‘They love it:’ Inside the dogsled tours offered at Alberta’s Fortress Mountain

Winter's return to Alberta lets tourists and locals experience dogsledding at Fortress Mountain.

Fortress Mountain Resort is offering dogsled tours.

Once a popular downhill ski destination, Fortress closed in 2004.

The Kananaskis location is under redevelopment, but open for activities like cat skiing, snowshoeing, fishing and hiking.

Fortress also includes dog sled tours as an option for local and international visitors.

• The information you need to know, sent directly to you: Download the CTV News App

The tours are hosted by Mad Dogs & Englishmen Dog Sled Expeditions.

They’re done on groomed trails, typically with seven dogs pulling a sled with one or two guests and a musher.

Dawn Donald, owner and general manager, says this is the company’s second season on the mountain.

“This year we were able to start running Nov. 22,” Donald said, adding normally they’d expect a December opening. “We were able to get on earlier, do some training, get tours out on the trails -- that’s a full month earlier.”

Depending on the weather, Donald anticipates they’ll be able to run dogsled tours right into May.

The partnership started with the many feature film productions on the mountain and dog sled teams being hired to take location scouts out around the mountain to see its potential.

Russell Donand, owner and founder, says it lead to a number of movie appearances by him and his dogs.

“We’ve been featured along with some of our dogs in various movies, and we got to do some body-doubling in some of the productions as well, which is interesting,” he said. “That’s ultimately how I got to know these guys at Fortress.”

Productions filmed at the mountain include Inception, The Revenant, Cold Pursuit, The Bourne Legacy and Jumanji: The Next Level.

The mushers act as guides and show the locations to their clients.

Mad Dogs & Englishmen Dog Sled Expeditions is a family operation that started with Russell, then wife Dawn. Their daughter Jaya has grown up in the business. Now at 20 years old, she’s part of it.

“Since I can remember, I’ve been trying to help my dad out and I’d always want to be there,” she said. “I’d always want to be around the dogs, I’ve officially been guiding for six years but I was only doing part-time for three, and then this is my third full-time year.”

Jaya says she’s always been focused on the dogs who make the tours possible.

“The dogs are like my family, I grew up with them,” she said. “Me and my dad named all of them, my sister as well, even in the summer when I’m not working full-time with my family, I come back, and every day off I’m at the kennel with them. These guys are bred for it, they love it.”

The family’s focus was running tours at Spray Lakes in Kananaskis Country for close to 30 years, followed by a stint at Boundary Ranch.

Now, they’ve found a home at Fortress.

“You’re in the mountain and the views are spectacular,” Dawn said. “Everywhere you look.”

“Every day it looks a little more magical,” Jaya said. “And it changes daily, so it never looks the same twice.”

Russell never saw a dogsled until he moved to Canada in the 1990s and says riding in one is a step back in time for visitors and himself, because it’s one of the oldest forms of transportation in northern communities.

“When you look at how people travel around with dogs – like some of the early dog races – the Strongheart Derby hosted between Banff and Calgary in the early 1900s,” he said. “I’ve always been quite intrigued with the history of Canada. I think coming from England, we have so much history and we take it for granted, Canada is so new by comparison.”

Russell says he and his family are able to keep a little bit of that history alive with their tours.