Horses and Sleds

I recently had the opportunity to view some videos that had been originally viewed as part of the 2008 Vancouver Mountain Film Festival...among them was one entitled Skiing in the Shadow of Ghengis Kahn, which featured the people living in the Altai Mountains of Northwest China...the Altai people have retained a skiing culture which was featured in this video...it was very interesting. These people live in a remote mountainous area and in the winter their primary method of transportation (other than skiing) is using hardy ponies pulling specially built sleds....it struck me that there wasn't really a great deal of difference between these horse-pulled sleds and the dog sled....the Altai people make all of their equipment by hand...it further struck me that there is a real similarity between these horse-drawn sleds and those sleds used in cultures where reindeer are trained in harness...there is no question that the dog sleds used in Russia are modelled on these reindeer-pulled sleds...the question becomes...which came first and is there a connection between all three sleds, those pulled by horses, reindeer and dogs? An area for further research. It is snowing today, the trails are excellent...great for so late in the season.

Posted by Buck at 10:04 AM 0 comments


Thursday February 19/09

Back In Action
It has been many months since I have taken the time to enter anything on this blog…not that I havn’t thought about it or havn’t been writing about other things in other places….My desire now is to share some of my thoughts regarding the history of the use of sled dogs, particularly as this pertains to Canada by sharing/posting my thoughts at least a couple of times a week in this space.I was up to the Yukon for the start of the 2009 Yukon Quest, I just got home on February 16th…it was a great experience, I was able to volunteer and this gave me a wonderful opportunity to get an inside look at what it takes to stage a sled dog event of this magnitude, to meet some wonderful people (race staff, mushers and other volunteers) and to feel that I was able to contribute in just a little way to support this very unique event. In many ways the Quest is a labour of love, everyone involved gives so much more of themselves than you could ever reasonably expect.While I was in Whitehorse, I spent some time at the Yukon Archives. I have always felt that the Klondike Gold Rush was the catalyst for the creation of a very unique place in Canadian sled dog history. In a very short period of time, thousands of eager gold seekers from all over the world raced to the Klondike. This journey presented many challenges made more difficult by the fact that in many cases there was a total lack of information and knowledge about the route, the destination and more importantly about just how to travelthere. And then of course there was the weather, particularly the winter weather.Sled dogs offered the only practical option for winter travel (other than walking) and over time a very unique combination of influences came together that produced a very unique sled dog culture, something that existed at a certain time and in a very particular place. My time at the Yukon Archives provided a beginning insight into many of these factors and I will be going back to do more research. Thank you to the staff who went out of their way to accommodate me. When I discussed my research focus with them, I sensed that they were as excited about the topic as I am.I have often wondered about the dog sleds that were most commonly used during the Klondike Gold Rush….I had always thought that they were simply a form of basket sled…but a very cumbersome one. You see these sleds in most photos of the Klondike, their unique aspect is the two poles that run down the sides and protrude beyond the back of the sled and are used as “handles”…and the runners of these sleds do not extend beyond the back of the sled so the musher is actually running behind the sled while he hangs on to these “handles”….it looks very awkward.I now realize that in fact these are not basket sleds and that they actually have a name, they are called Yukon Freight Sleds. Tappan Adney, who is best known or his work with skin and bark canoes…and whose life story is both inspiring and tragic was a reporter during the Klondike Gold Rush and in his book (The Klondike Stampede)about his experiences he devotes a chapter to the topic of working with dogs….Adney was also a photographer and an artist so his book has some great illustrations. He uses the term Yukon Freight Sled to describe what is essentially a platform for hauling freight, really a scaled-down version of a horse-drawn sled (usually 22 inches wide and about 8 feet long and about 8 inches off of the snow). The sled dog “freighters” (the canine equivalent of teamsters…those who transported freight by dog team) would often hook two or three of these sleds together and would walk between the dogs and the first sled using a steering pole fastened to the front right hand side of the sled (hence the name “gee” pole) and they would use this pole as both a brake and as a steering pivot point. The “handles” that I referred to above were really just add-ons…they really were just poles or saplings cut down or a specific purpose and added to these freighting platforms when needed…they were not a permanent part of the sled.

Posted by Buck at 1:43 PM 0 comments