Clips

I clipped the tether into my dog’s harness and then onto my own waist belt, pointed my skis down the snow-packed road and yelled, with gusto, “Mush!” A Malamute, this dog was bred for pulling freight through the snow. I’m freight, we’re in the snow, what’s the problem? Why is he looking back at me with disdain?

I’ve seen border collies and Australian shepherds pull better than my Rigby. I’ve seen mutts dragging skiers many times their size up the Bozeman Creek Trail. I’ve shown my buddy the picture in the Malamute book of a dog just like him happily skijoring with his owner. Rigby was unimpressed.

So, I went back to the book and read about how to teach a dog to skijor. I had done almost everything wrong. The one thing I did do right is get suitable equipment for me and my dog.

The most important item to purchase is a properly fitting harness. If the harness is too big or too small, the dog is going to be uncomfortable or worse—get hurt. Take the time to size your canine pal properly.

Next, you’ll need a tug line (the rope or tether that hooks onto the dog’s harness and then attaches to you). A little bungee in the tug line eases the starts, stops and random jerks on your dog.

As a skier, you can wear a fat, padded belt around your waist (with a quick-release snap that the tug line attaches to) or hold the line in your hand. Some folks attach the tug line to a backpack or fanny pack waist belt.

What I didn’t do right, was train my dog. I expected him to know instinctively what to do. As it says in Skijor with your Dog, “If the dog screws up, it’s always your fault.” What I should have done is started out having him wear the harness without pulling any weight.

Once he was used to the harness, it would be time to introduce a little light weight—2-5 pounds. This way the dog gets used to pulling, but without having to work too hard. By pulling a sled with a backpack on it or a small tire while I walked next to him, he might have decided that pulling is good; pulling is fun. Trainers suggest keeping these sessions to 15 minutes and quitting before the dog gets bored.

Professional musher and dog trainer, Rob Greger recommends finding a narrow quiet trail without distractions and to start out on foot—not on skiis. Attach a leash to the collar or harness and encourage the dog to run. “Speed isn’t the main thing; it’s to encourage the dog to run out in front.” If you know someone with a dog who knows how to skijor, Greger recommends using their dog as an instructor. “A dog who knows what he’s doing can teach your dog a lot better than you can.”

Greger thinks of training a dog to skijor in the same way as training a lead dog on a sled-pulling team. “The hard part is teaching your dog to be a leader—not all dogs are going to do it.” Without other dogs around to show the way or to read cues from, a skijoring pup has to be comfortable in the lead dog position.

Ideally, the dog should know some basic commands (See sidebar). Most dogs will know at least a few general commands already. Even Rigby—who was told at dog school that although smart, was unlikely to follow instructions—knows a few commands. The most important thing is to get your dog to stop when you want him to, and to not drag you off the trail into the willows.

Local skijoring enthusiast, Mary McFadzen did the right thing. When living in Boise she and her hound dog-mix (who she refers to as a Powder Hound), Koda, took a skijoring class. There they learned the basics of the equipment and some important commands. The dogs pulled tires around and practiced on a course without skis.

“It was a really casual approach,” says McFadzen, but one that seemed to pay off. She and Koda skijored for years around Bozeman. She used to skate ski behind Koda, since he was such a fast dog, “That way he wouldn’t be pulling so much,” McFadzen remembers.

At 13, Koda is retired from the skijoring life, but McFadzen finds the commands they learned useful. When crossing the street she’ll tell him to “hike, hike”, or speed up. A long, low “whoa” can still bring Koda to a stop.

Rigby and I tried again. I still didn’t follow the training instructions very well, but I let him run around with a harness on for awhile. Then I hooked him up to a sled with a small Christmas tree on it. I skied next to him, telling him how well he was doing, until he started running and dragged the sled off the road, tipping the tree into the snow. Maybe next time I’ll do better.

