Glacial Aliments

I'm sure you can imagine that there are a few reoccurring health problems. They affect us all. They are something that we also joke about after hours. I've made a list of some of these problems.

Tourist Voice:
It's a tone of voice, cadence and diction of our speech that we change in order to make ourselves seem more friendly. We have to 'paint on our nice faces' everyday and at the end of the day we don't have to be nice. People say things like 'Well... at least the helicopter ride was nice.' we cannot say back 'Well... at least my last tour was nice.' and so we have the tourist voice that we turn on and keep on all day.

Snap Thumb:
Snap thumb comes from hooking up dogs. The snaps that one has to do and undo in order to get the dog from it's house to the line will sometimes leave little cuts on your thumb. These sting like you would not believe. I had about 15-20 of these small cuts on my thumb. Every time I went to wash my hands my thumbs were throbbing.

Tourist Elbow:
Too much waving. It's like tennis elbow, repetitive motion. The pain is on the outside of ones elbow and feels a bit like a tendon. It's probably the most pathetic pain I've ever felt... too much waving.

Christmas Feet:
Also known as 'trench foot'. Yes this is a serious thing that does happen on the glacier. Peoples feet will go numb from being in the cold and wet for too long. Mine haven't started yet and I plan on keeping it that way. They go numb during the summer and don't come back until Christmas. This is nerve damage. Probably this is the worst thing that could happen up on the glacier.

Tourists

After dogs the biggest part of my job is keeping tourists happy. I make my money off tourists, they are what pays for everything. I never for a second forget that they are the reason why I can be here and living the way that I do.

The town I live in is a cruise ship port. People are all on vacation and they come off their cruise and then go into town and do their shopping thing/ other excursions. You can see the buses full for the tours going by to try gold panning or go to some sort of salmon bake. They go in and out of shops and there are shows that actors dress up in period costume for. After all this town was a bit of a rough place during the gold rush and people enjoy attempting to go back to that time period.

I have been on a cruise before, granted it was to Western Caribbean, but still they are all pretty much the same. In every port there are a series of excursions that you can do and there is usually a town that you can go shopping in. The towns have pretty much the same stores. I'll let you in on a little secret: when you're doing the cruise stops keep in mind that a lot of the shops are all owned by the same people in every port. So a company will have a shop in port #1, #2, #3... they will also have multiple shops in the same town attracting a different audience. The tourists come off the ship... walk around... and then get back on. There are thousands of tourists on each ship.

Now one would hope that if you were paying for an excursion you would be interested in the tour offered. Boy was I wrong! In an ideal world, yes this is what happens, but in the real world some people just look at the price tag and say 'well it's the most expensive it must be good.' and so that is how more people than I imagined get up to Dog Camp and are not actually be interested in dogs. Many people are, but then you have some who are more interested in the snowmobiles. It's very sad for the mushers when they would rather sit on the snowmobile and take pictures rather than pet a dog who is dying for attention. They also are the same people at the end of the tour who are not interested in puppies. I wonder if they have a soul....

Most tourists are nice but then every now and again you get the one or two that just don't get it. They treat you like you're less-than they don't accept 'no' as an answer. They pick on my sunglasses tan and don't listen when I tell them things. Yes I realize they are on vacation but when I say 'It's time to go towards the helicopter site' I don't actually mean 'please take 15 more pictures of puppies and take your gloves off, take pictures of you jumping with a dog team in the background, and go to the bathroom.' Funny how it seems that when I close the box full of puppies people seem to think that RIGHT THEN is the time to take more pictures... even though I've warned them it's going to be closed soon. Tourists do love their picture taking. Another thing they love is to ask the same questions 'When are you getting out of school?' 'Do you live here?' 'Do you have another shot of us?'

