Mushing

Chaser and Dream @_TravelMap robertforto.travelmap.net/ch…

My favorite ideas from the May 2001 issue of Team & Trail linkedin.com/pulse/my-favori… #mushing

The hardest conversation I ever had lasted less than two minutes. On February 21, 2001, I walked upstairs while deputies waited in the driveway. Nicole was three. I sat her on my lap and told her I would not be home for a long time. That was the moment the cost of my gambling addiction stopped being abstract and became permanent for the people who had nothing to do with it. I have never forgotten the look on her face. I have never stopped carrying the weight of putting @Micheleforto and the kids through the years that followed. Taking full responsibility did not erase the damage. It only made the next decisions clearer: pay every dollar of restitution, rebuild from zero, and refuse to let the same pattern touch the next generation of the business. Today Nicole is stepping into the operating role at @AlaskaDogWorks. That transition is not a slogan. It is the deliberate opposite of the day I left her in that bedroom. The work of succession is the work of making sure the hard chapters do not have to be repeated. If you lead a family business, the question is never whether pressure will arrive. The question is whether you have already decided how you will protect the people who did not create the pressure. The full record is on my site. The trail continues. #AdventureStrategist #FamilyBusiness #Succession

Sixteen years ago today, I moved to Willow and decided we were staying. Earlier in July of that year. Nicole was twelve. We stood in a cabin outside; it was pouring rain, looked at each other, and she texted Michele: “Mom, we are moving to Alaska.” That decision was never only about snow or dogs. It was the first clear step out of the shadow of the years that had come before. I had already paid the legal price, rebuilt a business from nothing, and refused to let the incomplete internet version of my story be the final word. Moving north was the next proof that the rebuild was real. Sixteen years later, to the day, the work has a new shape, and Nicole is stepping into the operating seat at Alaska Dog Works. We are stewards of Mushing Magazine, and we are returning to the trail in earnest. Starting with the 2026–2027 season, @TeamIneka will train and race with deliberate focus again. Not as nostalgia but as the logical continuation of the same decision made in that cabin: Leave the gray behind and claim the spark that led us here. The full record is public, and the next chapter is already in motion. #TeamIneka #Alaska #AdventureStrategist