Montana February 2010 Part 9

We finished a run of 38 miles in 4 hours. That was a good run. I had a clean run on my sled but fell twice on John’s. The dog in the bag shifted her weight in a turn and caused the sled to head straight for a tree. I missed the steel brake and couldn’t stop so I dropped to my knees on the snow, between the runners, to slow us down then got back on the runners and stood up. I could never have done that last year. Another time, my feet got knocked off the runners while going around a turn and I had to run to keep from falling. I managed to jump back on the runners after a few steps. There was a scary moment when I almost went down a steep embankment beside the trail. The snowmobiles had been cutting a corner closer and closer to the edge, then made a chute in the middle of the corner by riding up and down the steep hill. As I rounded the right hand corner, my inside runner drifted over to the edge and would have gotten into the trough and taken me on a one way ride down the embankment. The only way I could avoid that was by standing on the outside (left) runner with my right foot and hanging my left foot off in space to the side of the sled and jerking the handle to the left causing the right runner to come off the ground. Another rescue was narrowly avoided.