Sidebar
A few commands all skijoring dogs should know. Teach one command at a time and don’t move on to the next one until the first one is learned.

Whoa (stop)
Leash or harness your dog and walk along behind her. Say “whoa” in a long, low voice and pull back on the leash or tug line until she stops. If the dog doesn’t learn this, you can always plan to snowplow or sit down to force the issue.

Easy (slow down)
Leash or harness your dog and run along behind him. Say “easy” in a long, low voice and pull back on the leash or tug line until he slows. Let up on the rope and pick up speed again.

Hike (speed up)
Leash or harness your dog and walk along behind her. Saying excitedly “hike, hike, hike” rush up behind her, forcing her to speed up.

On by (ignore distractions or go past a turn)
Leash or harness your dog and walk beside him. When passing a turn or other distraction (other dogs, kids etc), say “on by” and by pulling his collar, make the dog pass.

Gee and Haw (right and left)
Leash or harness your dog and walk along behind her. Just before you get to an intersection say the dog’s name and “gee”. Walk over to the right where the dog can see you and pull the dog to the right, repeating “gee” several times. Do the same thing with “haw” and left turns. Make sure you know your right from your left before starting out.

Carve
January 19, 2007

Many people would agree that Yellowstone is at its best in the winter. With a blanket of fluffy white snow draped over lodgepoles, ice appearing and disappearing in the creeks and otherworldly geysers shooting steam and water straight into the cold, blue sky—it’s a place totally different than the summer Yellowstone of tourists and bear jams.

The heart of Yellowstone is hard to access in the winter, since all the roads—save the route from Mammoth to Cooke City—are closed to cars. The only way in is by snowmobile, snowcoach or a very long ski. But there are a lucky few that get to spend November through March living at Old Faithful, fifty miles from the nearest enclave of civilization.

Those lucky few are the people that keep the Park running through long, crystalline winters. And some would say the luckiest of those folks are the snowcoach drivers, because despite dealing with breakdowns, bitter cold and the occasional grumpy tourist, snowcoach drivers get to see the Park everyday in a way that no one else does.

Woody Gallaway, a dispatcher at Old Faithful and snowcoach driver for six years says, “There are so many fleeting moments and you get to catch these special moments because you’re here.”

Moments like the sun filtering through the trees at West Thumb on a really cold morning or the way the waterfalls change from day to day—sometimes totally icing up and other times dropping big chunks of ice over their precipice. While visitors to Yellowstone will catch an odd or spectacular site, it’s the day-to-day changes that coach drivers really appreciate.

Mariann Van Den Elzen is spending her first winter as a coach driver and while she has taken numerous trips into the Park before, living there and being out everyday has given her a new admiration for the Park.

“It’s always sort of unexpected,” she says. “The other day a couple river otters were playing on the bank, then one disappeared under the water and the other got really worried.” After calling for his friend, the first otter showed up and “much hugging and kissing ensued.”

A few days before that, Van Den Elzen and her guests watched a coyote chomping on a trumpeter swan on the edge of the Madison River. And with daily temperature changes she might see snow ghosts one day and bare trees the next. “You get to notice the subtle differences,” she notes.

“My favorite thing (about driving a snowcoach) is the teamwork,” says Gallaway. “I love the camaraderie; it makes it more of an adventure and so much more fun.” Snow coach drivers share what they see everyday and help each other out should they have any trouble. They also join in activities with other winter employees like polka night at the pub and the Old Faithful Winter Games.

But it’s not all pretty sites, National Geographic moments and backslapping in Wonderland. The snowcoaches are actually a fleet of eighteen Bombardier half-track tanks, and they’re old. In 1937, Joseph-Armand Bombardier built the B-7, an enclosed half-track machine with a caterpillar track and sprocket assembly in the back and skis in the front that carried seven people across the snow. A few years later he designed a similar machine that could hold twelve people.

