14 Apr Adventures Dog Sledding in Colorado
She asked which route I wanted to take. I was itching to fly down the most difficult path. But, we decided for the camera’s safety, ehem I mean, Micah’s safety, maybe just maybe we should scale back a bit and ride down the medium-difficult path instead. We didn’t want anyone or anything to fly out of the basket and break as we were on the clock for a film project.
The morning started with us digging our white SUV out from under a fresh coat of snow. Breckenridge, Colorado, got hit with a small batch of snow the prior evening, and we were thrilled. Snow was a welcome sight after the dry Minnesota winter back home, and a non-white Utah trip only days before. Even though it was February, the month I’m usually ready to pack up and head to the beach, I was ready for some wild and crazy winter adventures.
We pulled up to Good Times Adventures and were ready to see how this dog sledding adventure would compare to the last one in Utah. After layering up in our warm winter gear, we made our way outside to meet the dogs. We were ready to have an adventure dog sledding in Colorado!
It was love at first sight.
I wanted to sneak one home with me–the fluffy hair, piercing multi-colored eyes and sweet, cuddly tendencies had me hooked. These dogs were stunning.
Once we were done snuggling, it was time to get moving and out on the trail. The set up of this tour was quite different than the last one we were on. Instead of just Micah and I with the guide, we had a group of 6 assigned to one sled and one guide. I wasn’t too sure how I felt about this, since the tour was only an hour long in total. However, one aspect that I was really looking forward to was the chance to mush the sled on our own.
Here’s how the entire process worked–our guide drove a snowmobile pulling a four person sleigh behind it while two members of the group were on the dogsled, one in the basket and one mushing. Every so often we would stop to give the dogs a rest and rotate our positions.
Each of us were given two turns mushing and two turns riding in the basket of the sled. While riding was fun, in my opinion, the mushing was even more fun. The trails ranged from easy to difficult, and we flew through the curvy, mountain trails whizzing past snow covered trees.
Micah was a tad disappointed that we had more calm trails during his turns mushing. But, I lucked out and had a couple of exciting runs myself, even though I didn’t choose the most difficult option. Mushing is hard work and requires both balance and steering, and as much as I wanted to go the crazy route, I didn’t want to spill Micah out onto the side of the trails, like one of our tour mates did. She decided to bail from the sled after a super sharp curve and ended up eating a mouthful of snow in the process. After we realized she was injury free, we couldn’t help but crack up laughing!
Even though the tour was only an hour long, it was another mesmerizing peek into the world of dog sledding. As with our last tour, thankfully, the dogs at Good Times Adventures looked happy and healthy, and they were so excited to get out on the trail and run. Making sure the facility is ethical and treats their dogs right is important–we touch a bit more on the subject in our Utah dogsledding adventure recap.
Overall, the tour was a huge success. I would have enjoyed more time on the sled itself, but the crew, dogs, scenery and our tour mates made the entire experience wonderful. Sacrificing a bit of time on the dogsled gave us time to chat with everyone, and in the end we even had fun watching the others take their turns sledding, as well!
Have you ever been dog sledding? Where would you like to go dog sledding most?
We went on this adventure while working on our video project with Best Western–the full video will be posted later this summer!