mushing video

Mushing

A big day today... we were up early and waiting in the line for the lift to open at 8.30. The snow that had come in yesterday afternoon didn't continue all night, but there was a good top-up of about 10-15 cm and everything still looked nice and fresh as we were on our way up.

We sqeezed in 2 quick runs, one of which Jase found an ungroomed run which had no tracks on it yet so he was very happy with that :)

Then it was time to go mushing on the dog sled. We took the shuttle up and walked a little way until we saw some of the dogs up ahead. All together there were 40 dogs, all chained up in their individual areas, with space enough for a small wooden kennel, and a circle of about 3 metres diameter where they could walk around. They were all very keen to meet us and were trying to get our attention by barking and yelping all at once.

Our favourites were called Mousse and Marble, and another girl called Screamer, who was very timid but had a really sweet nature.

Jase had to help our guides pick out the dogs for our sled (we needed 8 in total) and run them one-by-one down through the middle of all the other dogs, ready to be harnessed up. Every time a dog was chosen the rest of them would bark and howl in jealousy, then when the guide came back to choose the next one, they were all on their best behaviour, and started crying and pleading to be picked.

There was another sled on the tour with us, a lady and her daughter from Ippswitch, Qld. Lots of Aussies here.

So after our lesson on how to handle the sled and the dogs we were on our way... I was first to do the mushing. The commands were "Ready" to get going, "Whoa" to stop, and "Hike" to spur them up a hill. It was so much concentration that I didn't really even take in the scenery for the first bit, but I soon started to get the hang of it. Until, a tight corner and the sled with Jase cocooned in it nearly toppled over and I lost my grip on the handle! Luckily there was a bit of a steep hill so the dogs were a bit slow up there and I quickly ran back up and got control of them (and Jase in the runaway sled) .... N.

Neri thought it was hilarious, but the number one rule we were told was "don't let go of the sled" so i was stuck in this runaway sled yelling out whoaaa at the top of my lungs with no control over the dogs. It was lucky that we reached an uphill so that they slowed down or who knows where i would have ended up.

Sledding was really fun, the dogs seem to enjoy it too. neri mushed us all the way to the lake where we had a break and warmed up in the hut. I mushed us all the way back, which was mainly downhill and required a lot of hard breaking so that the dogs wouldn't go too fast. At one point i let off the brakes too much and we almost overtook the dogs on a downhill. Luckily i used my superior skill to maintain control and not let go of the sled.

We got back to the kennels and said our goodbyes to the dogs... they were all really friendly.
There was a bit of a walk back to the bus stop, through boot deep powder, where we caught the bus back to the resort.

A quick lunch and we were out snowboarding again for the rest of the afternoon.

Warmer today and the snow wasn't great by the time we made it back out (we have been very spoilt though the past few days) but we still had fun and found some tree runs with fresh tracks here and there. The sunset was amazing, orange sun just breaking through the fog and casting this magic light onto the mountains as we did our last run.



we've attached some pics and a little video of the sledding.

-Jase