is one race early in January that is a bit further than I plan to travel, it's up in Markstay-Warren, and one purebred race at the end of January that is for Siberian Huskies.

My schedule is Feb. 6/7 Kearney, Feb. 13/14 Haliburton, Feb. 20/21 Cannington and Feb. 27 Apsley. Before that besides all the training I do on my own and with a couple of friends, I hope to be able to get out to a training camp that is being held Dec. 27-Jan. 3

There are also other races around for the mid-distance/distance racers, but it's the sprint races I attend and enter the 4-dog, 4-mile classes.

Tundra_Queen
December 18th, 2009, 06:39 PM
Gail, that looks like fun. I bet ya it is peaceful when u are out like that. Just the sound of the snow under the sled and dogs.

How do they know where they are goin? I'd have to put a giant steak at the end of the trail for my guys to follow the road....home :(

Rm

:laughing::laughing:

Spatx
December 18th, 2009, 10:04 PM
Think anyone would notice if I snuck in and built myself a home there... :laughing:

I really want to live out in the country and have a nice amount of land. I've never been one for city life... Everytime I see your photos I tell my sister thats exactly what I want - and all the border collies too! :D

Sledding with them looks like so much fun. Maybe one day in the future I'll be able to do it too.

growler~GateKeeper
December 19th, 2009, 01:07 AM
Picture Purrfect :cloud9:

hazelrunpack
December 19th, 2009, 10:19 AM
Are all those pics taken on the trails you groom, Gail, or are there other groomed trails available? Wow...if they're all the ones you groom, that was a lot of work! :eek:

Gail P
December 19th, 2009, 11:38 AM
It really is so much fun, and very peaceful too :cloud9:

Are all those pics taken on the trails you groom, Gail, or are there other groomed trails available? Wow...if they're all the ones you groom, that was a lot of work! :eek:
These pictures are all on my trail (wasn't freshly groomed in these either, I did it the day before and then we got a bit of fresh snow on top). It's not really a very long trail for training purposes, only about .75 miles (though that is PLENTY long when snowshoing and trying to pack it to the full width :eek: ) Now that I have a snowmobile though I don't normally snowshoe it anymore to pack it so it's pretty easy to do. I'll start out with just the machine to build a bit of a base and then after that to make a nicer surface I pull a plastic utility sled loaded with snow, which smoothes out the track marks from the skidoo. When I'm running the dogs I have to do laps to get in the distance I need to get them conditioned for racing but they tend to get bored with just doing laps around the same old trail. My neighbour across the road has some trails that I can use once they get opened up, but she hasn't had her snowmobiles out yet and I don't dare take my little machine over by myself. The snow has crisped up but there is still a lot of it so I might get stuck, plus it's almost guaranteed that there will be some trees down on the trail that will need cutting and if I come across that I'm sunk since my machine doesn't have reverse. Another friend (who also sleds) has some trails at her property that I'm hoping to go try out soon and for doing something different, and longer, I plan to head up to Algonquin Provincial Park a few times this winter (once/week would be really nice, but it's about 1 1/2 hours drive). They've got 66km of groomed dogsled trails there, no snowmobiles, only other mushers, skijorers and maybe people snowshoeing or skiing, although there are also other ski trails available for the skiers. I just checked the website last night and the dogsled trails in Algonquin aren't yet open. Hopefully they will be soon. There is also a training camp soon that I want to go to this year that will be running from Dec. 27-Jan.3 New Year's Eve there is going to be a full moon, I'd love to do a moonlit run then.

hazelrunpack
December 19th, 2009, 01:06 PM
A moonlit run sounds loverly :cloud9:

:fingerscr that the other trails open up soon!

angeldogs
December 19th, 2009, 06:37 PM
Those are great pics and look like a lot fun.