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Quest for the South Pole

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Quest For the South Pole

Discovered in 1840, Antarctica lies almost concentrically about the South Pole.  Fittingly enough its name means “opposite to the arctic”, and this fifth largest continent would be essentially circular except for the Antarctica Peninsula. It was here, in this unforgiving environment that two different men chose two different paths, and two different aides in their quests to reach the South Pole.  Both made it to their destinations, only one however made it back.  There is not any doubt that the difference was the dogs, or lack thereof.

Robert F. Scott (1868-1912) was a British explorer who made several attempts to reach the South Pole.  From their base camp on Ross Island, Scott, accompanied by Earnest Henry Shackleton (1874-1922), and E.A. Wilson penetrated as close as 82º 17’ S. to the pole at the Ross Ice Shelf on December 30, 1902.  Scott believed that the use of sled dogs was somehow disreputable.  “No journey made with dogs,” Captain Scott wrote, “can approach the height of that fine conception which is realized when a party of men go forth to face hardships, dangers, and difficulties by their own unaided efforts.”

Later, Shackleton and another party of five men reached 88º 23’ S. on January 9, 1909, a point a mere 97-miles from the pole.  “The successful experimental use of hardy Manchurian ponies, and the pioneering of a route up the great Beardmore Glacier to the polar plateau by Shackleton, paved the way for the epic trip of Scott in 1911-12 to the South Pole.”

The second participant in the epic race was Roald Amundsen (1872-1928).  Amundsen was the Norwegian explorer that ultimately discovered the South Pole, but just as with Peary on the other side of the world, his triumph came with a price.

Amundsen began his history-making journey by first studying medicine.  In 1897, he joined a Belgian Antarctica expedition as a mate, and was assigned to the “Belgica”.  The “Belgica”, under the command of Captain Adrien de Gerlache, became trapped in the pack ice in March of 1898.  The ship drifted with the ice of the Bellingshausen Sea until the following March; proving conclusively that one could winter the Antarctic.

It is noteworthy to mention that Amundsen was accompanied to Antarctica by the American physician-explorer F.A. Cook. Amundsen and Cook were largely responsible for bringing the “Belgica’s” crew through severe attacks of scurvy.

A few years later Amundsen made plans to conquer the Northwest Passage.  With a crew of only six he sailed secretly on the “Gjöa”, a forty seven-ton sloop, in order to avoid creditors.  He was the first man to take a ship through the fabled passage.  He then began to focus his attention on accomplishing spectacular polar achievements.

Amundsen planned to drift across the North Pole in a ship called the “Fram”.  This plan was secretly altered when the news that Robert E. Peary had reached the North Pole assaulted the wires.  He continued his preparations and in June of 1910 Amundsen left Norway; no one save his brother knew that he sailed for the South Pole instead of the already conquered North Pole.  Amundsen sailed to the Ross Sea and set up a base camp some sixty-miles closer to the pole than his adversary Captain Scott.  As a matter of personal, and nationalistic pride it was vital to him that he reach the pole first.

Unlike Scott’s party who chose to rely primarily on horses and the Beardmore Glacier route, Amundsen and his party chose to travel with sledges pulled by dogs and to take the Axel Heiberg Glacier route.  He reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911, beating Captain Scott by thirty-four days.  Appley Cherry-Garrard was a member of Scott’s previous excursions, he described the vast differences between the canines’ and ponies’ ability to adapt to the polar environment in the following account:

“The animals suffer the most, and during the this first blizzard all our ponies were weakened, and two of them became practically useless…Nothing was left undone for them which we could manage, but necessarily the Antarctic is a grim place for ponies.  I think Scott felt the sufferings of the ponies more than the animals themselves.  It was different with the dogs.  These fairly warm blizzards were only a rest for them.  Snugly curled up in [a] hole in the snow they allowed themselves to be drifted over.  Bieleglas and Vaida, two half-brothers who pulled side by side, always insisted upon sharing one hole, and for greater warmth one would lie on top of the other.  At intervals of two hours or so they fraternally changed places.”

Amundsen’s team arrived safely back at Franheim Station at the Bay of Whales with very little difficulty.  On January 17, 1912, seventy-eight days after leaving camp, Captain Scott’s final assault team achieved the South Pole.  The despair of coming so far just to find the Norwegian flag must have been nearly overwhelming.  Their return trek was aggravatingly slow as men succumbed to the environment.  Scott’s party was caught in a blizzard on the Ross Ice Shelf.  There they pitched their tents, and their food and fuel dwindled, then finally ran out.  Only eleven-miles from their One Ton Camp, Scott and his companions perished.

