Snow: 10-14 inches expected at the cabin

As it looks now....

The Maryland Sled Dog Adventures sled dogs can smell it. What is "it."? "It" is SNOW. The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Warning for our cabin in Maine:

Issued by The National Weather Service

Portland, ME
3:36 am EST, Wed., Dec. 9, 2009

A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 9 AM THIS MORNING TO 1 AM EST THURSDAY.

ACROSS INTERIOR CENTRAL MAINE... LOOK FOR SNOW TO DEVELOP BETWEEN 700 AND 900 AM. THE SNOW WILL BECOME HEAVY AT TIMES LATER THIS MORNING AND THIS AFTERNOON... THEN BECOME LIGHTER IN INTENSITY THIS EVENING. BY THE TIME THE PRECIPITATION TAPERS OFF TO LIGHT FREEZING RAIN OR SLEET... BETWEEN 10 AND 14 INCHES OF NEW SNOW CAN BE EXPECTED.

AS THE PRECIPITATION BECOMES LIGHTER TONIGHT... IT WILL LIKELY FALL IN THE FORM OF DRIZZLE... .FREEZING DRIZZLE OR SNOW FLURRIES. THIS WILL DEPEND ON SURFACE TEMPERATURES... BUT LITTLE ADDITIONAL SNOWFALL IS EXPECTED AFTER THIS EVENING.

More Information

... SIGNIFICANT SNOWFALL EXPECTED TODAY AND TONIGHT...

.A WARM FRONT EXTENDING EAST FROM LOWE PRESSURE OVER THE GREAT LAKES WILL APPROACH THE REGION THIS MORNING. AHEAD OF THE WARM FRONT... SNOW WILL DEVELOP FROM SOUTHWEST TO NORTHEAST BETWEEN 500 AND 1000 AM.

AN AREA OF LOW PRESSURE DEVELOPING ON THE WARM FRONT WILL RESULT IN SNOW FALLING HEAVILY AT TIMES FROM MID MORNING THROUGH THE AFTERNOON HOURS. SNOWFALL RATES OF 1 TO 2 INCHES AN HOUR ARE POSSIBLE DURING THIS TIME. TRAVEL WILL BE SIGNIFICANTLY IMPACTED FROM THE MORNING COMMUTE ONWARD... .AS CONDITIONS DETERIORATE FAIRLY RAPIDLY THIS MORNING INTO THE AFTERNOON HOURS.

Ten to fourteen inches of snow is predicted to fall at our dog sledding cabin in Maine and since we're all snow lovers we say: bring it on! While snow at the cabin means plowing, shoveling and clearing, it also means dog sledding, cross country skiing, skijoring, and snow shoeing, some of our favorite activities. To check snow depths, we use the NERFC Snow Depth Map which is updated daily.

As it will soon look....

Want to spend four days having a hands on adventure learning all aspects of dog sledding and mushing across the gorgeous snow covered trails surrounding our Maine cabin? Interested in learning how to skijor, breaking trail on snowshoes in a silent forest, identifying animal tracks around the cabin, and spending time with our lovable sled dogs? If so, check out our special women's dog sledding adventure trip: our Maine Winter Cabin Adventure. There are only six spaces available for this trip and they are filling fast so email catherine@marylanddogsledding.com to register.

Last Days at Baisley Lodges

The sled dog team: Zoe and Acadia (lead), T-Bone (team), Sobo and Okemo (wheel)

Post Can Am Crown dog sled races, our last days of our northern dog sledding adventures at Baisley Lodges were spent skijoring (see earlier blog entries) and exploring various dog sledding trails alone and with our host, Gino Roussel and his team of (Can Am finishing) sled dogs. Over our second week, we ran the Ten Mile Excavator Loop, the Five Mile Excavator Loop, the Tadpole (in the reverse direction), and we skiied and skijored several days. Photographs (our team photographer is sled dog dad, Eric Benson) from some of these runs are below.

Brr...it's cold out here

Another gorgeous day on the trail

Interesting lighting

All told, for our trip north, we spent three days in Harmony, Maine at the Lumberjack Lodges and two wonderful weeks at Baisley Lodges exploring the trails in the surrounding areas. We logged approximately 150 miles with the dogs either on the sled or skijoring. We also snowshoed, cross country skiied, attended the Can Am Crown Sled Dog races, had a wonderful dinner at Chez Charlotte in Edmunston, dined by the fire at Baisley Lodges with several Canadian and US mushers after the Can Am, and visited the Edmundston library to check email and post blog entries.

