We had quite an adventure this past weekend training the expedition dogs. We spent three wild and wooly days on the east side of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) near the Gunflint Trail.

A group of five of us mushed four sleds and twenty-two dogs over some very rough and rocky portages with little snow. The portages were so challenging that in one stretch we had only traveled two miles of forward progress in six hours. Despite the many obstacles, we completed the project and delivered some massive wooden boards into French Lake. Next summer the United States Forest Service will use these boards to construct a boardwalk.

The Will Steger Homestead and the U.S. Forest Service have enjoyed a long tradition of working together in the BWCAW to ferry supplies in and out of the wilderness area. The Forest Service provides the projects and the Homestead volunteers sled dogs for transportation. In this non-motorized wilderness, sled dog power is a unique and valuable method for management and enforcement.

This relationship began in 1989 while people at the Homestead were training sled dogs for the International Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The dog trainers needed to find difficult freighting projects for the dogs in order to maximize their physical conditioning. That year, coincidentally, the Forest Service needed nearly 400 latrines to be hauled into the BWCAW. There was a common solution to meet both groups’ needs. They joined efforts for several months to haul latrines all over the wilderness area, and from then on, Steger sled dogs have been involved in many Forest Service projects.