My days with Jodi are full of dogs and dirt and kibble,
tuglines and harnesses, tire chains and trailer hitches, sawed, stewed meat,
gray jays picking at the scraps and squirrels in the awnings waiting their
turn. There are voles in the dog food bags, fat and happy, not even scrambling
to get away from the human hands dipping in with their scoopers for the next
meal. There is firewood to be chopped and brought in, stoves to be stoked,
water to be hauled. The clouds hover around the foothills of the Whites,
promising snow, refusing to follow through. The temperature is below freezing
now, hopefully for good.
In the mean time, the work of early season training goes on.
With the trails nearby too icy and rutted for decent quad runs, we switched to
truck training on some nearby* BLM roads that are unmaintained and therefore
sufficiently snow covered in early winter.This involves quite a circus of mid-morning activity as Jodi
and I chain up her truck tires, hitch the dog trailer, play “catch-and-release”
(or really release-and-catch, but the other way has a much nicer ring to it,
no?) to shuttle dogs between the dog yard and the trailer to load up. My
experience with my own dogs bolting into the woods to chase whatever scent or
bunny/deer/moose/grouse is at hand leaves me vaguely nervous for this part, but
her fantastic team has proven reliable to sprint around for a minute before
heading to the trailer to load up for the run. Packed up finally, we head out,
unchain once we reach the highway, and make our way to what has become our
trailhead. Once there, the trailer is unhitched and the dogs are unloaded,
harnessed and hitched to a gangline attached to the front bumper of the truck.
They look fantastic, lining out and settling into their runs like
professionals. Even the young dogs are figuring out the routine and sliding seamlessly towards being a part of the team. Watching the team line out, lean into their
harnesses, lunge forward at the call to go, swing gee and haw through the turns,
take their breaks and launch back into the run with the joy and enthusiasm they
are born to is beautiful to see.
The other thing that’s beautiful is the landscape around
this network of roads in the foothills of the mountains. It doesn’t take long
to leave the (mostly deserted anyway) highway behind and top out a long climb
into 365 degree views of mountains, spindly northern forests with her Charlie
Brown Christmas Tree spruce scattered across the lower elevations, ridgelines
with ominous rock outcroppings, the weathered landmarks of centuries and on the
near horizon, snowcapped peaks rolling into further distance. There is
wilderness in every direction, and even on blustery, overcast days with just
the dim blue sub-arctic light glowing below the clouds, the views and the
stomach churning vastness of it all, of being in the midst of such wilderness,
makes me catch my breath a little.
But of course, the real and immediate thing is the dogs.
Their smooth, ground-eating trot over the landscape, ears perked towards ravens
overhead or grouse in the bushes even as they follow the command to continue
ahead and not give chase. Their eyes bright as they sidle up for a quick
scratch during a break and foot check. Their tails flagging back and forth
happily after a run, each leaning in for a back scratch as we go up and down
the line taking off harnesses, dolling out praise and compliments, then loading
dogs back into warm, straw-filled boxes for the ride back to the kennel
anda warm dinner of meat stew and
kibble.
It goes without saying that mushers would rather be on
sleds, sliding along trails through the mountains and not stuck on the backs of
quads or in trucks, the miles suddenly interminable without runners and
handlebars and snowhooks and trail. Oh, good trail! But these early season runs
are still something I look forward to each time we head out. They are full of
strong, happy dogs and a fantastic wilderness that I still have to pinch myself
sometimes to believe I’m trekking through. Snow will come, trials will solidify
and sleds will be pulled out. But in the mean time, this foundation is critical
– both for the dogs and for me as Jodi and I talk about routes and mileage, dog
gaits and habits, injuries and booties and feet, feeding (oh, the endless talk
of food – ours and theirs!) training and conditioning. These conversations
won’t be possible later, at least not in the volume we are privy to now with so
many hours in the truck behind the teams, so I’m trying to make the most of
what we have for now – truck training may not be ideal, but it is nothing I’ll
turn my nose up at. Especially given the alternative.
* Alaskan “nearby” here referring to something closer than
an hour away if the roads are decent.
