A group of friends and I head up to northern Minnesota to go dogsledding .It was the middle of winter and an extreme cold front had just blown in. When we arrived, the lady that owned the dogs and sleds had a briefing for us. She told us it was going to be 45 BELOW ZERO (Celsius and Fahrenheit are approximately the same temperature at this point) in the morning, (for those of you who have never even experienced freezing, I can’t begin to explain to you just how cold this really is). She explained that even though we were all outdoorsy type of people and had our own warm clothing, we would not be wearing our own gear except our long underwear. She went on to explain how at these extreme temperatures riding a sled would be very cold, so we needed to use her special clothing. We had five layers on the top, with the final one being a special parka that had a hood that extended out six inches (15CM) past our faces and were lined with real animal fur (I believe the only time in my life that I have worn real fur), she said there is no substitute for it in these conditions. With the hood closed down to just a tube and the fur lining it would hold our exhaled breath to keep our faces warm. On our hands we would have three layers, first a pair of fingerless wool gloves (those who know me know I wear these all of the time), then a pair of warm gloves and lastly a pair of mittens that were more than twice the size of boxing gloves in the amount of padding/insulation. When wearing these huge mittens you cannot do anything but hold on to the bar of the sled and pull up the break, because of this they are designed for ease of removing them. They slide on and off very easily and are attached by a rope around your neck so you can’t lose them. Since we are wearing the gloves under them are hands will stay warm for a little while without the mittens when we need to be able to use our fingers. If we really need true dexterity of ungloved fingers we still have the fingerless gloves, but in minus 45 you won’t be able to do that for very long.
We would each get to ride the sleds once on Saturday and once on Sunday. One day driving it and one time riding. Because the day I was riding, I was riding with her, I got to drive one and a half times (yea!!). When you are riding it is even colder because you are being the wind break and you aren’t moving at all, but you do have an additional blanket or two, but it is still colder! Driving was great fun, you got to control how fast you went by applying the break or not, these dogs just want to run and you go very fast if you don’t use the break at all. You steer by shifting your weight and leaning. Naturally I let the dogs go as fast as they could on the strait of ways and slowed down as little as I had to keep control of the sled on the curves.
The beauty in the north woods with lots of snow on the ground is one of the most beautiful things that there is to see in all of nature. All though I have only done this the one time and I avoid winter for the most part now of days, this is something I would like to do again someday.
I have had a few other extreme cold experiences in Minnesota. In college after finals in December we had a hot tub party in 40 below wind chill (-20 actual temp) one of the local networks came and filmed us including me getting out and jumping in to a snow bank (yes it was shown on TV). It is amazing how the excessive heat from being in a hot tub leaves all at once; I went from being comfortable to freezing in a split second. Another time it was a record 80 below wind chill and I went out for a walk. It was a Sunday evening about 7 o’clock I went out for 45 minutes walking up and down a busy street and not a single car went by. It is an eerie feeling to be in a big city on the street and not see a single person or animal for 45 minutes. It was way to cold out for anyone else to even venture outside.