Wyoming’s Stage Stop Race awaits Denver native and his sled dogs
Six snowy miles up Tiger Road, seemingly closer to Keystone than Breckenridge, a cacophony of Siberian husky howls fill the air. At the foot of Mount Guyot, Good Times Adventures is a dogsledding and snowmobiling oasis deep in the woods.
If you hop on a snowmobile from the main building and ride up the hill — right about to where Good Times staff members boil pots of chow for their herds of huskies — you will find Tim Thiessen readying for yet another cold winter day as a dog-sled guide. It was about 18 years ago when the Denver native “fell into a cool job and got hooked” as an 18-year-old.
Growing up in Denver, Thiessen dreamed of living in the mountains while he cared for his family’s mutt rescues from the pound, Sparky and Toby. These days, Thiessen’s Alaskan husky mixes Bullet and Pyro are his lead dogs when the longtime sled guide competes in competitions, such as next month’s sevenstage, 250-mile journey from Jackson, Wyo., into Idaho and back to Teton County, Wyo. The race is formally the 25th annual Pedigree Stage Stop Race, probably the biggest dogsled race in the Lower 48.
Thiessen and his 14 “kids” live at a remote, off-the-grid home in Leadville, which is a 2-mile snowmobile ride from the nearest road.
“With the competitive side, I get to spend so many days with my kids and my best friends on the trail,” Thiessen said. “And when I say ‘my kids,’ (I mean) my dogs. They are my best friends, and I want to see them have fun. That’s the main goal of running them.”
Having raised Labs before getting into the sleddog life, Thiessen said the dogs love running the sled as much as Labs like playing fetch. They live for it. Even if it means 17 of them sleeping with Thiessen inside his trailer, as they did between a pair of stages last year, when they competed in the Pedigree Stage Stop Race for the first time.
“It can be noisy. Sometimes they’ll eat your pillow while you’re sleeping,” Thiessen said with a laugh.
“When I’m pushing,” Thiessen added, “I’m helping them out. I’m one of the dogs. I’m the alpha dog, but I’m one of them.”
Over his years working as a dog-sledding guide, Thiessen gradually got into having a pack of his own. Then his close Leadville friend and fellow musher, Austin Forney, encouraged him to participate in the Pedigree Stage Stop. This year, the championship purse is $165,000. A year after finishing 20th among 25 mushers, Thiessen isn’t expecting to challenge for that purse.
This year, Bullet and Pyro will push the team to be a little faster.
When they’re training or racing at their best, Thiessen said the dogs can move the sled at a clip of about 15 mph. For a journey like the Pedigree, anything over 18 mph is too fast. The dogs won’t have the endurance. Monitoring his speed with a GPS — one of the key tools he’s able to have with him in the sled, along with a hatchet, a sleeping bag, a first-aid kit and two extra dogs — Thiessen balances the care for his dogs while also letting them fulfill their biological yearning to run and run, and run some more.