Excavator Ten: Here we come!

Leaving the Excavator's lot

As many of you know, this was our second season visiting Baisley Lodges in St. Jacques, NB and we highly recommend it to both mushers and non mushers. The trails that Gino grooms in (with his prized Skandic) are excellent and total well over 100 miles in length. The variety of trails and scenery is simply stunning (as you can see in the photos throughout our recent blog entries). Distances range from the five mile Lynch Mountain Trail to thirty plus mile trails. Trail mileage is never a problem. There is very little snow mobile traffic. Last year, during a full seven days of visiting Baisley Lodges, we saw one snow mobile the entire time. This year, we saw two snowmobiles during our two full weeks at Baisley Lodges, both on a weekend run. Running early in the morning on the weekends is advised to minimize contact with snowmobiles. The two snowmobiles that we encounter while running the team were very polite and slowed way down and gave the team a wide berth as they passed.

Love these big mushers' mitts

Five little sled dogs (and shockingly I can see them all)

Gliding over a silent trail, behind a team of hard working sled dogs, listening as the birds call, animals rustle in the woods, and watching for animal tracks along the trail. This is the life we love.

Riding the runners

Down the big hill

Returning to the Excavator Trail Head

Skijoring Fiend: What I like about Skijoring

Skijoring in Canada with T-Bone and Okemo

This blog entry is by guest blogger, chief poop scooper, occasional musher, and T-Bone's dad, Eric Benson. As many of you know, Eric's hobby is photography and Eric is the photographer of nearly all of the stunning photographs on this blog and on the Maryland Sled Dog Adventures LLC website. Eric has photographed everything from weddings to dog sled races to heavy equipment and machinery. For more information on Eric Benson Photography including rates and availability, email Eric at eric@marylanddogsledding.com. In addition to his duties as photographer, musher and poop scooper, Eric is an Associate Professor in the Bioresources Engineering and Animal and Food Science Departments at the University of Delaware.

Eric R. Benson Photography

Since my wife, Catherine, and I began dog sledding approximately seven years ago, we have tried canicross (running), canicross (hiking), bikjoring, scootering, dryland (wheeled) dog sledding, and, of course, dog sledding on snow.

Catherine skijoring through the trees with Acadia

So which dog powered sport is my favorite?

My favorite option is skijoring with two dogs. Skijoring is cross country skiing while a dog or dogs pull you. I enjoy skijoring because it’s a shared experience between the dog(s) and the skiier and the dogs really seem to enjoy it. Skijoring is also particularly appropriate for small (1-2) dog teams. In skijoring, the skier can easily help to provide additional power to go up hills and help the dogs as they get tired. Catherine and I often skijor as an activity in conjunction with dog sledding to help keep the dogs limber or when a couple of the sled dogs need a rest. Skijoring also allows us to work one on one with one to two dogs refreshing basic commands such as gee, haw, on by, and line out.

For skijoring (as with all other dog powered sports), the dogs wear a harness designed for pulling. Catherine and I use traditional x-back harnesses on the Maryland Sled Dog Adventures sled dogs. The skier wears a padded belt (waist or diaper style) and the dogs are attached by a special one to two dog line of approximately 8-9 feet in length. The line has a built in shock absorber to help to take some of the impact off the dogs and skier during stopping and starting. The skier wears cross country skis, boots and uses ski poles.

Me (Eric) skijoring with Okemo and Sobo in New York

Okemo and Sobo demonstrating line out.

Sled puppy, Acadia, has taken to skijoring like a fish to water

The surprising thing about how much I enjoy skijoring is that until recently, I was not a big downhill or cross country skier. Since I was more of a snowboarder than a skier, I have had to quickly learn to ski. While much of my training has occurred while strapped in behind one of our sled dogs, conventional wisdom is that it is helpful to be an intermediate skier or better before skijoring. In particular, I have spent a lot of time learning the art of stopping, slowing down (aka the “snowplow”), and various aspects of falling with dignity (aka the very important “getting up out of a snow bank” move). Thankfully, given my experiences snowboarding, I was already proficient in the “sit on your butt in the snow” skill. As I have become a better skier and thus a better skijorer and have grown more comfortable with skis strapped to my feet, my style of skijoring has evolved.

