Summit, an eight-year-old Seppala (a mixed-breed husky), is the leader, followed by three rows of dogs that will run in pairs. He watches the couple’s young children, Finn, age four, and Tallula (Lula), age two, play while Kate leads dogs from the tether and clips them to the gangline that tows the sled. (When I take a step and sink up to my thigh, Kate tells me with a grin that this is called “post-holing.”) Because it is so deep, Brian spent part of the morning carving trails with a snowmobile through the trees and across the buried fairways of the Sugarloaf Golf Club. Trying to stay on top of the snow, I trudge through the drifts to join the Rays and photographer Nicole Wolf. She, her husband, Brian, and their two young children relocated to western Maine in fall 2018 this upcoming winter will be their second season offering dogsledding at the mountain. Kate Ray of Dogsled Maine drives a team at Sugarloaf. The dogs-some with classic gray, black, and white husky coats, others with pure white fur-all wear harnesses with their names: Yukon, Kato, Sol, Quivet, H2, Summit, Denver, and Calypso. Between extensions to the front bumper of the truck and the rear bumper of the trailer, a tether cable holds eight huskies insulated from the icy ground by a bed of straw. High snowbanks surround the small lot, which is dominated by the Rays’ dog-transport rig: a Ford F350 truck with a white box trailer emblazoned with a logo for Eagle Mountain Sled Dogs. As I pull into a parking area just beyond the mountain access road to meet Kate and Brian Ray of Dogsled Maine, the top of Sugarloaf is still veiled in clouds rolling across what will later become a bluebird sky. Maine native Kate Ray and her family bring dogsledding back to Sugarloaf.Īdding several inches to Sugarloaf’s already substantial snowpack, an overnight storm made a marshmallow world of Carrabassett Valley on this Saturday in late March.
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