With just 10 impressively strong dogs pulling at their harnesses, it’s disquieting to find out how hard it can be to get you and your sled to a stop. These dogs live to run, whether you’re standing on the rubber brake mat or not. On the snow, going uphill and with three adults weighing down the sled, they run.

It’s exhilarating, exciting and enlivening.  But it’s also disquieting. Disquieting because the true silence that only the snow-covered backcountry knows, gets broken every time you let out an adrenaline-laced scream to express your very real fear of no longer being in control of your destination, or direction. That is until you listen to your guide and begin to work with the dogs instead of against them. You yell out “Gee” and the dogs start to break to the right before you remember “Haw” is the command that will get them turning left…and back on the trail.

    It’s true that dogs can be man’s and woman’s best friends, but in the solitude of a quiet winter valley they can also be our best teammates.  What isn’t true, is the somewhat common perception that dog sledding isn’t as exciting as other winter activities. “When a couple shows up for a ride,” says Gregg Dubit, who along with his wife, Gretchen, owns Durango Dog Ranch in southwest Colorado, “it is most likely the wife’s idea. The husband isn’t nearly as excited.” Gregg isn’t just picking on men either. For the past 12 years the Dubit’s have maintained a kennel of 40 Siberian and Alaskan huskies year-round, and from mid-November through mid-April they run half-and full-day tours up trails that rise to more than 11,000 feet in elevation. Still, he’s not sure why this common gender gap exists in couples. (From my experience, I’ve learned that when my skepticism faces off against my wife’s excitement, I end up thankful that she still drags me along for the ride.) “Usually, the husband would rather be watching a football game or skiing,” Dubit says, as if he’s traveled with my wife and I before. “But when the ride is over, you’ll walk away the most satisfied.”