Skijoring through the pines on the Excavator trail in New Brunswick with Okemo and T-Bone

When I started skijoring, I wanted to be in control at all times. I wanted the dogs to move at my pace. No easy feat when my pace was snail like slow and our dogs are mostly 10-12 MPH dogs once they reach their cruising speed. And while 10-12 MPH might sound slow on paper, trust me when I say it feels pretty fast on skis. Starts were even more harrowing as the dogs would reach speeds of 17-20 MPH in the first mile or so. As my skills developed, I soon learned that an important part of skijoring was learning to “embrace my inner speed demon” and letting the dogs ride out the sections where they wanted to go faster. It was much more effective and controlled than trying to snowplow the entire way. Occasionally, we joke that skijoring is like water skiing behind a fast boat that chases squirrels.

Skijoring: Exploring new trails

That brings me to another point. For skijoring, the commands on by, whoa and line out are probably three of the most important commands we use. When dog sledding or dryland dog sledding, you can rely on the drag or bar brake on your sled to slow or stop you or the brakes on your rig to slow you down or stop you. When skijoring, your ability to fully stop a determined, hard driving and hard pulling dog, is fairly limited. Thus, the importance of those three basic commands: whoa, on by and line out.

Okemo, our big white Siberian Husky – Akita mix, is one of my favorite skijoring partners. Okemo is one of my favorite partners in everything we do, but that’s a different story. Okemo loves to skijor and you can see it in his facial expressions and his reactions on the trail. He gets into his big loping stride and starts to race down the trail. Okemo has proven to be a hard working dog for dryland dog sledding and dog sledding, but when skijoring, Okemo will race whoever he is next to! Okemo’s favorite time to race the other dogs is when skijoring DOWN HILL! The bigger the hill, the better (and faster) the race.

My favorite skijoring partner, Okemo (looking deceptively calm here)

Catherine skijoring down a hill in Tug Hill with Okemo

Okemo puts a lot of muscle into skijoring

During our trip north to Canada, Okemo and I have gone skijoring several times. Our night skijor in Harmony, Maine, sticks out as a particularly memorable (ok, so possibly a more appropriate word would be terrifying) skijor. At the early stages of the trip, the dogs had spent a lot of time in their dog boxes in the truck. For those of you who are mushers, you know that this results in shall I say, excited dogs. I decided to take Okemo and Acadia out on the trails around Lumberjack Lodges where we were staying one evening after dark. In hindsight, this was possibly not the best idea since the Lumberjack trails were new to us.

Often when dog sledding, we use our headlamps. While both Catherine and I have headlamps, our headlamps are set up for different tasks. Catherine’s headlamp is intended for driving the team and has both LED’s and a brighter main beam. Since I primarily handle (musher jargon for assist) for the team and work with equipment, my headlamp has short rage LED’s. During my “Midnight Run” in Maine, the beam of my headlamp illuminated only a few feet past Acadia and Okemo’s head. As we set out on the trail, we immediately hit a downhill section of the trail. What did Okemo do? Start to race Acadia downhill! So we start going faster and faster downhill in an area where I can’t see what is ahead of me. Talk about trusting your lead dogs! After setting a new two lap NASCAR qualifying time around the Harmony course (including a couple of pit stops where it was more about off loading vs. getting new tires), we arrived back at our cabin, safe and secure. This is why I love skijoring. Tired, we fed the dogs dinner and everyone slept soundly that night.

Catherine skijoring with Acadia in Canada

A week or so later, we had a more sedate (and slightly more illuminated) skijor run at Baisley Lodges in St. Jacques, New Brunswick. This time, Catherine and I set out together. While Catherine skijored with Acadia, I skijored with Okemo and our smallest dog, T-Bone. We traveled approximately four miles, stopping often to enjoy the scenery and take photographs (my other favorite hobby besides dog sledding and skijoring). A good time was had by all. Again, this is why I love skijoring.

Pulling hard: Acadia and Catherine skijor in Canada

Birch trees along the trail