photo: Tyler Garnham
Postal pups
Mushers in the annual three-day, 100-kilometre Cariboo sled-dog run from Quesnel to Wells employ old-fashioned canine power to deliver the federal mail.
Jeff Dinsdale’s purebred Canadian Inuit sled dogs operate on two levels: order and chaos. They can work together as a quiet, harmonious team to achieve a mutual goal, or they can turn on each other with sudden territorial violence. The disfigured face of Handsome tells the latter story. The dog’s name recalls his good looks before his brother, Dandy, tore into him.
“It happened in a split second,” Dinsdale says. “Not really even a fight, and then it was over. But it was a big enough cut to require stitches.”
I’ll be riding that line between order and chaos as I hop aboard Dinsdale’s sled for the Gold Rush Trail Dog Sled Mail Run. The three-day, 100-kilometre run from north of Quesnel to the historic gold-mining towns of Wells and Barkerville is not a race, as such. It’s more a historic re-creation, a way of celebrating the role sled dogs played in the founding of British Columbia, including the delivery of mail in winter. About one third of the route follows the original Cariboo Wagon Road; the rest traces old logging and mining networks, newer access roads, and recreational trails.
Read more in the current issue of British Columbia Magazine
