Alaskan Husky Musher Camp in Dyea

Greetings again readers and welcome back!

Today was my day off from work, so I was able to book myself on
one of the tours we sell at the Holland American Sales and Service desk. We are encouraged to take these tours so we have first-hand experience and are therefore better informed to help our guests choose the best tour for them.

Sled dog pup in training at Dyea Musher's Camp

We are of course on standby in case the tour fills up, and my original plans to go on the Glacier Point Wilderness Safari fell through when I was bumped due to a full passenger list, but fortunately I was able to get on another popular tour for the Sled Dog Musher’s Camp offered by Alaska Excursions.

The winding dirt road to Dyea

The musher’s camp is located in Dyea (pronounced “die-ee”) which I mentioned in an earlier blog and is located about 9 miles from Skagway. Dyea is now a ghost town except for some individual homesteads and small guest houses, but in 1898 the area was filled with stampeders preparing to hike up the Chilkoot Trail across the pass and into the Yukon gold fields. The trail was originally forged by the Tlinget native Alaskans as a trade route over the coastal mountains. The town site was originally located where the Taiya River and Taiya Inlet meet on the south side of the Chilkoot Pass.

Looking down from upper musher camp area trails to Dyea tidal flats

The tour today began by boarding a small van which shuttled us from the docks at Skagway, across town, and up a short distance of the Yukon Highway to the Dyea turnoff which soon becomes a narrow and winding dirt road. I was surprised to learn from our tour guide that the residents of Dyea live in homes without pumped in running water like we have in Skagway, and most of them take pickup trucks with large tanks on the back to the river where they fill these tanks about every two weeks (depending on usage), then empty this water into their household tanks. Talk about hearty souls. We take so much for granted sometimes eh?

The education area of the musher camp

The musher’s camp is located in the woods on a hillside high above the Dyea flats, the tidal area and estuary of the Taiya River near where it meets the Taiya Inlet. The area is home to many kinds of wildlife including bears, caribou, eagles, salmon and seals, in addition to a host of water fowl and smaller animals. After winding along the dirt road with the steep cliffs on our right and a low-tide Taiya Inlet on our left, we arrived at the base of the musher’s camp.

Guide (right) introduces musher Rich Savoyski, 2008 first-time competitor in Iditarod

The Alaska Excursions white 24-passenger van decorated with black paw prints let us out at the log foot bridge which crosses one of the streams to the inlet, and we walked a short distance from there into the base camp area. The lower part of the camp includes the kennels where the Alaskan Husky puppies are born and raised until old enough for training with the older dogs. The area also contained kennels and dog houses for the sled dog teams, an outdoor auditorium for the educational portion of the tour, and of course a small gift shop.

Rich explains the 1100 mile Iditarod course

The tour operators split us into two groups of 12, and our group began in the educational center with a presentation by musher Rich Savoyski of Minnesota who participated in the Iditarod for the first time in March of this year.

Rich and several other rookie mushers bring their dog teams and work at the camp in the off season, thereby allowing them to spend this time continuing to train their dogs instead of taking logging or fishing jobs to make financial ends meet between races.

Right: Map shows routes for the 1100-mile Iditarod course and the
lesser known Yukon Quest (1000 miles).

Left: Alaskan husky puppies born in April of this year.

Rich has about 60 dogs, but it’s not uncommon for seasoned racers to have more than 100 dogs from which they choose the 16 who will compete in the Iditarod. A musher begins with 16 dogs for the 1100 miles of the Iditarod, and during the multi-day race between Nome and Anchorage, they can send dogs home if needed, but they cannot replace or add dogs. Rich finished his first race with only 8 dogs in about 12 days – in 2008 the winner finished in 9 days and the final musher arrived 16 days after the race start.

Left: Our sled team is hitched up and ready to go (lots of excited howling and pulling at their harnesses). Right: In front of our team is the cart pulled by the forward team (our cart is similar but uncovered).

After Rich’s talk we boarded the van again for the steep climb up a rutted dirt road through the forest to the other part of the camp where most of the kennels and trails are located. There we boarded small wheeled carts with seats for six (complete with seat belts) which are pulled along the dry dirt roads for a mushing experience (just without the snow).

Our team's handler (musher's assistant, left) and musher (right). Our team is actually this musher's dogs, he is working at camp with his dogs this summer during off-season from racing.
[Side note: There is also a tour called Glacier Dog Sledding where you fly on a helicopter and land on the glacier where other sled dog teams actually live in wall tents on the glacier with their dogs. From there you can go mushing on the glacier, but as you can imagine this tour is pretty expensive, so getting on that tour as a "comp" is not really an option unless you are affiliated directly with the camp due to the cost of the helicopter portion and the limited space on the dog sledding.]

And we're off along the trail!

Back at the musher camp in Dyea where of course there is no snow this time of year, our sledding experience was a few miles just above the base area, through the woods and along the rolling hills on dirt roads. There we stopped for a water break for the dogs and a chat with the musher who owned the dogs, and then the 16-dog teams pulled our wheeled carts back down to the lower base for some time to see the kennel puppies and wander around the camp before our return to town.

Left: Holding one of the new pups (this one is about 5 months old).
Right: Young pups born in June to mom Sadie.

My love of dogs made this a special treat for me, and I highly recommend this tour if you’re interested in sled dog racing or just love dogs in general.

All the best, cy

Right: Sled dogs having a rest day relax in (or often on) their kennels.