It’s the twelve-person model that Xanterra—the Park concessionaire—uses, although they only carry eight people on interpretive tours. The oldest coaches were built in the 60s and the newest models rolled off the assembly line in the early 80s.

Sometimes these machines breakdown, usually when the weather is at its coldest. “You have to learn little tricks to get you back home,” says Steve Blakeley. Blakeley has lived in the Park since 1977 and spent ten winters driving snowcoaches. “There’s always a chance you could breakdown and feel helpless,” he adds.

But Blakely waxes philosophical, “Yellowstone travel has always been an been an adventure.” From the days the army would ski across the park with twenty-foot planks tied to each foot, to the days of thousands of snowmobiles, it’s never been easy to access our nation’s first national park.

“I drove during the era of 2000 plus snowmobiles a day. It was unbelievable; it was the worst thing. Besides the nature of the snowmobile, the roads were like the most mogulled ski run you’ve ever seen, we had to drive 5 mph,” recalls Blakely.

Life is better these days for snowcoach drivers. With groomed roads and a maximum of 700 snowmobiles a day allowed in the Park, snowcoaches face fewer breakdowns. Plus, with required snowmobile guides there is a lot less, “passing on the right, speeding, side-hilling,” and general recklessness according to Blakeley.

The lack of snowmobiles doesn’t guarantee that a coach won’t get stuck, though. “I’ve been stuck. People will give you so much *#@& for getting stuck, but sometimes it just happens,” laughs Gallaway (who hasn’t been stuck in years).

He does recall his second winter, however, when another driver got caught in the snow. Coach drivers stay on the far right of the road and are trained to hit the gas and turn the wheel to the left, should they begin to slip off the road.

“Apparently, she forgot to crank the wheel to the left,” says Gallaway, instead gunning her coach out into the Hayden Valley. Of course, someone took pictures. With a perfectly clear bluebird sky overhead, “it looks like she’s trying to take the trail to Mary’s Mountain,” Gallaway says.

Another time in the Hayden Valley—known for its high winds and blizzardy conditions—Blakely get caught in a whiteout. To keep the road in site he had to get out of his coach, carry a bright orange toolbox ten feet ahead and then drive to it. Then he repeated the procedure over and over until he got back into the trees. It was the only way to stay on the hard packed road.

“It’s the most fun job I’ve ever had,” says Gallaway, “but it takes a lot to make sure the guests have a quality experience.” Coach drivers work 8-13 hours a day, continually getting in and out of their machines, occasionally doing repairs, and all the while entertaining and educating their guests.

A snowcoach trip isn’t just transportation from point A to point B (or from Old Faithful to Canyon) it’s an interpretive experience. Coach drivers have both an intrinsic love for—and curiosity about—Yellowstone, and training in the natural and cultural history of the Park. “We get to share all these great places with the guests and share unique experiences with them,” say Van Den Elzen.

That interpretive experience is one of the things guests love about a snowcoach tour. “I appreciate the touch of history the snowcoaches lend,” says recent passenger and Bozeman resident Greg Smith, “and the drivers have a lot to share about the Park.”

“The winter visitor is so much different than the summer visitor,” says Blakely. “The summer visitor is on their way to Aunt Betty’s in Oregon, but in winter, you are coming here because you really want to be in Yellowstone.”

Gallaway concurs, “It’s my favorite time of year to be here. Everyone who is here wants to be here.” And that includes the snowcoach drivers, who, despite the cold, cold weather, blizzards that cause the road to disappear, pieces of suspension systems that get caught in Bombardier tracks and machines that breakdown at the worst possible time, wouldn’t give it up for the world.

Because while the rest of the country huddles in their houses, snowcoach drivers are watching geysers erupting like wildfires, bison covered in thick snow and wolf tracks just off the boardwalk at Old Faithful. Van Den Elzen says smiling, “I’m in my own little fantasy world. I’m living in a snow globe—that’s what it feels like.”

Carve
February 24, 2007