Location: Ely, Minnesota
Occupation: Dog musher and tour guide
Next Race/Adventure:
Continuing to play with old dogs and help them to thrive doing the tours that we do. However, I like to do a lot of canoe trips and long distance paddles and I have some trips that I want to do up my sleeve. Like we try to do some of the long distance paddles where we are breaking a record for a certain route, which we like to do. So like the border route along what’s called the Voyager Highway from International Falls to Lake Superior is kind of next on the list.
We started our annual Team & Trail Tour in July of 2024 and we knew when we started penciling out the schedule for Mineesota and Wisconsin that Chilly Dogs and Jake Hway were going to be on the list.
Jake and his wife were the first interview on the tour, right at their kitchen table and over the next four hours we found out just what makes this place so special. There is a lot of content about Jake and Jess and they were the feature story in Issue 200. This is just the Q & A.
Socials: Chilly Dogs Sled Dog Trips
It’s called the border route and it’s just the original Voyager fur trade route from Lake Superior inland along through this area of the Boundary Waters.
That was the first kind of fur trade routes where they’d trade with natives and haul.
I like it here.
I don’t know, I’m a go along, get along kind of guy. But, I am going to go ahead and say it, the color blue.
My lovely wife.
Follow your passion.
We make them now. They’re a raised toboggan style side. So most people would just call it a toboggan sled, but it’s not like a traditional flat bottom with a curled front solid, slats of wood. It’s got, wood runners and it’s maybe an inch and a half or two inches up to the bed. So it floats well over deeper snow and it carries a load pretty well.
They’re designed after like the original Tim White sleds or sawtooth mountain sleds. I make them with a good friend of mine who is the true craftsman, but what I’m saying is we kind of make them in house. not buying from a manufacturer.
We haven’t had too many huge blunders here over the years. But…
I think we all learn from our mistakes in a lot of things, and I’ve made plenty of them. I’ve learned from a lot of good people.
I’ve learned from the dogs a lot. I’ve constantly learned from our mistakes. A smart person learns from their mistakes. A wise person learns from others’ mistakes. So I learn from lot of other people’s mistakes on what not to do.
Physical fatigue. On that trip we were talking about, the paddling trip, the canoeing trip. But I mean, there’s a whole lot of variables, there’s whether, there’s high water or not. it’s low water, it’s tough. Whether the wind is in your face or not.
My brain is going so many different ways. You want to be safe in what you’re doing, but you want to have fun, have a good attitude. Positive attitude is going to make or break a trip, or whether or not you have a positive attitude.
Old dogs.
The one that sticks out in my head right now that I’m thinking of, I’ve got a lot of stories, but a training run that I was working with a guy training for the Iditarod, and we ended up in some thin ice and some challenging situations and jumping over open water and stuff, and he was stuck to his chest and all that.
We’ve all been there, and then temperature is well below zero and you’re trying to jog in frozen clothes and so those are challenges.
Being unprepared for the conditions.
Hudson Bay bread. It’s a local delicacy. It’s like an energy bar that’s made here locally.
Giving back to sled dogs.
Holding onto a dog too long.