I take their action shot while they are sled, and it's moving. As I'm sure you can imagine this becomes quite challenging 'Everyone smile and wave! Now look at me! 3..2..1!' most of the time it turns out just fine. Then there are times when someones hand is in someones face. I will retake the photo if this is the case. However I will not take the photo if your own hand is in front of your face. I counted you down, I warned you, and then your musher told you too. Not my fault. Also the people who will keep their camera in front of their face I will not retake their picture, they will have some amazing video of me taking their picture and telling them to look at me. Then they ask why I have a picture with either their hand or a camera in their face. Tourists will often times take so many pictures that they do what we call the 'virtual tour' which means that they never taken their camera away from their face and just look around... with their eyes. They are constantly looking through the lens of their camera, rather than with their own eyes. You'd rather watch the tour instead of experience it.

Hundreds of tourists come and go and I've yet to have an unhappy tourist. The ones that stick out in my mind are the ones that do something incredibly stupid like ask 'so do you ever get cold up here?' or 'Do you helicopter the dogs in every day and out every night?' my personal favorite 'is this really your career?' or 'so what is your goal in life really?' Well it sure as f*ck isn't to take your picture lady, get back on the helicopter.

At the end of the day we all share our stories, after all we do need to vent about our day. But like I said we all keep in mind that without tourists our job wouldn't happen. With that said we all wake up again and paint on our happy faces to greet the next batch of tourists.

Puppies!

 Part of my job is handing out puppies to tourists. Yes that's right, I'm a professional puppy-hander-outer. There are currently two litters of puppies that have been born on the glacier. One has 8 puppies and is about one month old. The pictures in this post are of those puppies. They're just starting to crawl out of their house, explore their world and play with each other. They are by far the highlight of any tourists time on the glacier. We have a saying here at dog camp which is "if you don't like puppies you don't have a soul". This is of course not true, I'm sure there are very nice people in the world who don't like puppies... and still have their souls.... I've yet to meet one of these people but like I said I'm sure they are living among us. 

The little guys at camp are just cutting teeth and getting curious about things like earrings, necklaces and fur coats. They especially like to try to ruin these things. As of right now people have left with their expensive souvenirs in tack. I fear though that this may not be the case for long.

 Fun fact about me that you may not know. When I need a conversation changer I use the phrase "You want to know what I like? Puppies. Who else likes puppies?" Everyone knows it's a conversation changer, and people will point it out to me. But then people talk about the cute little puppies they've known. It actually surprises me how well that this trick works. Puppies just make life that much better.

Dogs

 I realized that I haven't really talked about dogs yet. Dogs are a very big part of my job. Everyday I get to play with dogs, comfort them, hold them, love them... it's great. You know when you walk in the door after being gone, even if it's only 5 minutes, and your dog is super excited to see you every time? Imagine that happening but with 40 dogs. At 6 am when we wake up and start scooping poop they all bark, wag their tails, run in circles and look at you with those excited eyes 'I love you! I'm so glad you're back!' Not a bad way to start your day.

 There are a couple of types of sled dogs. The one pictured above is a racing dog. They are a little smaller, about 50 pounds or so and they are bred to race. Another type is a large fluffy dogs. These dogs are bred for freight, pulling heavy gear over long distances rather than moving fast. Sort of the difference between a marathon runner and a football player, each strong and athletic in their own way.

Then of course, there are the puppies! There are currently 12 total on the glacier. 8 are 3 weeks old and 4 are about 10 days. The older puppies are just starting to look like dogs but they're still little butterballs. It's my job to hand them out to tourists. It's tough... but someone has to do it.

