twenty five

I wasn't sure what our run would look like, but I knew I wanted to do a long one. I was hoping to get a little bit further on the highway trail out towards the Tanana river. It was warmer, sitting at around ten below zero. I hooked up the dogs and we flew out of the yard. After all the cold, they were full of energy to burn and I had to work to keep them running at a reasonable pace on the slick road. We rode out under a beautiful winter sun, Norrin and Billie pulling strong up front. The air was still and the trees were still covered in frost from the cold snap.

We reached the highway trail and turned left, quickly traversing the long lake we'd turned around on last time we'd come this way. In new territory, the thrill of whipping down trails and around corners with no idea what was ahead had the dogs sprinting in bursts and left me straining to see around each new bend. This trail seemed to dip across long frozen oxbow lakes, then up through stands of trees, then onto more frozen lakes. We hit a T-intersection before I realized it was coming, and Billie and Norrin took a left on the fly. I let them, but cringed when I saw a sign tacked to a tree just past the turn pointing in the other direction: "To The River." We were now heading away from the Tanana, which had been my half-hearted exploratory goal. Oh, well. Instead, we came to another T-intersection, took another (uncalled) left and headed out over a huge lake - the broadest and longest so far. It was so big, and the surface so buckled and uneven under the deep snow, that for a while I thought we had somehow come out onto a channel of the big river herself. I noticed the dogs occasionally stepping off the snow machine trail here, and sinking nearly to their bellies before launching back out on to the packed trail in a shower of powder. The snow was certainly drifted high over the lake, and I started to wonder how we would get turned around. But on we went.

We passed a rudimentary frozen-in dock on the edge of the water, and deep in the trees I thought I saw the outlines of a log cabin but it was so well blended in with the snow and wood I might have imagined it. Although we were following a well packed trail, there were no tracks heading towards the ghost of a building I thought I'd seen in the deep shadows on shore. The dogs followed the path up over another berm of woods, and onto another deeply drifted lake. I looked up at the sun, and the bend of the hills. We were headed back in the general direction we'd come from, east and north towards the trail we'd taken from the house. But I had no way of knowing if or when this particular snow machine track would connect. There were a few tracks from that old trail that headed generally this way, but there were a dozen more off-shoots of the one we followed now and none had yet proved straight. There was no way to know. I wished I had a snowmachine myself, to figure out these trails and loops. But at the same time that would take away the thrill of these minor explorations. I looked at the GPS and saw that we'd come over twelve miles already. I stopped the sled.

We were in the middle of a lake, and when I stepped off the runners to the side of the trail I sank to my hips. Devilfish wandered over and gave me a big kiss on the forehead while I struggled to pull myself back onto the trail, and Parka stepped on my arms and knocked me back into the drift trying to get in for a cuddle. Pepper, in a reverie of bliss, had completely disappeared into the powder while Xtra, still attached to Pepper's lines, stood holding her ground nervously on the edge of the packed stuff. Reese was shrieking in protest at the stop behind the two of them, slamming his harness. Norrin had flopped down on the trail and set to chewing ice balls out of his giant fuzzy feet, and Billie watched me over his shoulder, sitting snugged up against Norrin's sprawl on the narrow path.

Back on solid ground, I carefully stepped over the dogs and considered my options. I doubted the dogs would take off on me if I unclipped them completely, especially given the deep snow, but I didn't want to risk too much. I set the extra snow hook under the wheel dogs and pushed the whole sled off the trail to give us more room. Reese immediately caught on and started pulling everyone around, with Parka and Devilfish not far behind. I unclipped Pepper (who had emerged from her snow cave) and Xtra's necklines quickly as they were dragged along to give them more room to maneuver, and unclipped Billie and Norrin completely from their lines and each other. With one hand on Billie, I walked up past the now back-facing and slightly tangled team to the front, where I clipped him back in and left him to hold down the fort. Norrin, still chewing on his feet, was much more reluctant to come forward, and I slipped off the trail twice more before managing to navigate his hesitant bulk back up to his place next to Billie in lead. In the end, for all my anxiety about turning around on the drifted lake it hadn't gone too badly. I was sweating and sucking air in the end, but the dogs all ended up pointed straight ahead, tails wagging and barking to go without a hint of stress or anxiety about the ordeal. I wrestled the sled back onto the trail, retrieved the snow hooks and we headed home.

