Emily Ford, born and raised in and resident of Duluth, will be the third Minnesota woman in two years to take on Alaska’s 1,000-mile Iditarod sled dog race. Ford, the head gardener at Glensheen Mansion, is no rookie to cold weather. In fact, she is quite renowned as a person of color who is a champion of the outdoors.
Some people just seem drawn to adventure, and Ford is one of these. Perhaps it was the exploring she did as a child on her grandparents’ farm in northern Minnesota or on Boundary Waters canoe trips with a friend that brought out this adventurous spirit early on. By the time she was 12, she was taking off on Brooklyn Park trekking trips (where she grew up), which later led to thru-hikes of the Kekekabic, Border Route Trail, Superior Hiking Trail and in 2021 a winter solo hike of the 1,200-mile Ice Age Trail. In 2022 she skied and winter camped across the Boundary Waters. All the while, she has been drawing attention to inclusivity in the outdoors—inclusivity for people of all backgrounds—persons of color and sexual orientation first and foremost.
These initial trips were solo with her adopted husky Diggins, but now she works with her partner Anna Hennessy to train and run Alaskan huskies with the goal of running the Iditarod, held March 1-16.
Ford loves to talk about dogs, particularly with kids. She recently spoke at a library event and recounted an experience where a child attending stated outright that he had a huge fear of dogs. Ford had brought an older dog named Gabby, a now retired Alaskan husky. Gabby simply sat calmly and allowed the kids to pet her, and this child who was so fearful was able to really connect with her in a way he had never been able to connect with a dog before.
“People’s relationships with dogs, black people’s relationships with dogs, were once ones of weapons,” Ford explained, going on to say that the relationship with working dogs and sled dogs has been, for her, a way to work against that history.
“I love winter. I love dogs, and I love being able to represent that to people that are interested. Not everyone is interested and that’s okay.”
Ford had done some mushing before meeting Hennessy. She had worked a brief stint at Positive Energy Outdoors near Duluth and then at Wintergreen in Ely. But getting to Alaska in the winter of 2023 was really getting in deep. There she was helping Hennessy train dogs and signed up to do a race, primarily with the goal of training the dogs. Hennessy convinced her she might as well run the race as a qualifier for the Iditarod.
That was the Goose Bay 150, and Ford said it dumped snow the entire time, and though she could have run up to 12 dogs, she only had nine available to her. Needless to say, it was quite challenging. Then in 2024 with Hennessy signed up to run her rookie Iditarod, it became clearer that Ford would need to run an Iditarod as well. She ran her second qualifier in January 2024, the Copper Basin 300 and in April, she finished her final qualifier, the Kobuk 440, a race that runs along the frozen Kobuk River from village to village, starting and ending on the coast. Ford ran into some trouble at the end of that race when a ground blizzard came up. She was only 15 miles from the end of the race, but she had been running a solo leader for 200 miles because “things had been going well.” Ford said. Suddenly they weren’t. The dogs quit, laying down on the ice. Ford persevered though, despite a visit from the race marshall who wanted her to withdraw for her own safety. Ford wanted to finish and periodically checked with the dogs saying “we’d stay as long as it took.” Finally, she found an older, more experienced dog, Laurakins, who wanted to go and led them to the finish.
Ford acknowledged that her “greenness” as a musher just shows up sometimes. But even experienced mushers make mistakes.
Ford seems unphased by the Iditarod. She is sleeping well at night. When asked if anything scares her about it, she replied: “I don’t know yet. I love tough adventures. I’m scared of being tired and turning incompetent. There’s not much I can do about a storm. There’s not much I can do about the weather.”
She says she’s excited about the adventure ahead: “I love being out there, just me and the dogs.” She plans to run toward the back of the pack. She hopes to have someone behind her in case something happens. And she says she’s not super competitive.
Before the Iditarod, Ford, Hennessy, and their friends and handlers Skylar Whitcomb and Olivia Frank, will take on a slate of races to train up for Iditarod 2025. Be sure to follow the Shameless Huskies in the Knik 200, the Copper Basin 300, the Su Dog 300, and the Canada Quest 450.
Ford posts about the Shameless Husky Dogs daily on Facebook and Instagram, and has a website: emilyontrail.com. Running the Iditarod is an expensive endeavor and she continues to look for dog sponsors and bootie funds—information can be found online.
