Monday 4 March 2013

Dog sledding in the Canadian Rockies ...

A few weekends ago, C and I were lucky enough to experience one of the ultimate Canadian tourist adventures in the Rockies ... dog sledding.  This was my (selfish!) Christmas present to C, an experience neither of us had never had before.  There are several companies who offer dog sledding in the Rockies but only one has a truly outstanding reputation, Snowy Owl, so this is who we went with.  Dog sledding is not a particularly cheap adventure to partake in ($300 for two of us for two hours) but well worth every penny.  The morning began with an introduction to the sport and some guidelines of how to drive your team ('Hike!' to go; 'Whoa' to stop; 'On by' to move past distractions like squirrels; 'Easy' to slow down; and lots of encouraging remarks).  The dogs seemed to know when the introduction was nearing the end because they went absolutely nuts as you can see in the video below.  They were ready to run.  And so were we.  C drove for the first half of the tour (he drew the short straw because there were quite a few hills he needed to run up to help the dogs out!) and I took the second half (no hills but a hell of an icy breeze!)  We ended the adventure with cuddles with all the dogs and hot chocolate by the fire.  From start to finish, the whole adventure was truly amazing and now I'm saving my pennies to go out for a whole day adventure. 

Curious moose who approached the van



Ready to go, just waiting for my glass of bubbles!

And we're off! 
The rest of the pack wait on frozen Goat Lake

Rounding the corner onto the lake

Half time cuddles with the hounds (excuse the icy smudge on the camera lens)

Beautiful blue eyes

Do we look like pros or posers?!

It's hard work pulling these humans!

Check out those thick luscious coats ... +5 is hot for these dogs!

More beautiful scenery

And finally, the view from our lunch spot