Outside the barn, next to the woodshed, half of one fifty
gallon drum sits atop another. In the bottom drum, a roaring fire makes short
work of the logs fed into its voracious belly. Above, soup for the thirty-some
dogs in the dog yard below bubbles and steams. Jodi flips the lid off the top
drum, and I flinch a little as the sharp black ears and then dull lower teeth
and lolling tongue of a horse’s head bobs to the surface, turns once, and sinks
again. The smell of a bland beef stew permeates the chilly fall air and my
mouth waters a little in spite of myself. I knew that horse’s head stew was on
the menu for the dogs this morning, but seeing the beast’s muzzle surface and
dive was another thing altogether. I stood by as Jodi measured out kibble and
meat into buckets for the dogs, then scooped the fragrant, steaming broth over
top. I tried hard to pay attention to the number of scoops in each bucket, the
level of water, the relative proportion of meat chunks, but the black pony’s
muzzle kept bobbing to the surface of my mind. Jodi sent me with two buckets
back up to the house to fetch water to refill the soup pot, and when I returned
we made our way down the slick driveway – so thankful for her extra pair of
spiked overboots, as mine were back at my cabin an hour and a half away – to
the dog yard where a chorus of anticipation met us and the buckets of steaming,
kibble-laden equine soup. Jodi dished out breakfast – a substantial kibble meal
for the retired dogs and a lighter fare for the working dogs about to hit the
trail – and we proceeded to carefully scoop the yard clear of dog shit while
the now silent team inhaled their breakfast.
Between the tour of the kennel, including the walk-in
freezer with stacks of salmon and horse quarters arranged neatly along one side,
the shop with its nearly finished dog-box project, and piles of errant
equipment, chains, gloves drying over the barrel stove, coils of spare runner
plastic, benched sleds, mountains of booties and first aid equipment for man
and beast alike, it was late morning by the time we were done. We retired to
the cabin where Guppy, the sweet grey and white lead dog that broke her ankle
on Iditarod years ago and has been a house husky ever since, met us to solicit
an ear rub and some cuddles. Jodi talked about the kennel, feeding, mushers we
both know, as she threw together a kefir smoothie with bananas, blueberries and
bee pollen to get us through the next part of the day (her triple-B smoothie,
she proclaimed.) It was truly the tastiest, most refreshing thing that has
passed my lips in months if not years. We bundled up again, despite the
unseasonably warm weather that was quickly turning the trail heading away from
the cabin and towards the White Mountains into an ice chute, and headed back to
the dog yard.
Jodi’s yard, like many serious racing kennels in Alaska,
consists of dogs they have carefully bred over years for the qualities they
need to populate their team; a solid physiology, a adoration for people, an
insatiable drive to run and an appetite to match. Many of the litters of
brothers and sisters look nearly alike, some black with blue eyes, some grey
with white-edged ears and muzzles, others brown-flecked. Each dog eager to be
chosen to run today, all running into a muddle of fur and ear and wet black
nose in my mind. How will I learn so many names, with such subtle differences
between siblings (his head is a little more square than his brother’s, and see,
she has a tiny bit more white under the chin than her sister.) I have no hope,
at least today, with my addled brain already full of harness sizes and kibble
proportions and the ingredients of horse-and-salmon stew. I don’t try very
hard, yet, and instead fetch one dog at a time, harnessing where Jodi points,
hooking up a team of thirteen along the line from her four-wheeler to the
trailhead at the top of the yard.
The trail is icy, but uphill, and the dogs pull hard for a
hundred yards then a few stop to relieve themselves after the excitement of
hookup. We pause, then head up the trail again, pause, then begin the slow
climb up a 4x4 hunting trail into the low rolling foothills. After a mile, Jodi
stops and I hop off the quad. There is a scramble as we realize we have
forgotten the bear spray carefully set aside in the barn for this part of the
afternoon – she hands me instead her .45 and calls the dogs to head on up the
trail. I am alone among the paper birch and fox tracks in the snow. I start
walking back down the trail towards the kennel, hefting aside loose rocks that
will tear up the trail groomer later in the season. Behind the birch trees, the
sky is a clear blue, cloudless and perfect. The sun is bright and I quickly
shed layers as I make my slow meander back down the hill, flinging rocks into
trees and humming into the echoing silence of the forest. There could not have
been a more beautiful day for an amble in the woods.
Too soon, I hear a quad coming back down the trail, but
instead of a dog team and Jodi, there is a lone, bearded man, a trailer of
firewood behind him and a shotgun slung across his back. Jodi had warned me
that I might run into Trapper Jon, and here he was, heading home after a
morning in the woods. He stopped his machine and remarked on the beautiful day,
pointed out marten tracks in the snow, talked about the windstorm that had
blown in the trail with downed timber for weeks last winter. He showed me the
two grouse he had just shot, and explained how each part would be part of a
trap for a different animal, the breast meat for himself for dinner, the tail
feathers saved to sell to a girl in town who used them for some kind of
crafting. He talked about his respect for Jodi and Dan and their operation with
the dogs, their care for the trails. He talked about the recent crash of the
mouse population and how that effected his marten trapping, but how the numbers
are coming back – he can see by the tracks already criss-crossing the woods
around us that it’s going to be a good year for marten. He talked about the
opening of beaver season and how he’s already bagged two animals, how this will
bolster his trapping already for the bait they provide. His eyes crinkle in the
bright sunlight, and after a while he bid me a nice walk and continued on town
the trail, firewood in tow, towards his own cabin and lone hound waiting for
him there.
