Dog sled rides offer wild winter fun at Mt. Bachelor

The pack of dogs barked and whined, eight of them harnessed together, snapping their jaws and jumping restlessly as the musher prepared the sled.

“OK, climb in,” Joey Stancato told me, his eyes hidden behind a chunky pair of sunglasses, a neon yellow jacket zipped up to his dark, bushy beard. As soon as I was situated, he raised his voice to the dogs. “Let’s go! Hup hup!”

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At that, the patient dogs set off at a run, pulling the sled quickly down a snowy hill into the quiet forest on Mount Bachelor.

“Listen to that silence,” Stancato said. The yelping and whining that had filled the air a moment earlier was replaced with the gentle rushing wind and pounding footsteps of the dogs, muffled by the snow.

The dog sled ride is one of many winter recreation opportunities at Mt. Bachelor, the Bend ski resort primarily known for its downhill runs. Found just below the ski area and run independently by Oregon Trail of Dreams, the rides offer people a quick, 1-hour excursion into the world of dog sledding.

Rachel Scdoris, owner of Oregon Trail of Dreams, is well-steeped in that world. Born and raised in Bend, Scdoris has been dog sledding since she was a kid, trained by her father, Jerry Scdoris. Her dad ran dog sled rides in the Deschutes National Forest on his own for years, she said. He started operating out of Mt. Bachelor in 1993 after he took the ski resort’s CEO for a dog sled ride.

Mt. Bachelor is where she learned to mush, she said, a journey that eventually took her to the famed Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska, which she ran four times, completing it in 2006 and 2009 as the first legally blind person to do so. Scdoris has congenital achromatopsia, a genetic disorder that severely limits her vision to about 20/200, though changing light conditions can make it much worse.

Scdoris, who also launched a brief bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Greg Walden in 2017, still runs races, including one this winter in West Yellowstone. However, most of her energy these days goes to caring for her pack of 95 Alaskan huskies (a category of dogs that includes several breeds). Kept on the outskirts of Bend, that team counts 77 working dogs, 13 puppies and 5 retirees, she said.

“It’s no secret that my heart is in competition, but the heart does not beat without bread, and this is my bread and butter,” Scdoris said of the sled dog rides at Mt. Bachelor.

The trips cost $225 to $310 per adult, depending on the day and season, and $110 to $210 per child – roughly the cost of a three-day lift ticket at Mt. Bachelor. Their longer “marathon trips,” which run four hours and include lunch at nearby Elk Lake, cost $1,230 for two people.

“I recognize this is not cheap,” Scdoris said, noting that some riders save up for years just to come for a ride. “Keeping animals is not cheap.”

Stancato, who is working for Oregon Trail of Dreams for the first time this season, said he’s been living on Scdoris’ property and waking up with the enormous pack of dogs. Getting to know them all by name has been a challenge, he said, but as he guided the sled through the quiet forest, he had no problem pointing out the dogs that pulled us: Trevor, Cinders, Lava, Harper, Elle, Jen, Gordon and Da Vinci.

The trail ended at a small loop, where we stopped to give the dogs a rest. On the way back, I could step on the back and drive the sled, Stancato said – if I wanted to. Of course, I did.

He directed me to place my feet on the foot boards, which jutted out from the base of the sled on either side. I placed my hands on the handle bar as Stancato jumped in and pulled up the claw brake, which is essentially an anchor that digs into the snow. He told me to simply imitate his calls to get the dogs to go.

“Let’s go! Hup hup!” I barked.

The dogs didn’t budge. The musher in the sled recommended I try again with a little more command in my voice, but no matter how loud I yelled, how stern I sounded, the dogs refused to move. Finally, after nudging the sled forward with my body weight, the dogs got the message and off we went.

Standing at the back of the sled as we glided through the forest was a whole different experience. It felt like flying and I couldn’t help but laugh as we turned tight curves and whizzed by the trees. It was as if I could feel the dogs through the sled, and as I did, Stancato instructed me to pay attention to the animals: Which dogs were working hard and which were distracted? Which ones were excited and which didn’t seem as interested?

Driving the sled turned out to be much easier than I had expected – primarily because of the experienced musher who was guiding me through the process – but also because of the experience and training of the dogs themselves.

“They know the trail well enough you don’t have to like, really have to talk them through it,” Stancato said of the dogs. “Unless it’s a really tough spot and all eight aren’t working together, like they get distracted or something, would you really have to sharpen them up, coax them with a bark.”

Scdoris said that kind of trust is key to good mushing. In 2006, the first year she completed the Iditarod, her dogs followed the familiar trail so faithfully that they missed a new re-route, sending her miles off-course while she dozed in the night. A course correction eventually led her to the next checkpoint and, eventually, to the finish line.

“The dogs have to know that I’m asking them only to do what I know that they’re capable of, and I have to trust them to behave and do it,” she said.

While she’s had her share of mishaps while mushing, Scdoris said there are rarely any issues on the safe and easy trails around Mt. Bachelor. Mushers joke that they crash all the time during competition, but never on commercial rides, she said, and that’s proven true with Oregon Trail of Dreams.

That’s led to a very approachable introduction to dog sledding, a sport many people never dream of experiencing. Once in the sled, the pull of the dogs is magnetic, and the sheer joy of the animals is infectious.

“For a lot of people this is a bucket list thing to do, it’s a lifelong dream, and then other people just kind of stumble upon it and go ‘oh this is something interesting to do,’ or just something to do,” Scdoris said. “They all leave smiling.”

Oregon Trail of Dreams offers sled dog rides daily through April 23, 2023, conditions permitting, at Mt. Bachelor; standard rides cost $225 to $310 per adult, and $110 to $210 per child; book a ride at mtbachelor.com.

— Jamie Hale

503-294-4077; jhale@oregonian.com; @HaleJamesB

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