Weather

'Some days are diamonds... some days are rocks... ' -Tom Petty

So not every day is a sunny day out on the glacier. This past week we had a 'weather day' which means that the weather made it impossible for helicopters to land on the glacier. I'm not talking about extreme wind or freezing rain that's falling sideways, nope just clouds. The elevation from town to the glacier is a change of 4000ft, and dog camp is only about 2 miles from town. This drastic change in elevation means that town as completely different weather. When town is overcast it means that the glacier is above the clouds. We can see into the valley and sometimes it is a like a lake of clouds. Other times on the glacier we can't even see the mountain which is right next to us. When the pilot can't see the ground they can't fly, end of story. Unfortunately, tours get canceled. The helicopter base does try to do weather checks on an hourly basis, so they know the moment that they can start tours again. Some days we might have an hour or two canceled, other days canceled until lunch and then some others, canceled all day. At dog camp we just sit around and wait all day, not that we have anywhere to be. These days are not bad, but not good either. It's nice to have a break but its' also nice to make some money, no tours= no $.

Then there's the day that we had yesterday, beautiful, sunny and clear for miles. Tours every half an hour. It was hot, and all the employees were walking around in t-shirts. The heat is reflected off the white of the snow, and since white is the dominant color in the landscape it gets pretty hot. Tourists come off the helicopter in their fur coats (no joke, some people actually wear fine fur coats to go and play with dogs) and helly hansen ski pants and we're in jeans and t-shirts with ball caps on. These are good days, the best tours happen days like this. These days are also the days that everyone gets sunburned, everywhere. Because the sunlight is being reflected from the snow, which is everywhere, you get sunburned in places you wouldn't normally think about. Such as under your chin and up your nose. You feel like a grease ball all day long because you're also sweating. When I get back I'm going to have an amazing sunglasses tan, watch tan and potentially a strap tan from the camera bag I wear around.

Living on a Glacier

So I've been living on a glacier for about a couple of weeks now. The first week I was up with a small crew and we build dog houses all week long, along with shoveled out groomers, walk through 2ft of fresh snow and of course, as always, take care of dogs.

This past week the full crew was up and we transported another 100+ dogs to camp. There are 13 people living on the glacier with me. There are mushers, dogs handlers, tour assistants (that's me!), the cook and our manegment team.

Tours started on Monday and have been going ever since. We have tours every day. We never have a scheduled 'day off' without people coming up the glacier. On certain days of the week there are less tours than others and during those days we are flown down from the glacier (via helicopter!) and we get to have the next two nights in town and then we are flown back up in the morning. For those who are curious my schedule goes a little like this:

5:50am alarm goes off

5:55 roll out of bed and put rain pants/ boots/ jacket on

6:00 grab a shovel and start finding poop, put poop in a 5 gallon bucket. Usually a dog yard of 40 will have approximately 2-3 buckets of poop

6:30 feed dogs if necessary, put eye drogs in irritated dogs eyes and use zinc on any part of the dog that's pink to prevent sunburn.

7:00 breakfast! (eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, pancakes, oatmeal, yogurt, fruit....coffee...)

8:00 first helicopter lands full of tourists! I unload the helicopter of the tourists/ gear and put gear back on.

Next I lead tourists to mushers after they recieve their safety speech

I then go and stand in the 'photo spot' and wait

I take an 'action shot' of them on the sled

I then walk briskly back to the photo tent where I edit and print off the pictures

I hopefully am ready a few minutes before they get back to the camp so that I can get their pictures organized.

I remember that I sell thousand dollar a night condos when I'm trying to get these people to purchase a picture of themselves

I then lead them back to the helicopters 'no I'm sorry you cannot change seats...' and get them ready to go

Once the helicopter lands I help the new tourists in the helicopter and then I put the old tourists, photos hopefully in hand, back inside. I then unload the gear/ load our gear into it.

This process repeats itself every hour. Tours on 'slower' days run every hour, a full day is every half hour.

5:00ish-7pm tours stop. we feed dogs/ water/ poop scoop once last time.

7:30pm we eat.

8pm a crew does dishes/ we hang out.

I usually go to bed sometime between 9:30 and 10pm.

The picture is of what I'm living in. Note the snow is above the door on either side by about 2ft. I'll keep you all posted about what's going on but for now I'm oging ot get my things organized again to go back up to hang out with the 240 dogs!