Distance Dogsled Bag

CYA Canvas

This dogsled bag was designed and fabricated for use in wilderness distance dogsled racing. This bag will be used in back-to-back 1,000+ mile races in 2011. The musher and his team of 16 dogs will travel over 100 miles per day over wilderness mountains, rivers, tundra and sea ice in temperatures ranging from 30 to -50 degrees. The bag must carry a specified amount of food, water, supplies and survival gear for the musher and dogs, which is verified at periodic checkpoints. These 45-pound dogs need 10,000 calories per day when racing. The fabric must be abrasion and tear-resistant and shed water and snow. Visibilty to snowmachiners (and searchers, if necessary) is the primary aesthetic concern. Zippers must not ice up and the interior must be organized so the musher can access his or her gear easily in the dark, snow and wind while sleep-deprived. As the musher will often sleep inside this bag when camping in extreme cold and wind, all interior dividers must be collapsible and zipper slides must be double-sided. As the driver can be virtually blinded from dark, cold, snow, wind and exhaustion, we try to make the bag “operate itself.” Just as our marine customers neglect to fully zip or snap closures, our mushers will fail to close a critical flap to keep their gear dry. We add boning stiffeners to those areas so the flap closes automatically when the lid is zipped.

This client is a returning customer who is introducing a new line of high-tech competition dogsleds. His major innovation is a carbon fiber runner that replaces a two-part aluminum runner with a plastic insert that had to be replaced several times during a race (eliminating the need to carry a bulky replacement). He wanted durable bags to match and accentuate the black and orange color scheme on his sleds. Aesthetically, the most important aspect for these customers is visibility to avoid being hit by snow-machiners at night. We found that we get the best conspicuity when we wrap the reflective tape over the welting cord, as it refracts the light far better than flat tape.

The most challenging aspect of this project is securely attaching the bag to the sled. The sleds are subjected to extremely rough terrain and traditional snaps and hardware do not hold up. They bounce off trees and rocks and slide down ravines on their side, often with a bale of straw for dog bedding lashed to the top of the bag. Any sick or injured dog must be safely carried in the bag, along with the cooler, cooker, dog jackets, booties, sleeping bag, first aid kit, clothing, ax, snowshoes and rifle. The primary attachment is a 1-inch tubular webbing tensioning strap running forward from the handlebar to the brushbow secured with acetal nylon Super Ladderlocks. For lateral stability and to anchor the vertical compression straps, webbing strips are sewn across the bottom of the bag with “tails” that tie to the stanchions on either side of the sled. We use lashing straps, pockets and removable/adjustable dividers to organize and stabilize the interior load. As sleep-deprivation is the norm, we add color-coded reflective tails and tabs to all zipper pulls, pockets and access points for ease of use. We install vinyl window pockets for promotional items that must be produced for inspection at each checkpoint on the race. Carol Dykes’ triangulation methods have enabled us to fabricate our bags from builder specs which has greatly increased our capability to provide bags for more Alaskan drivers who are not able to ship sleds to us for patterning.

Our client (the sled builder) has been using one of our bags for three years and is confident that his customers will be likewise satisfied. He is pleased to offer his customers proven bags that are custom-fabricated in their colors and to their needs and specifications. He ordered eight of these bags already this season for four different sizes of sleds, plus one for himself for his first Yukon Quest run. The end user of this particular bag is a top ten fishing veteran of the Iditarod who will be using the bag in back-to-back runs in Yukon Quest and Iditarod in February and March 2011. The bag was fabricated from builder drawings/specifications and shipped to the client’s training camp in Alaska. As his camp is off the grid, in an area currently getting only four hours of dusky sunlight per day, we were unable to obtain quality photos of the bag on his sled. The only available sled for our photos has different dimensions. The diagonal compression straps you see on the sides of the bag anchor to the bottom of the side stanchions. These anchor points are important for stabilizing the load, as drivers carry straw bales atop the bag for dog bedding while camping outside away from checkpoints. Otherwise, the only remaining anchor points are the tensioning straps running fore-aft, keeping the bag from swinging like a hammock.

Project details

Size: 54 inches by 28 inches
Fabrics: 600 D Polyester from Vaughan Brothers Inc., 1050 Ballistic Nylon from Vaughan Brothers Inc., Acetal nylon/Delrin Buckles/Ladderlocks by Nexxus from Dog Booties.com, Reflective Conspicuity Tape, Cord and Webbing by 3M from Rose City Textiles, Dog Booties.com & Reflectively Yours
Design: Vonnie Hummert/Kolby Morrison, CYA Canvas/Lonewolf Sleds
Fabrication, Project Manager and Installation: Vonnie Hummert, CYA Canvas