Ester Dome mushing

Sonja joined me at work for a couple hours today (Emilie was at her daycare, which is open this week). After a lunch at home, we went to the top of Ester Dome with the dogs. Good inversion: -10F and below in the valleys, while it was probably around +20 at the top of the Dome. Sonja went on her sled, I on the skis, and each of us had one dog. We started in the saddle between the two main tops, and went on the out-and-back to the last top on the west side. Beautiful view of the alaska range and denali and the sun.



It took some trial and error, but at the end we had a system: on some downhills I took my skis off and held the handlebar of Sonja's sled and ran downhill that way. On some downhills I skied, tied only to one dog (too bad we can't let both of them run loose at the same time if we want to see them ever again) and was holding the line to Sonja's sled so close that the sled was pretty much right behind me. On the smaller uphills, each of us had one dog. On the bigger uphills, I took the skis off too, let my dog loose, and helped the dog that was pulling Sonja. And thus we went. At the end, Sonja was tired, and when I fell down and her sled tipped across my skis, and that caused some tears to be shed. Luckily it was only a 100 yards or so from the car, so we got home without problems.

Nearly back home, here is a picture of the Alaska Range at 3:20pm or so, about half hour after sunset. Mt Hayes is on the left, Hess and Deborah near the center. The hills closer by were the location of the fire/smoke that plagued us this past summer.