Porcupine Mountains

We  parked at the Government Peak Trailhead, road walked to the Lake Superior Trail and took that to just past the Big Carp River Trail for day one. ~14 miles

We made camp on the “beach” as every campsite was taken.

We found a 6′x’6 area of gravel that was almost sand on the beach and set up there.

Made the decision that due to the injuries on the dogs feet that we needed to take the quickest route back.  So we took the Big Carp River trail to the Lake of the Clouds visitor center and then I caught a ride from some nice folks back to our car. ~10 miles

Lessons Learned:

Always Bring Dog Booties!

The Lake Superior Trail kicked our butts and our dogs had some injuries on their feet as a result of the rocky trail.

So we bailed out early and headed home.

We did have a great time, but I was feeling really irresponsible for putting our dogs in a position to get hurt like that.

Mackinaw Mush

Last weekend Brigid and I had the opportunity to handle (help out) for Rex and Krista Jones at the Mackinaw Mush, a sprint race in Mackinaw City, MI.

Rex and Krista just moved back to Michigan from Alaska, where they lived for a number of years. Rex has established a real high quality sled dog kennel, focusing on European sprint and skijor lines.

His dogs are awesome, he brought mostly "scandinavian" hounds with him many of which where out of Egil Ellis's famous dog "Mike". He let me run my dogs with a couple of these guys after the race events wrapped up on Saturday - great experience.

However, for me the highlight was getting to mess around with his "Vorstehs", which are essentially German Short haired Pointers (GSP) out of European sled dog lines. These dogs are bigger than the more typical sprint dogs used in N. America. These big dogs are solid muscle, much different than my lean and lanky huskies. Getting to work with these guys over the weekend, has been a real eye opening experience.

I'm really thinking that I'd want to try out a couple of these GSP's. These are the type of dogs most people who are competing successfully in 1-2 dog events are using (i.e. skijor and bikejor).

You can't really tell from the video, but I'm doing all I can to hold these two guys back with out falling over. One of these dogs easily has the strength of two of my guys...