Mushing Towards Success
By Bill Spring
As the owner of Wyoming's Washakie Outfitting, a sled dog adventure company, Jacki Blakeman leads a life right out of The Call of the Wild. But before she settled down on the snowy runs of Wyoming's natural world, she was drawn to the showy runways of New York's fashion world.
Blakeman grew up in Dubois Wyo., a small town about 90 miles from Jackson. As a child she was enchanted by the area's natural beauty, which includes the Wind River Mountains to the south and the Absarokas range to the north. "My dad and mom built an RV park," she remembers. "It was a seasonal summer business, so in the winter we skied and were just out in the mountains as much as we could be."
But as much as she loved Wyoming, young Jacki had plans of getting out. "My aspirations growing up," she says, "were to be a fashion designer. That was where I was going when I got out of school."
In late 1976, eighteen-year-old Blakeman graduated high school and moved to Cleveland, where she stayed with some family friends. From there she made several trips to New York City, checking out the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parson's School of Design.
Although many aspects of life in Manhattan thrilled her, Blakeman and the Big Apple quickly proved a mismatch. "I loved New York, and all the culture I experienced there," she remembers. "But I knew myself well enough to know I couldn't live there. There were just too many people. I missed the high plains, the mountains, and the miles and miles of nothing." After less than a month in New York, and a year in Cleveland, Blakeman headed back home.
Blakeman spent 1978 at the University of Wyoming, working three jobs to pay for art classes, which were the closest thing to fashion design that the school offered. It was a difficult year, and at the end of it she moved again, this time to attend art school in San Miguel De Allende, Mexico. "It was a beautiful place to be," she remembers.
In 1981, after spending two introspective years holed up as a hired hand on a Wyoming ranch, Blakeman decided to stay put in the state she loved most. She married a longtime friend, moved to an isolated house outside of Dubois, and stared Washakie Outfitters, named for a Shoshone Indian chief. At the time, the word "outfitters" referred both to the fur and leather clothing that Blakeman was creating and to the mountain horseback trips she and her husband arranged for tourists.
But in the winter, Blakeman's front door was four miles from the nearest plowed road, and since she disliked traveling by snowmobile, she needed alternate transportation from the house to the family truck. "I found a brochure from a guy in Michigan who made dogsleds." she explains. "I had him send me a beautiful ash sled, and I taught myself." To pull the sled, Blakeman enlisted her two pet Great Danes. Training consisted of harnessing the dogs to the sled and letting them have fun chasing the snowmobile. "Within a few weeks, I was able to be on the sled, and they knew where we were going."
Having gotten into dog sledding for practical reasons, Blakeman soon found that she loved it. "I was in heaven." She says. "I just felt like, 'this is it,' and it just fit in with everything I wanted to do." Surrounded by the beauty of the snow-covered landscape, reveling in the silence of a Wyoming winter, and enjoying the companionship of animals she had raised, Blakeman knew she had found something that she could truly love doing.
The 1980s were years of constant change for Blakeman, who got serious about acquiring and breeding sled dogs, including Alaskan Huskies. The turning point came at the end of the decade when she found a local sled dog racer who was getting out of the scene and was willing to sell his entire outfit, including twenty dogs, for a minimal price. "We were already in the outfitting business," she remembers, "so we started thinking that we could do dogsled tours."
Starting in 1990, Washakie Outfitting slowly got out of the summer pack trip business, concentrating on sled dog adventures. At first, it was difficult to get the word out, but by 1995 the business was thriving, and Blakeman and her husband were able to sell the other parts of the company and hire a number of guides to help with the dogsled tours.
In the winters of 1989 and 1990, Blakeman had daughters, both of whom were very nearly born on dog sleds on the way to the hospital.
Today, Jacki Blakeman is the sole owner of Washakie Outfitting. She offers short introductory tours that leave from Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, and longer, more authentic half and full day adventures in the Shoshone National Forest, near the southeast corner of Yellowstone National Park.
Running the business is a hard job, and Blakeman shoulders a huge amount of responsibility, including the care and feeding of her beloved Alaskan Huskies, who must be looked after 365 days a year. "You get attached to them," she explains, "so it's very hard if everything doesn't go right."
But Blakeman loves the chance to share the sport and lifestyle she still loves with visitors, and is happy to be surrounded by the breathtaking natural beauty that she grew up in. "It doesn't matter if it's a blinding snowstorm or a sunny day," she says, "They're all beautiful days, and I love being able to show people that."
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