Life at 30 below (and below)

The cold weather has finally shown up!

We've never see it as low as we did this morning! Picture take through the window.

Our Christmas black spruce is growing buds in our (comparatively) warm house!

The Carbon Hill sled dog race was yesterday, and we got to watch some amazing feats in very cold weather. The events were a 6-mile skijor race, a 10-mile sled dog race, a 30-mile skijor race, and a 30-mile sled dog race. We find ourselves knowing more and more of our neighbours at community events, and yesterday we got to cheer them and their dogs on. I volunteered and did registration and timed the 10-mile sled dog race, while Colin was keeping things running around the community centre, including in the kitchen and in the chute (where the teams line up before the starting line) as well as helping to keep the bonfire burning for everyone's toes and fingers.

Of course, all the sled dogs were cute- mostly huskies but a couple that looked closer to retriever and grayhound than to a husky there were also a few pointers and labs. I really enjoyed taking in all the cold-weather gear and increasingly frozen facial hair of the mushers and volunteers. It's a matter of (a) experience, (b) using warm materials, (c) knowing yourself, and (d) a bit of experimenting, that combine to provide a cold-weather outfit that will keep you warm and happy during a day spent outside running dogs, or standing around outside doing something less active. Possibly even more complicated is finding gear that will keep you warm and happy while skijoring for 30 miles, where sometimes you are skiing extremely hard and creating lots of heat, and sometimes you are moving slowly or even stopped. We both talked to the owners of some very different jackets and boots we admired, and heard their views on good gear. Hopefully there will be some photos in the newspaper or on the community centre website soon, that we can post a link for, because the photos of the outfits would definitely be worth a thousand words.

Incredibly, it doesn't take a very long time to race a sled or skijor- the 10-mile race winner came it at 30 min, while the 30-mile sled dog team was about 2.5 hours the winner was in by the 2:17 mark which was a new record, and the 30-mile skijor was even faster, by  minutes.We had a great time at the race, and might race in the skijor with Cookie and Smiley.

Speaking of Cookie and Smiley, I should go over to the window to check that they are still in the pen. Oh good, there are two dogs back there. This week, something stirred inside them, inspiring someone (or both of them) to learn how to knock the stopper out of the way and then raise the bar on the door of the pen, allowing them to zoom out into freedom. Thankfully, as soon as we notice that they are out, they are always in front of the house on the driveway or still in the back of the house, sniffing around but still in sight. They also come right back when we call them. It's amusingly frustrating to try to figure out how they can open the door from the inside, and we are trying to come up with something to deter them better. Time to go check if they are still there, again.

Earlier in the week, I tried something new- indoor rock-climbing at the elementary school in Carcross! There is a 2-storey wall set up in the school gym, and every Thursday night, an outdoor expedition company from Whitehorse goes down to Carcross with sacks of climbing gear. They hold a climbing program for Carcross kids from 6-8pm, and then there's public climbing afterwards. I went with a friend from work and really enjoyed it. There's another idea for something fun to do while visiting us :)

Love Lauren and Colin

Not this Carcross elementary school! 

The newer one :)

A climbing wall just outside of Whitehorse