Out with the dogs and the sled one winter's evening. Strongish wind and constant snow made it difficult to see the way ahead, despite the headtorch. I had my map GPS with me, but was going to wait a couple more hundred yards before checking it. After all, we were on the usual training trail and I trust my dogs. Suddenly, I was sledding over flat rocks, slightly downhill. I reckoned I knew where we were, and that the dogs had tried to take a shortcut. I commanded them into a turn to get away from the rocks, but it wasn't long before alarm bells rang in my head that something was very wrong. Everything happened so fast. The downhill became steeper, and there were even more rocks. I couldn't use the foot brake to stop the sled in the terrain, so I did the only thing I could do and crouched down, slamming the snow anchor down to the side of me until it held. At the same time, the dogs took an abrupt 90-degree turn to the left. Everything stopped. I peered into the darkness ahead of me, and realised to my horror that just half a yard ahead of where I stood was nothing. We'd been on the verge of going over the edge of a cliff. I now knew exactly where I was.
The next challenge was to get moving again safely. It seemed, however, that Fate had it in for me. It was always going to be difficult to ride the sled along the edge of the cliff, without making matters worse. As I pulled up the snow anchor, I lost my balance and fell over. The dogs disappeared into the darkness with the sled. It's amazing how calm one can be in a crisis. The only thing to do was to follow the tracks in the snow and hope that the loose snow anchor would get stuck on something and stop the team. It was bad enough, thinking that the dogs might have gone over the edge, but now I realised I could be following their tracks for miles. I must have stumbled on for several hundred yards. There was nothing to hear. No barking or whimpering. Not a good sign. I couldn't see much ahead because of the falling snow, so it was with blessed relief that I suddenly happened upon the sled. All the dogs were lined out in front like we were taking a normal pause in training. I checked all the dogs, but they were all okay. Some of them looked at me like they were wondering what had been holding me up.
I drove the dogs a bit further, to give them the security that everything was okay, then we headed for home. It was only when I got back to the safety of the yard that it really hit me how close we'd been to a very serious accident, if not death. Since then, all bad weather sled trips are either on the snowmobile trails, or with the GPS on at all times. We learn by our mistakes!