Despite the warmer temperatures, the wind kicked up and it turned into a cold run back. We pulled in at dusk, and to Peter's growing concern at our long absence. We'd been out for over three hours altogether, the longest run we've done this year, and we started later in the day to begin with. It was the first run this year where I've felt comfortable enough to listen with one ear to RadioLab podcasts, and it was a nice feeling to finally have enough confidance in what we are doing to start catching up on this season's shows.

The reality was, however, that the dogs were running on a familiar trail and every turn we came to I let them do what they wanted - I often didn't see the turns coming anyway and didn't know where the trails went. But the next day's run made this continued lack of responsive leadership crystal clear.

We started out earlier, with plans to try the birch forest loop across Rosie Creek. I wasn't sure the dogs would take the turn onto the lower Rosie Creek crossing without Peter their to guide them, but since we'd had his help on the last turn I figured it was worth a try. To my astonishment, Billie and Norrin took the turn! There was a good layer of fresh snow on the trails, so the dogs were taking it slower than usual. I was intending for this to be a short recovery run I didn't push them to pick up the pace. Everyone had inhaled their post-run snack yesterday, then curled up for a nice long nap, but by dinner they were pacing and frolicking again, eying the ravens in the yard and stretching out in the starlight. I figured a short, technical run would be perfect.

And it did turn out to be a short run. After that first, encouraging turn on to the Lower Rosie Creek crossing, my lead dogs never turned the way I asked again. At each crossing, I had to hook in and walk forward and get the team turned myself. Twice, I tried to hook in and make turns but the dogs dragged us all well past the point of no return. In the end, we barely went four miles. I was frustrated, but also felt resigned to our new focus. We had worked up to nice, long, mellow, decision free runs. Now we needed to work on being able to navigate the maze of trails closer to the house.

But for the rest of the week, the team was getting a break. I was headed out to follow the Yukon Quest.

anticipation

Every day, the temperatures are supposed to be warmer tomorrow. And every tomorrow dawns just as cold, with the same false hope on the horizon. What is true is that it's been entirely too cold to run the team, and that forty below zero has started to seem warm, and that Xtra now thinks her dog house consists of the couch and the woodstove, and that I am getting more restless with each passing day.

The Yukon Quest starts Saturday. This summer I turned in a volunteer application for the third time, but didn't expect to hear anything back since that has been the case for several years running. As the race start approached, I considered calling the office to see if my information had gotten lost but in the end figured that they were probably just swamped with folks wanting to help out and since I wasn't there in person clamoring for a spot I was out of luck. I told myself that it was better this way. I have several friends from work coming out to the start line on Saturday, and I'd much rather hang out with them in the chute than be running around at the staging area or attempting crowd control along the river.  And this way I'd be free to follow the race from checkpoint to checkpoint. At least, this is what I was telling myself.

But on Friday, I got a phone message from the Quest staff asking if I'd give them a call. Apparently, a load of volunteer applications hadn't been processed and I hadn't be receiving the e-mail updates requesting volunteers. In fact, they still needed people for vet checks and for a few of the checkpoints on the Alaska side of the race. The vet checks were the next morning. I called them right back.

And so I found myself driving down the highway at six thirty am on a Saturday, warily pushing thirty miles an hour in the thickest haze of ice fog I've ever seen. I arrived at a warehouse in the industrial district south of town to temperatures dipping under fifty below zero.

