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ENOUGH of outdated romantic notions. Everyone knows that true travellers in
the North don鈥檛 use flying reindeer: they go by dogsled. And if a wooden basket
on skis towed by a pack of dogs sounds primitive, well, frankly, it is. But
don鈥檛 be fooled: modern dog mushing is not all birch sleds and sealskin
trousers. Some would even call it high-tech.

Dogs and sleds were once an essential mode of transport in the snowbound
North. Today they鈥檙e recreation鈥攑assionate recreation. You鈥檝e only got to
look at the Iditarod, perhaps the best known of the long-distance dog team
races, where more than 50 鈥渕ushers鈥� and their dog teams fight it out in one of
the harshest environments on Earth. Aircraft and snowmobiles from across Alaska
are commandeered to help set up checkpoints and deliver thousands of tonnes of
prepackaged dog food along the 1770-kilometre trail. Microchips the size of
apple seeds are injected into dogs and scanned at intervals to guard against
cheating, and identify them if they get lost. And to monitor the race and keep
fans informed, telephones, fax machines and satellite dishes all have to be
hauled into the middle of an icy nowhere.

Killer terrain

Such races are the pinnacle of the sport. Musher and dogs must make their
way, unassisted through brush, across frozen lakes and over mountain ranges in
the dead of winter鈥攚ithout dying. The journey along the Iditarod trail
from Anchorage to Nome can take anywhere from 10 days to three weeks.
Temperatures in March can dip to 鈭�50 掳F (鈭�45.5 掳C 鈥攕o cold
that icicles form on beards, and eyelids freeze shut. Daylight hours are few and
there isn鈥檛 much shelter along the way. Serious mushers take cover at
checkpoints, mainly to hear about the weather. They eat, sleep and tend their
dogs out in the cold.

Under these conditions, it鈥檚 no wonder that mushers are obsessed by what they
wear. Clothes must be warm, of course, or hypothermia sets in. The real clothing
debate these days focuses on sweat, or, as mushers more delicately refer to it,
鈥渕oisture鈥�. It amounts to this: if clothing gets wet and clammy on the trail, at
best you will waste hours of valuable time trying to dry out at a checkpoint; at
worst, the freezing moisture could speed your descent into hypothermia, and
death.

But modern mushers are a far cry from their fur-clad forebears. Some
competitors, like Martin Buser, who has won the Iditarod twice, wear suits
fashioned from a 25-millimetre-layer of polyurethane foam. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the Michelin
Man look,鈥� he says, explaining why he looks like a stack of tyres in his gear.
Parka, overalls, socks, mitts鈥攁ll are made of foam. 鈥淚t used to be I had
to dress up to go out into the cold,鈥� he boasts, 鈥渂ut now I have to take my
clothes off.鈥� He鈥檚 not kidding: wearing nothing but a 鈥渕odesty shirt鈥� and shorts
beneath his foam suit, he travels pretty much in the raw.

Buser argues that his open-cell foam suit is superior because all the
moisture can pass right through it as vapour. In conventional cold-weather
clothes, he says, condensation gets trapped between layers, and then chills.
Sometimes it even forms ice crystals. But not everyone is a convert to
polyurethane. 鈥淚 have an inherent distrust of wearing a sponge,鈥� confesses Jack
Niggemyer, the Iditarod鈥檚 race manager.

Even traditionalists, who opt for good old-fashioned 鈥渓ayering systems鈥�
rather than foam, wouldn鈥檛 dream of wearing natural materials. 鈥淔ur, wool,
feathers鈥攖hey don鈥檛 deal with moisture when they are separated from the
body they grew on,鈥� says Jeff King, who has also won the race twice. He has
tried the foam gear, but has gone back to Goretex鈥攁bout six layers of it.
Mushers鈥� clothes, remember, need to double as Arctic sleeping bags.