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Dr. Robert Forto is the Dog Sledding Examiner, a musher training for his first Iditarod under the Team Ineka banner and the host of the popular, Mush! You Huskies radio show.

Voyages to the Ends of the Earth

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Voyages to the Ends of the Earth

An explorer’s work is vastly routine, and at times mundane. Raymond Coppinger stated it as an “unglamorous collecting of data, and charting of land and water.”  But every once and a while a mission comes along that captivates the imagination of man; explorers and the public alike.  Man’s insatiable quest for the North and South Poles were such missions, they produced both triumphs and disasters.

Quest for the North Pole

From the beginning the men who braved the Polar Regions have depended on dog teams.  In the 1870’s and 1880’s Nares and Greely used dog teams in their attempts to reach the North Pole.  In 1895, Nansen was to become the white man that had reached the furthest north, he accomplished this feat with the aide of native Eskimo dogs.  Nansen’s record was broken by a mere twenty-two miles in 1901 by Italian Naval officer, Lt. Cagni.

Robert Edwin Peary (1856-1920) is widely credited with reaching the North Pole first, a feat that he accomplished in April of 1909.  For Peary this victory was only achieved after a hard fought battle that began in 1886 with a trip that started at Disco Bay, and proceeded one-hundred miles over the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Peary returned to the Arctic in 1891 with seven companions that included his wife, and F.A. Cook.  Leaving from Hvalsund in the spring, Peary and his party sledged an impressive twelve hundred miles to the northeast of Greenland, and discovered Independence Fjord in the process.  It is important to note Peary’s befriending of an isolated tribe of Eskimo referred to as the “Arctic Highlanders”.  These natives, according to Peary, were of the “greatest assistance” on his later expeditions.  Peary made additional excursions into the arctic regions in 1893, 1894, 1896, and 1897.

In 1898, Peary announced his intentions of reaching the North Pole. Because of his single-mindedness, over the next four years Peary relentlessly reconnoitered possible routes from bases at Etah in Inglefield Land and Fort Conger on Ellesmere Island.  He adopted Eskimo techniques of travel, shelter and clothing.  The “Arctic Highlanders” were his drivers, and his igloo builders.  Following the prescribed methods of McClintock, food and supplies were cached, and a trail was laid.

In 1905, Peary made a valiant attempt at reaching the North Pole.  His group traveled with over two hundred sled dogs and reached latitude 87º 6’ N. eclipsing Lt. Cagni’s closet approach.  Severe ice conditions conspired with a run of bad weather, and forced the party to make a premature return.

In February of 1909, Peary departed Cape Columbia, Ellesmere Island with twenty-four men, nineteen sleds, and one hundred and thirty-three Eskimo sled dogs.  In the final leg of the trip Matthew Henson, and four Eskimos accompanied Peary.  The men with their courageous dogs “covered the last 133-miles in five forced marches, arriving at that magic spot where there is no North, East, or West on April 6, 1909.”

The group then made the 485-mile return trip in a nearly unbelievable sixteen days.  His once friend, F.A. Cook, claimed to have superseded Peary’s accomplishment by reaching the North Pole during the previous season.  Cook’s claims have been widely discredited, yet they continued to mar the enjoyment of Peary’s triumph.  That the dispute was even taken seriously at all was owed to the fact that Peary’s return trip was so astonishingly quick.  However, most experienced mushers agree that one’s return trip on a marked trail is generally almost twice as fast.  Peary died on February 20, 1920 in Washington D.C. His contributions to the sled dog and scientific communities however live on.

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Dr. Robert Forto is the Dog Sledding Examiner, a musher training for his first Iditarod under the Team Ineka banner and the host of the popular, Mush! You Huskies radio show.

Charlie Belford on Mush! You Huskies Radio Show

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Dog Sledding Legends-Charlie Belford on Mush! You Huskies

On the radio program, Mush! You Huskies we are continuing our summer series on the Dog Sledding Legends that made this sport what it is. This week we talk about Charlie Belford.