Inside the chilly building, tables were set up for officials to check paperwork and vets to check dogs and volunteers were wandering aimlessly between them, waiting for something to start happening. A hastily scribbled list on a white board outlined a schedule, with three mushers at a time slated to arrive in hour and a half blocks. I ended up with a group which included two other random volunteers - a girl with a husky she hoped to teach to skijor and a smoke jumper - and two veterinarians - one Quest vet-team veteran with purple hair and a newcomer Army veterinarian who had been transfered to Ft. Wainwright less than two months ago. We stood around our bare table, clipboard, thermometers and microchip scanners in hand, stomping our feet on the cold concrete floor and waiting. Eventually, the giant warehouse doors opened and frosty dog trucks began rolling inside along with waves of frigid air. To one side, I noticed a Quest staff person taking phone call after phone call from mushers whose dog trucks weren't starting, or who were stuck on the road somewhere far from town. Once of those was Lance Mackey, who'd been scheduled to arrive in the first wave of trucks.

We started with Kristy Berington's team. I learned later she is running out of the Gebhardt's kennel in Kasilof, and finished in the top thirty in last year's Iditarod. Her dogs looked spectacular, strong and bright-eyed. I watched out of the corner of my eye as Mike Ellis and his beautiful Siberian team cycled through the scales.When Kristy rolled out, Hugh Neff rolled in. While we waited for his paperwork to be processed, he told us how they had stopped for diesel in Delta Junction in the early hours of the morning, and the hose line had snapped in half in the cold. It was interesting to see the different conformations in his dogs - particularly those he'd aquired from John Baker, last year's Iditarod champion. Next was Abbie West, a local musher from Two Rivers, and her tough team of trapline dogs from the Fort Yukon area. The fifty or so dogs I saw that morning ran the gammut, from petite, sprint-type racers to classic Alaskan huskies, from thick-coated, dense 'village type' dogs to classically beautiful and remarkably fuzzy Siberians. Lance Mackey even had one that could pass for a police dog, it so resembled a shepherd.

Lance Mackey weighs one of his classic Alaskan Huskies.

I had to cut it short after Abbie's team came through, as I had to be at work later that afternoon, but I was brimming with proximity jitters from being around so many mushers I've admired from a distance for so long. It was surreal to see them all, joking around with one another, swapping dog food and stories, and interacting with their teams. Mackey and Neff sidled up behind Neff's truck for a few minutes, and Mackey absentmindedly gave one of Neff's dogs the ear-scratching of his life without ever looking at him. The dog was so mellow and blissed out under his hand, and he'll be competing neck-in-neck Mackey's dogs in less than a week. And to see all the different trucks, from Mackey's mac-truck custom rig to fancy walk-in trailers to DIY dog trucks designed and pieced together in someone's garage, was an education in itself.

I also saw the two people who kick-started me down this path in the first place; Paige Drobny and Cody Strathe of Squid Acres Kennel and Dog Paddle Designs. Peter and I house-sat for them, back when they were living in an off-grid cabin with fifteen dogs on the backside of Goldstream Valley. In exchange for watching their dogs over the holidays that year, Paige let me on the runners behind one of their teams and set the stage for everything that's followed for me.  They've been developing their kennel and racing mid-distances for the past couple of winters, and Paige is running her first thousand mile race in this year's Quest. The team included two dogs I'd known as puppies back then, and it was cool to see them all grown up, happy and strong and ready to race.

Cody and Stout, who I met as a puppy.

After all the fuss and my admittedly fan-boy admiration of everything going on around me,  I was even more elated to receive confirmation that I'll be able to work at the Circle checkpoint, at about the 370 mile point of the race. I'll watch the race start on Saturday, drive to Two Rivers and watch the mushers go through there that afternoon, then leave early Sunday morning to follow the Steese Highway as far as it will take me. I spent several weeks in Circle two summers ago, working as a medic on the Crazy Mountain Complex wildfire and I'm eager to see it again in this new context.  I'm also looking forward to sleeping indoors this time - granted on the floor with a sleeping bag and ear plugs - instead of in a tent or in my truck.

This will be the last race I'll have a chance to follow from Alaska for a while, and I'm glad I get to do it in high style. Now, I just have to pack the truck. And spend every spare minute running my little team between now and Sunday morning. Because, against all odds, the temperatures seem to be rising.