The Side Bridge

I am loosing sleep worrying about how to cross this damn stream. I went back to the site to take another look and see about a possible reroute which might allow a straight approach to the bridge. There is an old logging trail off of the end that might work; it just has a lot of brush growing in it so I think if I cut that it might work. There is a pretty large ridge before getting back to the main trail but it might be doable. I cut the brush then asked both employees to join me for another training run. I figured I might as well have some weight in the sled since that will be the situation for tours. We approached the new side trail and I was nervous; it was still pretty tight with a pretty good bend in it plus it had a rise of about eight feet in the space of about twenty feet. Not great. We went into the spur and the dogs pulled the sled up the sharp rise until they were down side of it and the sled was on the uphill side at which point we stopped dead. It was too steep for them to pull a loaded sled up. I was able to get behind the sled and push with everything I had to get the sled over the top at which point we shot down the other side and into another corner. Over went the sled. %$#@! The corner is too sharp and if I can’t get a sled through there how can I expect my help who have much less driving experience than I do to make it? We did the remainder of the run and on the way back I was actually able to get us across the bride and through the reroute without incident but it wasn’t easy.

Now what to do? Yet another; bigger reroute? I went back to the site to look around some more. Maybe I could run the spur a little further out on the old logging road and it could work. We went back and spent another half day working on another approach trail. The following weekend I had tour booked at 12:00 and we had not yet run the new spur trail. Stress, oh yeah. It happened to be on a Sunday when my wife was off from work so she agreed to go help me and we were going to do one run with half of the dogs before the actual tour then run the other eight for the tour. We hooked up the team and off we went. I made it through the new reroute and over the bridge but it was still pretty scary. I’m once again thinking to myself that there is no way my help is going to get a loaded sled through this spot. We did the rest of the run and came back; crossed the bridge and headed into the spur trail. As we were about half way through we went around a sharp turn with a drop off to the right and I lost control of the sled. Over and down we went. I hit so hard that it sheared the laminated ash driving bow off of the sled. My wife was limping from banging her knee on something and she had scratch on the side of her forehead. We somehow got the sled up and back on the trail and made it back to the truck.

Now I have guests coming for a tour in forty five minutes; a broken sled and no safe trail. The first thought was to cancel and go home. My second thought was that they had come all the way from New Hampshire mainly to go on this dogsled ride. My third thought was that I had just enough time to run home; grab my second sled and get back here to meet them but how were we going to make it across the damn bridge? There was no way I would attempt to drive them through the spur trail after what had just happened. I decided we could sled to the bridge location; unhook each dog and walk them across the bridge one a time and hook them back up on the other side. This was time consuming but all went well and the guests were able to have a little extra interaction with the dogs.

I managed to pull this tour off but we really don’t want to be unhooking and walking the dogs across this bridge all winter long. I was quickly coming to the conclusion that somehow; some way I was going to have to build a thirty five foot span bridge seven feet in the air where the old logging bridge used to be. I had no idea how since there is not a way for equipment to get in to the site. I had also burned up another week attempting to make the side bridge work. Four days working out there and $250.00 worth of lumber and we still didn’t have a workable solution.