Listen to Mush! You Huskies Radio Show: Charlie Belford

Doc Belford was one of the most influential of Siberian breeders and racers. He was a close friend of that OTHER racing vet, Doc Lombard. With Dick Moulton making a threesome, these men undertook to found SEPP– a move within the ranks of SHCA to retain the racing qualities of the Siberian Husky. Doc Belford lived much of the important racing history that we read about in books. He was a World Champion and raced Alaska shortly after Lombard initially went there from New England and came back with many tales of the tough trails, tough drivers, and tougher dogs. He started in Siberians when his father bought dogs from Seppala. He was a member of the newly formed NESDC Juniors. And he loved the sport. Dr. Belford was recognized for his authoritative knowledge of the racing Siberian and was asked abroad to speak and lecture in the Scandinavian countries.

Citation: http://www.GoMush.com

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Dr. Robert Forto is the Dog Sledding Examiner, a musher training for his first Iditarod under the Team Ineka banner, and the host of the popular, Mush! You Huskies radio show.

Mush! You Huskies Radio: The Lombards

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Roland and Louise Lombard

On the Mush You Huskies Radio Show we continue to showcase the people that made the sport of mushing what it is today. It is called Dog Sledding Legends and we will be covering these amazing contributors to the sport all summer long.

Listen to Mush! You Huskies: The Lombards

If you are a musher and would like an excellent reference to your library check out Nancy Cowan’s The Training and Racing Journals of Roland and Louise Lombard. Self-Published 2004.

The following history is taken from Mrs. Cowan’s book and Roland “Doc” Lombard’s training journals to show a history of one of the greatest musher’s of all time. I hope that Mrs. Cowan and the late Doc Lombard to not mind my liberty.

Emile St. Godard’s flop-eared racing hounds may have looked like odd sled dogs to Siberian fans in New England, but as he raced them in the 1929 race in Laconia, an even odder-looking team was making a first mark in sled racing for its youthful owner, Roland “Doc” Lombard of Maine. Lombard, later to win time and time again in the biggest races with long teams of Siberian-Alaskan Husky crosses, was right on St. Godard’s heels with a motley five-dog crew. On lead was often a cocker spaniel-collie farm dog, behind the leader, a German Shepherd cross and a mixed husky, and filling out the team, two Siberians borrowed from Seppala. Lombard’s third place finish was fast enough to win him first-place handicap money, $1,000, which went along way in those Depression days towards his schooling for a career as a veterinarian.

Once his veterinary practice was set up near Boston, Massachusetts, Lombard returned eagerly to his sled dogs. His early teams were made up of purebred Siberians, which were the fruits of a half dozen New England kennels that had been breeding from Seppala stock for almost three decades.

In the late forties and well into the fifties, Doc and his wife, Louise, ran their Igloo Pak Kennel dogs in dozens of New England Races. By the mid-fifties Lombard, along with Charles Belford and Keith Bryar, were known as New England’s “big three,” and they represented the best the sport had to offer outside of Alaska. When the New England races could not hold up to their blazing teams, the three racers traveled to bigger events in New York, Canada and finally Alaska. Lombard was the first to take sled dog racing back to the state where it started, driving in his first Alaskan race in 1958 at the age of forty-six. He was also to be the most successful outsider in Alaskan championship races, giving every sled dog driver in the state a tough run for his money for many, many years. Although he remained an outsider in Alaska, his gentle manner, considerate words and fine racing record won him the respect of the farthest-north Americans.

Lombard won his first Alaskan race on his second attempt. This he did at Fairbanks, in the North American Championship, the first outsider to challenge successfully in the fifty years of Alaskan sled dog racing. From 1958 to 1975 Doc Lombard won six North American Championships, placing second in six others. Down in Anchorage at the Fur Rendezvous World Championships it took him until 1963 to win his first one, and he won the North American that year, and so added the coveted title of Dual Champion to his laurels. In the next twelve years Lombard kept returning to Alaska and kept proving his talents, winning eight more World Championships. In 1964 and 1967 he re-earned the Dual Championship an extraordinary second and third times.

Lombard’s lead dog in most of these victories was a 48-pound black and white Alaskan Husky named Nellie. Trained in Huslia, the little Alaskan town famed for its sled dogs and their drivers, Nellie attracted Lombard’s attention in 1962 while she was running on champion George Attla’s team. Lombard’s professional admiration for the dog resulted in the first sale of a sled dog for the then unheard-of price of $1,000.

