Denali Sled Dog Demonstration

Tuesday morning, my mom and I drove into the park to watch a sled dog demonstration. When we first showed up, some of the dogs were outside the cages leashed to doghouses. A couple of them were not roped off, so we could pet them!

This is Happy, she is one year old and we got to see her be lead sled dog for the first time!

Denali National Park has been using sled dogs since before the creation of the park in 1917. (It's the centennial year this year!) It is the only National Park still continuing the tradition.

After we got to see the dogs for a bit, the rangers started to put harnesses on.

After a while the rangers asked us to stand in the designated area so that we could watch the demonstration.

Erica, the park ranger who spoke during the demonstration, has seven years of NPS experience under her belt. Before coming to Denali NP, she worked at Dino NP, Grand Teton NP, and Zion NP. Talk about a dream resume!!

Before the dogs pulled a sled, Erica gave a bit of background on the use of sled dogs in the park, which was shown by a small display of items.

Originally, their purpose was to scout the area for poachers. As time went on, this became less of an issue and sled dogs were used to gather and distribute firewood and other supplies throughout the park. Now, sled dogs are used to distribute scientific research equipment. All the park rangers made sure to repeat that these dogs do not race!!!

While the dogs are not a designated breed, they are bred for certain characteristics. The first of these is a thick two-layer coat. The slick top layer is for protection against water and snow, and the soft bottom layer is for insulation. The dogs are actually more comfortable in 10° F than the 50° F that we watched the demonstration in!

These dogs also need large paws with compact pads. The large paws help them run on snow and the compact pads minimize the amount of snow and ice that gets stuck in between the pads.

There are two-week old puppies at the kennels right now, they're so tiny! There will be a live webcam streaming then online soon!

Finally the dogs were ready to show off for us!! Once they saw the rangers getting out the sled they started freaking out!

For the demonstration they used three pairs of dogs: wheel dogs, swing dogs, and lead dogs. The wheel dogs are closest to the sled and carry the weight initially when they first start moving. The swing dogs are in the middle and do most of the maneuvering. The lead dogs are in front and lead the others. There is a fourth pair used in the winter, the team dogs, who are in between the swing and wheel dogs and they help carry weight.

The goal is for all of the dogs to be able to be lead dogs. They switch out positions regularly, though they usually are stronger in some positions. The lead dogs could be male or female!

After they ran, we got to watch the rangers send the dogs home. They unhook them from their harnesses and the dogs run unaccompanied back to their doghouses, which was so cool to watch!

Each dog can carry up to 100 pounds, though they limit each dog to 50 pounds.

We were curious about the amount of staff in the winter, and a ranger told us that there are sixty staff members in all of the park during the season. There are only around seven at the kennels! Three of them are permanent mushers, one is a permanent staff who handles paperwork, and then there are three or four volunteers. It's crazy to think that only three mushers handle this entire trail around the park!

The blue line is the sled dog trail!

There are small cabins along the trail and they are pre-stocked with dog and human food. The teams can be out for up to five weeks at a time!

These dogs are incredibly smart. Erica told us a story about another musher who got stuck in a blizzard while out with a dog team. It got so bad that he couldn't even see beyond the pair of dogs closest to the sled. He didn't want to get stuck so he kept yelling commands to keep moving. Eventually they came to a stop and would not move no matter how much he yelled. He got off the sled and walked to the lead dogs to see if they were stuck or something, and they were actually standing at the edge of a cliff! Thank goodness they made their own decision!

We loved watching this presentation and learning about the park's paw-some tradition! (punny)