Chocpaw Expeditions is a unique experience. It's dogsledding!
Your day starts about 8:30 in the morning, you do an instructional session for an hour, then it's off to dogsled until about 3pm. Dogsledding takes a lot more out of you than you may think.
The dogs are the nicest I've ever met. They have 387 dogs, each one running 5-7 times a week. They run for hours on end. The happiest, most energetic dogs you can imagine.
You begin hands on by laying out your sled gear, and then collecting your dogs (down rows and rows of smiling jumping hounds, each hoping that they're picked next for a day of running), gearing them up in harnesses, and taking off, following your group's leader.
You sled in paris, each with 4-6 dogs pulling. One person steers and the other is a passenger. Both are strenuous roles. When you're going up hill, you have to jump off and run up alongside the sled, so you don't gas out the dogs.
It was a very memorable experience that I recommend. The only ways I'd say it could be improved:
Go with a group of people that you know are reasonably fit so you don't get stuck grouped with a bunch of slobs who have trouble running up hills or let their sled tip over. Can get very frustrating. The food they give you for lunch is extremely terrible (smooshed white wonder bread with some tuna or egg salad, some tomato soup, and used nalgin bottle of Tang). Those details made it feel like it was a bad summer camp. Some of the staff inside also were quite gruff with patrons (maybe because they get a lot of annoying school groups), which could be improved since customers are paying a fair bit of cash to be there for the day.
Chocpaw also offers multi-day treks...but I can't imagine having the stamina to do this day after day / sleep in the North Ontario cold.
All in all, it's all about the dogs, and they were fantastic and it was a great time. read more