According to Attla, “She just never made a mistake on commands. It was like driving a car; you made every turn you wanted to make.” Nellie had all of the good traits, she worked enthusiastically, and she had ‘heart’. She helped Lombard to his unprecedented fourteen Alaskan championships. The year that both “Doc” and his dog were elected into the Dog Mushers’ Hall of Fame, Lombard commented to the Boston Globe: “Nellie is very special. She not only has speed, courage and stamina—because these championship races are long distance—but Nellie is highly intelligent.”

Nellie represented the finest in canine evolution that had been occurring in Alaska since Seppala left with his Siberians. A purebred Siberian strain had been developed in Huslia, but so had a non-registered breed called the Alaskan Husky. The toughest of the survivors from the gold rush days, the fastest of the winners in the early races, were interbred with Siberians, with Malamutes, with Eskimos dogs and with wolves. When the New Englanders brought the best of their Seppala Siberians back to Alaska to race, it was the best of these husky-type dogs that beat them.

Roland Lombard’s contributions to sled dog racing extended far beyond his racing record or his abilities with dogs. During his career he aided more than one aspiring musher with dogs and advice, spending hours talking, explaining and teaching. The more serious new drivers who visited him were slowly included in the fall training activities; and several of New England’s better drivers learned the basics from “Doc.”

Another major contribution was his early belief in the idea of an international organization for the sport. Lombard served as the first president of the International Sled Dog Racing Association from 1966 to 1970, he and a small group of intensely dedicated people gave unselfishly of their time and money to make this infant idea into a reality.

Roland Lombard was a master at reading and communicating with his dogs. His race results represent this. Lombard’s evaluations of his dogs were very precise. As the date of the next racing event drew closer he had an astonishing perception of his team’s readiness. Lombard was adept at finding any and all faults or variation in his dogs’ behavior. Many mushers thought “Doc” was a perfectionist, and as such, overly critical of his dogs. Others maintained that Lombard knew his dogs so well that the type and intensity of the correction he administered to his dogs were perfectly suited to the incident, and even more importantly, to the individual dog.

If something wrong happened to a dog during a run, Lombard recorded the incident. These types of notes were recorded with the intention of curbing negative events and conflicts with that particular dog. Roland Lombard was an in-field researcher of his dogs. He kept training and racing journals that spanned decades.

Each and every dog on the Lombard team always had a clear understanding of what was expected of it. Lombard allowed all of his dogs to remain in a positive frame of mind when running in a team. Year after year he came to the racing circuit to learn, about his dogs and himself. He worked hard and the teams got better. He won his share and he lost some, but he always conducted himself with exemplary sportsmanship.

“Doc” was often asked to speak about sled dog racing. In the book, The Training and Racing Journals of Roland and Louise Lombard, it shows that for over thirty years he did not leave anything out, and did not leave anything unplanned. “Doc” listed some statements he called “one-liners” that he intended to make in order to encourage questions and discussions. Roland Lombard’s “one-liners” follow:

1. Break your dogs on opposite sides. When training, shift all dogs after a mile or so.

2. Start training dogs young, but don’t race them in long or fast races.

3. Try to accomplish as many corrections that you have to make, AWAY from the team (i.e. aggressive and NO.)

4. If you want your dogs to listen to you, keep your mouth shut unless you have something to command them to do.

In one speech, “Doc” used the words, “the numbers game” as a one-liner when speaking about the fact that a lower-48 [states] musher who was working with his kennel, then goes to Alaska to race, was taking a team made up from his limited resources. This musher had to go against teams made up from the pooled resources of native villages. Lombard’s point was that when he began racing in Alaska, the native Alaskans were assembling teams from the best of a pool of five hundred or more “best in the village” dogs, the best of thousands. The opportunity to assemble a superior team coming from a breeder choosing from fifty dogs of his own home-grown gene pool was nil to this prospect. “Doc” was using this one liner to illustrate to people why he had bought individual dogs in Alaska, and then to also explain why Alaskan Huskies were proving themselves superior on the race trail of the day, to any registered purebred team, of any breed.

