It would seem that only now, distance mushers are coming to realize that something that mushers have been doing for thousands of years may not be such a bad idea after all....I'm talking about sitting down on the dog sled.
We talked about sleds that were perfect for the situation in which they are being used, with the Inuit komatik being the example presented. I asked that if komatiks are so perfect, why don't we see any of them being used in the Yukon Quest or the Iditarod. The answer of course is obvious....they are perfect for the the types of use and the conditions in which Inuit hunters use their dogs. But for the Quest or Iditarod, a komatik is very heavy, is not easily maouverable and the musher can only drive a komatik when sitting or lying down on the sled.
But wait.......weren't there a large number of mushers sitting down on their sleds in this year's long distance races? The introduction of the "tail dragger" sleds a few years ago, which saw the distribution of the load split between the traditional (but scaled down) sled basket and a smaller addition to the sled located behind the musher, made it possible for the musher to sit down on this small addition. Isn't this exactly what Inuit mushers have been doing for thousands of years?
By the way, when I look at photos of dog teams in Siberia, I also note that the sleds are really scaled-down versions of the sleds that are used behind reindeer and they are designed so that the musher sits on or straddles the sled....he isn't standing at the back of the sled on the runners.
So is the "tail dragger" sled really just a komatik in disguise? The "tail dragger" is usually made from aluminum, plastic, carbon fibre and possibly with a few wooden components thrown in for the sake of tradition. This type of sled is an excellent example of what happens as technology evolves....let me illustrate what I mean.
Traditionally, the bottom of the sled runners of the komatik were covered with mud that was applied in the freezing weather and then carefully smoothed down.....(I have even seen an Inuit hunter using a wood plane to smooth down his mud runners). Then at the beginning of each journey, the komatik would be turned upside down while the hunter spit warm water onto this prepared runner surface and carefully wiped it down and around with a piece of bear hide to produce a smooth sliding surface. Some hunters preferred to cover the bottom of their sled runners with pieces of ivory, painstakingly pieced together and lashed with rawhide, to the woooden runner.
With the coming of white traders, more and more komatik runners were "shod" with steel strips (which worked great under certain conditions but were like sandpaper in others) and now today you won't find a komatik anywhere that doesn't have UHMW plastic on the bottom of the runners. As newer materials appeared, it didn't take long for someone to figure out how they can be effectively used to make things (in this case the bottom of a komatik runner) better and more efficient.
With the advent of extruded aluminum runners and plastic brush bows and carbon fibre stanchions and UHMW plastic sled beds, etc. etc. the long distance dog sled has evolved but has it really changed? True, the modern "tail dragger" sled is light and manouverable and strong thanks to the modern materials....it is perfect for the conditions under which it is being put to use. But isn't that also true of the komatik, which has been used for thousands of years? Is this not just a case of the more things change, the more they remain the same?
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