I drove past the few houses on the outskirts of the village proper, passed the big field where I lived for three weeks while the wildfires raged, nearly missed recognizing the darkened gas station and saw the fire house like a beacon, brightly lit with a huge checkpoint sign hoisted above the fire doors. I drove to the end of the road - about fifty more yards - turned around at the boat ramp and parked on the street. The entire town, with the exception of the fire station, was quiet and dark. It was about seven o'clock.
Walking into the parking lot of the fire station, I could see a small group of volunteers hoisting the "Circle City Checkpoint" banner over the entrance to the dog yard from the trail and another group walking towards me. I approached them and introduced myself. Jean, with a strong Australian accent, was clearly in charge. This was her third year as a checkpoint volunteer, and she does one checkpoint on each side of the border. She gave me a quick tour of the dog yard - where straw was stored, where mushers' drop bags had been arranged in alphabetical order, where teams would be parked when they started arriving, and went over Checker's responsibilities. We would stop teams at the entrance to the dog yard, mark the time, check mandatory gear (ax, snowshoes, sleeping bag, cooker, vet paperwork, etc) then help the musher park their team. We would deliver straw and drop bags to the musher, replace the batteries in their GPS tracker and make sure the tracker was replaced securely on their sled bag. When the musher left, we would double check the GPS, tick off mandatory gear and mark their exit time. We walked down to the Yukon river and placed a few more trail markers out. I noticed a pool of overflow already seeping up onto the ice right on the banks of the river, slick and shiny in our headlamps. It was twenty below zero.
Then we went into the checkpoint itself - a small two-bay fire station that apparently doesn't get much use during the year. The fire truck didn't look to be in service - at any rate it wasn't going to roll out during the Quest - and there was no fire gear that I could see anywhere inside. A huge tank labeled "dog water" sat precariously on a wooden frame right next to the front doors. The other bay held several picnic tables, a large rack for drying gear, a set-up for someone to cook with electric griddles, crock pots, coffee pots, a microwave and human-grade water jugs. There were two tiny side rooms, off the fire bay. One was labeled "musher's sleeping quarters" and the other had a ham-radio set up as well a a few cots tucked away in the back for the race veterinarians.
I realized quickly that my expectation of sleeping on the floor inside the checkpoint was not going to happen. There was simply no room. Even before the mushers began arriving, media, spectators and handlers began crowding the tiny empty bay. A couple of people had crawled under the fire truck with sleeping bags but looked restless and miserable in the cramped grimy space. Bright lights and a hundred conversations in the echoing building were going to make indoor sleep - at least for me - impossible. I reluctantly went out to my truck and arranged all my cold-weather sleeping gear to try and get some shut-eye on the bench seat of the cab.
I should pause here to talk about my expectations of working at a checkpoint. I knew I could and would be doing anything that needed doing. I also expected (this being Alaska, and a volunteer effort) a certain lack of organization overall. I had half-expected the utter lack of indoor accommodations despite being told they were available, which is why I had brought enough cold-weather gear to comfortably sleep in my truck. I had brought food for myself and cash to purchase food from students in the little village school, knowing there was a chance the checkpoint food wouldn't be fair game for anyone but mushers. I expected to be cold, and to not get much sleep. But the biggest expectation I had was that working for the race, I'd be able to be in and around the mushers in the checkpoint - overhearing interviews & conversations, listening to stories from the trail, observing checkpoint routines & organization, seeing what gear different teams were using. Basically learning all I could by osmosis and proximity. This hope is what drove me out to Circle in the first place.
The first wave of mushers began arriving at about two fifteen in the morning. Brent Sass was first in, and there was some confusion as we tried to get his team parked as the checkpoint manager had suddenly changed the way we'd been told to steer and park the teams five minutes before he arrived. As we got his team parked, Hugh Neff pulled in with a dog in his sled bag and suddenly we were scrambling. There were only three adults and a teenage boy working as checkers at Circle, two with no experience around sled dogs at all. One of us was always out on the trail, watching for approaching headlamps. Another had the clipboard to do the official check-in. Another was trying with only middling success to help mushers get their teams parked (this is usually a multiple person job.) The last was scrambling to get gear and hay to mushers as they came in. We needed more help anyway, especially since mushers tended to come in waves, and the way things were looking, nobody was going to get any sleep any time that night.
The front runners continued to come in until about six that morning. I had ended up with the job of standing out on the trail watching for teams for the rest of the night, and by the time it was determined that no more teams were on the immediate horizon I was exhausted. I hadn't been indoors since about ten that evening, except to occasionally run an arrival time to the ham radio guy. My socks inside my bunny boots were soaking wet, and I could barely keep my eyes open. I hadn't seen the face of a single front-running musher all night, or heard them say anything except "Where do I park?" When Jean told me I could go get some sleep, I stumbled into my truck and crashed hard, not even changing my wet socks. I slept for about two and a half hours, and woke to sunshine and boots crunching on the road. I was cold and instantly wide awake. I bolted out of the truck, shoving my feet into frozen bunny boots and stumbling back into the checkpoint. I stared at the leader board with a sinking stomach. Sass, Neff, Moore, West & Linder were already headed down the trail. I had missed every single one of them.
The rest of my time in Circle went this way. Long stretches of standing alone on the trail, stamping my feet and watching for incoming teams. Occasional respite in the checkpoint, scarfing what food was available, pounding coffee and thawing out slightly before running back out to the trail to stand and watch. I didn't talk to any mushers, overhear any conversations, observe any media interviews. I got sleep in two hours snatches, in my truck, before going back out to stand on the trail and wait, direct a team to a parking spot, and then watch from a distance while the musher took care of their team and stumbled into the checkpoint themselves to warm up, eat, sleep and move on.
And I was glad to do it, glad to be there, glad to see (through a haze of exhaustion and cold) a little more of the inner workings (and disorganization, and discontent) that follows the race. And from what I've picked up on since, this is true every year. That's just the way the Quest works. It is essentially a small-town volunteer effort to put on a thousand mile endurance event that traverses incredibly remote country with little available support, technology or infrastructure. Everyone is tired and sleep deprived and cranky and stressed - mushers, handlers, trail-breakers, veterinarians, officials, media staff, volunteers. Everyone. But everyone, in the end, is happy to be a part of the craziness of it all, and eventually time and sleep cover a multitude of small insults and frustrations along the way.
When I packed up to drive back to Fairbanks - Jean in tow - I'd gotten barely twelve hours of sleep in the last sixty. The only interaction I'd had with a musher was to ask Kyla Durham what sort of boots she had under her Neos (Lobens!) I talked to lots of other people, though, including locals and folks from all walks of life and spots around the globe that came together for the race. I did get to see some of the gear and checkpoint routines of mushers, if from a distance.
Having neither cell phone service nor internet access in Circle, it was weird to have no idea what was going on in the race for several days right in the middle of it. As soon as I got back to Fairbanks (and a cell signal) I called Pete and had him look up the race standings for me. I had no idea who was ahead, or where they were on the trail. I was glued to my computer for the rest of the race, but was left with very mixed feelings about the whole experience of being out on the trail itself.
1 comment:
I so value this piece and your view of the experience. Thanks for sharing it and giving me a sense of what this was like.
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