ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Alaska is known for its dog mushing, a winter pastime that usually requires snow, whether for competition, recreation, or tourism. In the summertime, some mushers run their dogs using wheeled dog carts, but up on the Norris Glacier outside of Juneau, there's another option - a mushing camp on an ice field where winter conditions last year round and tourists can leave summer for a few hours to ride with sled dogs. KTOO's Clarise Larson has this report.
CLARISE LARSON, BYLINE: The Norris Glacier Dog Camp is located within an ice field just outside of Juneau that's home to over a thousand glaciers. The only way to get there is by helicopter.
(SOUNDBITE OF HELICOPTER BLADES WHIRRING)
LARSON: Within five minutes of leaving Juneau's leafy green summer, you're back in the heart of winter. And far below on a flat patch of white, there are a bunch of very excited dogs.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOGS BARKING)
LARSON: Each year from late April through late August, nearly 200 dogs live on the glacier, where they give rides to tourists. The dogs are mostly from Alaska, but there are also some from Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. The camp has existed for more than 20 years, and everything there is flown up and down by helicopter, including the dogs. Josi Thyr is the camp's manager and a professional musher.
JOSI THYR: I live in Fairbanks, and so in the summertime, it's very smoky. It's very warm. So we'd be sitting around in the shade. So by bringing the dogs up here, just like your Olympians aren't going to take a bunch of time off, you know, for half the year, we can keep them moving.
LARSON: Last year she finished her first ever Iditarod, the iconic 1,000-mile trek from outside Anchorage to Nome. Now her team is training for a second.
THYR: The shape that they're in after coming off the glacier, I think, makes a big difference in how they perform in the wintertime.
LARSON: Throughout the day, different teams of dogs pull tourists around a 1.5-mile loop. Thyr's husband, JJ Shelley, selects 10 dogs with names like Fifa or Seabiscuit and hooks their harnesses up to a sled.
J J SHELLEY: Ready? All right.
LARSON: Shelley says that coming to the glacier not only gives the dogs more exercise. It lets mushers maintain a steady income during the off season. Shelley and Thyr's main job the rest of the year is mushing for tourists in Fairbanks, but they need to make money in the summer, especially as mushing has become more expensive. Shelley says people sometimes ask him what the dogs need to eat to run as much as they do.
SHELLEY: The answer is my wallet. They eat about $30,000 worth of food every year.
LARSON: Shelley says that's why more and more mushers are turning to tourism to keep their dog kennels going.
SHELLEY: So we rely on it for dog food, money and all that stuff and race entry fees and everything. I mean, this is how we make our living.
LARSON: The mushing tours are expensive. They can be 600 or $700 a person, but for people like Cindy Spencer, it's worth every penny. She flew to Alaska from Colorado to celebrate her 60th birthday.
CINDY SPENCER: And so I asked my girlfriends if they would be up for it. And they're like, heck yeah. And we kind of chose things that we all wanted to do. And dog sledding was one of them.
LARSON: On a typical day during the tourism season, about 150 people tour the camp, according to the company that flies people up there. The very last tours of the summer will happen this weekend. Then the dogs go back home to wait for the real winter to begin.
For NPR News, I'm Clarise Larson in Juneau.
(SOUNDBITE OF RAPSODY SONG, "ASTEROIDS (FEAT. HIT-BOY)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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