“Doc” was an excellent communicator and trainer when it came to his dogs. He was considered a master trainer of his dogs, especially his leaders. As a trainer Roland knew, and he knew that the dogs knew, that if it was being just plain stubborn or disobedient, Doc dispensed criticism in a manner and at the moment that the dog would understand it best. In a few instances he whipped a dog, sometimes he urged a dog, at other times he “spoke to” a dog (a verbal reprimand) or else “jollied” the dog with happy words. Each correction was perfectly suited to the canine, to the moment and to the offense. Few trainers are able to achieve the level of performance and empathy that Lombard expected from, and gave to his dogs. In his journal an entry explains how he does it:

Attitude—prefer to train second year dogs because it has proven speed and lack of bad habits.

First teach “come.”

Second teach “line out.” If you have ever tried to get a team harnessed and get back to your sled while the young leader wants to come back to the sled with you, or to visit with the dogs in the team (you know the value of this lesson). After going up and straightening him out eight times, because of the delay, the other dogs are chewing their necklines etc. You might be tempted to get rough with him. DON’T. Put him back in the team and promise yourself that you will start training properly by teaching him to line out.

1. All leaders should be taught to go single. If you start out with double leaders, one will know “gee” and the other will know “haw”. Your young leaders want to have the confidence to push or to pull the other. If one makes a mistake, the other goes along.

2. We do not hook leaders in until last—usually.

3. Teach “NO!”

4. A good leader is a rare and wonderful thing. When you get one, take care never to do anything that might put a bad thought in her head.

5. Everyone should read the Mel Fishback article on leader stress in Northern Dog News.

  1. I don’t believe that you can successfully make a rigid training program at the beginning of the season. It is almost a day-to-day program. I do, however, think that it is probably wise to set some goals.

Roland Lombard was a rare entity, a master of masters at what he did, and who was also mentally and telepathically in tune with his team. He loved and understood his dogs. They loved and understood Lombard. Lombard’s labor made a science of sled dog racing, but it was his talented hands that made sled dog racing an art.

Citation: The Training and Racing Journals of Roland and Lousie Lombard edited by Nancy Cowan, 2004.

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Dr. Robert Forto is the Dog Sledding Examiner, a musher training for his first Iditarod under the Team Ineka banner and the host of the Mush! You Huskies Radio Show

The Mail

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The Mail

Lead Dog RevengeThe mushers carrying the mail packets were by far the most popular.  The Hudson Bay Company’s “Northern Packet” departed what is now Winnipeg on the Fort Garry dog train.  Eight days and 350-miles later, the Fort Garry dog train arrived at the Norway House, located at the north end of Lake Winnipeg.  Simultaneously, the York Factory on Hudson Bay sent a mail packet to Norway House.  After unloading, and then repacking, the two dog trains returned from where they came.  A new dog train departed Norway House and headed west to Fort Carlton, located on the Saskatchewan River.  The trip was 650-miles and took around twenty-two days.

The mail drivers were so adept at getting the mail in on time, that the men stationed at the old Swan River barracks made wagers every twenty-one to twenty-two days as to when the mail would arrive. “Bets would be passed at the noon meal as to what exact time Louis Laronde or Antoine Genoit would arrive with the mail.”

The importance of the mail was also prevalent in Alaska, and was one of the most eagerly awaited shipments of the dog trail.  It has been said that all sled dog trails lead to Nome, and on those trails the mail driver was treated like a king.  United States law actually required all other trail users give the right-of-way to the mail drivers.

“The mail driver was the single most important person on the trail, in the mail-station, or at the over-night roadhouse.  He was given the best seat at the table, the first service of hotcakes for breakfast, and the best bunk at night.  When the mail driver pulled into a station or the roadhouse at the end of a day’s run, he unhitched the team and turned all the dogs loose except the leader.  His leader, his parka, gloves and whip was brought into the roadhouse.  He put the leader under his bunk, hung his wet clothing on the best wire around the stovepipe…and woe to him who complained about the leader under his bed!”

At the turn of the century the mail driver received a salary of $2225.00 per year, and was required by the Postmaster General to deliver the mail “with celerity, certainty, and security.”

The United States Postal Service employed dog drivers until 1963.  Chester Noongwook, of Savoonga on Saint Lawrence Island, was honored in the same year.  With the retirement of his loyal dog team a century of sled dog tradition slipped into history.  Noongwook’s team, Spotty, Brownie, Mil-ko-lak and Donkey were replaced with an airplane, yet they remained at the ready, because there would be times and places that a dog team could make the trip and an airplane could not.

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Dr. Robert Forto is the Dog Sledding Examiner, a musher training for his first Iditarod under the Team Ineka banner and the host of Mush! You Huskies Radio Show