Well with some trepidation, and a full throttle approach( with a little finesse), I was able to get our main Yellowknife trail put in to the great slave lake, a 17.5 mile trip one way. always get your blood pumping. nver fun sinking your machine .. I know from experiance.
We are always waiting for cold weather to freeze creeks that we follow in the portages here in Yellowknife between the lakes.
We also have had lots of snow , a great insulator to those same creeks and marshy areas keeping them form freezing. 
The only way to get the trail open is to blast through and hope you  don't  get stuck and sink your snowmobile in the process.
So I am able to run now from the house a 35 mile loop whick we will continue to do for the next week, then moving up to 50 mile- 70 miles runs in December.
As of right now , we have close to 800 miles on the dogs, and will project as per our scedualing another 750 miles in December ( which is the big month for us).
So we are looking at 1500 miles  by  the end of December.



Warren

Pictured is 1 of 2 16 dog teams  that we were training each day  35 miles at the cutline , week of November 11-13th 2008 notice pallet being dragged behind the sled. Makes a nice trail!

It snowed the whole time there, three days! We were almost stuck at the camping spot and had to chain up the truck , even then it took 1/2 hour to go about 1/2 mile to get back to the main road!

And yes Magali, we have good tires!- inside joke..


 Here is a picture of a big male buffalo that was "sharing" the trail with us, I was trying to get the team stopped so we wouldn't  run into him, and was not able to get the camera out of my jacket, He is standing between the two birch trees in the middle of the picture. It would have been a cool shot of the buffalo in front of the dogs!

November 7th 2008, Our first run on snow at the cutline, 35 miles!

With all the snow we have had in the last week, It was decided to head to the cutline on Thursday morning,  I brought the Skidoo, as the deep snow was anticipated.
I decided to use the snowmoblie and have the dogs pull it , dragging a pallet then have Annie on our old School tobogan.
It was barely enough to hold them back, fortuantely the snow was pretty deep, and they slowed down to a managble speed.
We have been using our Polaris Ranger, which weighs 1500 lbs+ the passengers, so they are very strong.
We ran 20 miles thursday.
I decided since I had extra hands with me ,to use the tobogan the next day, and we went further, 35 miles, Annie, I and 80 lbs of Dry food for extra weight, with the 200 lbs tobbagan.
We did the runs in just over 3 hours and the were steady runs, smooth. - meaning the started strong and did not fade at the end.
I have done long runs like this in the past, but the dogs did not look this good at the end!  Needless to say some very talented dogs tied up outside the house as I write this!
I think the slow long runs have paid off.  We will continue with weight, for a few more weeks, then carry about 35lbs per dog for the rest of the season( total weight)
So there you go, Nov 8th 2008 on sleds here in Yellowknife!

Warren