In the Iditarod, where, as in many races, a few seconds can decide the
winner, details matter. One of King鈥檚 claims to fame is his shoelaces. With just
one quick tug, his laces, which are threaded through big D-rings, tighten
evenly. A 鈥渃ordlock鈥� then locks them in place. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not a small issue,鈥� he
insists.

Nor is the contribution of Velcro. Dog paws need protecting from ice, snow
and rocks almost as much as human feet do, and before Velcro a musher would bank
on tying protective dog 鈥渂ooties鈥� onto cold paws about 1800 times during the
course of a single race.

Women, who compete sled to sled with men and have won four out of the past 10
Iditarods, are especially grateful for another contraption, the 鈥渇eminine
urinary director鈥�. It鈥檚 not much more than a carefully crafted plastic funnel
with a 15-centimetre hose attached, but in the Arctic outdoors, where everyone
guards their privates against frostbite, this device is the great equaliser. It
allows serious women competitors to save valuable time by peeing just like
men鈥攐ff the back of a moving sled.

Over the centuries, basic sled design changed little. Only in the mid-1970s,
when modern racing began, did people start to take a second look at their sleds.
Traditional sleds, says Tim White, an upstart sled-maker from northern
Minnesota, are 鈥渓ike glorified snow shoes鈥攚ood slats tied together by
rawhide鈥�. They are known as 鈥渂asket鈥� sleds. But when snow is deep, the runners
sink in, and the sled becomes impossible to steer. White, a structural engineer
who has worked for Boeing, designed a rival.

His new 鈥渢oboggan鈥� sled lowers the load, which improves steering. The body of
the sled is set on a sheet of strong plastic that can glide across the snow.
These days, top mushers start out with these toboggan sleds as they trundle
across the mountains, then switch to the lighter traditional basket sleds for
the stretch along the Yukon River and the flat approach to the Bering Sea.

Tipped off by its success in aircraft, not to mention in tennis rackets and
skis, White also experimented with aluminium runners. Aluminium has three times
the density of wood, is less likely to break and isn鈥檛 easily damaged when it
bumps over rocks and roots.

But strength alone wasn鈥檛 enough. White also wanted versatility. Scratchy
runners could slow you down, and replacing them could take hours. So he came up
with the quick-change runner, a strip of aluminium with a slip-on plastic cover
held in place by a single screw. In two minutes flat, you can not only swap old
for new, but mix and match: runners can be thick or thin, narrow or wide, and
different plastics can be used for different snows and temperatures.

Outlawed

Today, almost everyone uses the quick-change design. But the fabric of the
runners themselves is still evolving. Bernie Willis, an airline pilot who makes
sleds in his spare time, has been working on the next generation of composite
runners, which may some day supersede the aluminium versions. The runners on his
premier sled, the Happy River Racer, are made of thin layers of ash and hickory,
reinforced near the top and bottom with fibreglass. This high-tech sandwich, he
says, combines strength with just the right degree of flexibility. Still, Willis
counts himself a traditionalist. 鈥淢y philosophy is that you learn as much as
possible about the way it was done for hundreds of years,鈥� he says, 鈥渁nd make
improvements only where necessary.鈥�

Not every innovation is welcome. 鈥淭he first year I sailed the Iditarod was
1992,鈥� says Buser. He had a strong wind behind him, so decided to turn his
windproof overshirt into a sail, using ski poles to prop it up above the sled.
He won. The following year he entered with a custom-made sail. Then suddenly,
wind sails were banned. Unfair advantage, said the race organisers. Did the sail
idea really have potential? 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what鈥檚 so bad about outlawing things,鈥� he
says. 鈥淵ou put the research on hold.鈥�

But for all the technological one-upmanship, mushers all agree
that success comes only to people with good dogs. They say that training,
nutrition and good communication with their animals are the keys. 鈥淧eople are
always trying to knock off a second here and a second there,鈥� says Niggemyer.
鈥淏ut if you鈥檝e got crappy dogs, it ain鈥檛 going to do you any good.鈥