Disaster in Slow Motion

Running the Mid Distance Bear Grease Sled Dog Marathon
Day 25 September 25, 2010
Team Buzzsaw / Stewart Taylor Printing

Disaster struck on Saturday as I was running the dogs on the first loop. As we came around a corner I see my lead dog jumping over a giant tree that had fallen. I could not stop or the dogs would get hung up in the tree so I had to wait for the last set of dogs to be jumping over the tree when I hollered Whoa! Nobody got hurt, the wheeler did not hit the tree but now I have the dogs on one side and me and the wheeler on the other....stuck. For 10 minutes I fiddled with the idea of tying off the dogs and unhooking the wheeler but the drag rope was too tight and couldn't untie and for the first time I did not have my knife.....first lesson of the day! Stetson showed up and in 10 minutes I was on my way after he used a chain saw to free the wheeler. The second lesson of the day was to unhook the tug lines on the dogs to calm them down. If they are off tug lines, it defusus them and takes away 90% of their power to pull. Later in the run I tried to have the dogs go "haw" (left) where they usually don't and it was trouble! I learned my 3rd lesson of the day: Stay the course, keep it simple, boring is good! For some reason I thought we could go left and it would be this smooth, all in a line left easy turn.......NOT. Every dog turned hard left and we got wrapped up in some trees, breaking necklines and potentially harming the dogs. Only because I was going slow did I avert disaster. If I had been in a sled, I would have been in big trouble. Again, lessons for the rookie sometime come in bunches and today was a bitter sweet day. In a controlled enviornment, we were able to correct it easily. But, on the trail at 3am in the dead of darkness going full speed and it is -30 below.....Disaster!