Just before I had reached the cut-off to the house, Jodi and
the team came down the trail behind me. The icy downhill proved difficult and
she couldn’t stop the quad until a flat place in the trail further down. The
dogs, tails wagging and faces grinning even at the end of their eleven mile
workout, barely let her stop long enough for me to clamber aboard for the short
ride back to the yard.
Jodi declared the trail too icy for venturing out with a
second team, and instead we spent an hour catching up with visiting friends who
stopped by the cabin while I let my own dog out to stretch her legs and go
through her obedience paces. Late in the afternoon, Jodi made short work of the
horse’s head, breaking up the bones for
the older dogs to gnaw and filleting the meat from them with a skill and
efficiency I could not hope to match. I took the easier task of slicing frozen
salmon with a meat saw to add to the soup for the next morning’s brew and
fetching more water from the cabin. We fed and scooped the yard again, built up
the barrel fire and put away the quad. My arms were sore with the unaccustomed
work, and I was glad it had been a warm day for it, this first foray into the
day in the life of a working kennel, the first of many this fall.
We took turns showering and I hopped on the internet to
catch up on some email while Jodi cooked dinner. Dan came home from work and
headed to the shop to continue working on the dog box, then joined us a
delectable turkey-and-sourdough casserole. Later that night, I left the cozy
warmth of the cabin perched on the side of the mountain to drive back to town
under the eerie glow of northern lights along the horizon, dancing in long
green streaks in the clear night sky.
I am spending the fall in Fairbanks, and spending several days a week at Jodi Bailey & Dan Kaduce's Dew Claw Kennel. Although I've had a chance to attend a couple of lower-48-style mid-distance races in Minnesota over the last two years, I've missed Alaska and her unique mushing subculture badly. Although I can't put together my own team for just a few months - and there won't be enough snow for sleds for most of the time I'm there anyway - Jodi has been generous enough to let me moon around her kennel & dogs, getting my fix and learning about the inner workings of an Iditarod team deep in fall training for the big race in March.
So I'm opening up this blog again for the fall to keep track of the lessons learned and stories gleaned from a few months back up north. In the mean time, I'm writing again over at my old blog Entelechy about everything else is going on during my brief return to the north country on the ground and in my snow-addled brain.
We have made our way to Iowa for the next few years. Jodi & Aliy's dogs have gone home, Norrin has found a forever home with a skijoring family where he will be much happier without the stress of a big team around him. There are a few stories left to tell between my last post and the last snow, but they will have to wait. We have traversed the interim miles between home and the cornfields of the midwest with Pico, who is adjusting to his new city life with the usual laconic ease of his even pawed temperament. In the mean time, you can follow our Outside adventures at http://entelechyproject.wordpress.com
The next adventure on our plate came unexpectedly. A friend of mine who teaches at the community college is thinking about getting back into mushing, now that her son is five and old enough to hold on to the sled and help out with the dogs. Every year, Jenny takes a trip out to some public-use cabins near Fairbanks. She usually goes with visiting family, or friends with kids, but this year no traveling companions had materialized. She proposed a trip out to one of the cabins with my dog team and her snow machine, both for companionship and to get a feel for if she really does want to put together a team of her own.
This seemed like a perfect match. One of my goals for this winter was to do some cabin trips and some camping, but I was still a little wary of setting out for my first trip all alone. I don't have enough dogs to haul two people and all the gear and food we'd need. But with her snow machine available for most of the heavy hauling - and the company of another adult - teaming up for this first trip seemed ideal. I could bring more gear than the bare minimum, and would be able to see what I really did need without worrying about too much weight. And we wouldn't have the chaos - this time - of trying to cut and haul firewood back to the cabin with the dog team.
We reserved the Stiles Creek Cabin, about eight miles off road in the Chena Recreation Area near Fairbanks. I spent the week before the trip trying to figure out what all I needed to secure eight dogs and keep them fed and comfortable for two nights without dog houses or running water. In the end, I decided to use the drop-chains I had made for the truck, planning to string them together and secure them with the two snow hooks I was now carrying on the sled. I picked up a bale of straw from a local supply store for their bedding, as we are using grass hay in their houses here and it didn't seem bulky enough to keep them warm in the snow at the cabin.
I arrived home at seven am from work on the morning of our trip, and fed the dogs immediately. While they digested their breakfast, I scrambled to pack dog food, moose snacks, water pots, food bowls, harnesses, lines and the sled, as well as food and sleeping gear for myself. (Peter had generously taken care of making and freezing chilli and putting together pancake fixings for us while I was at work.) One thing that surprised me was the sheer weight of the dog food we would need for just two nights - four meals - away. I began to wonder about the feasibility of longer trips without a place to resupply heavy food. I was going to have to work on getting the team used to hauling a heavier load.
I had decided to bring Pico along on this trip, even though he hasn't been running with the team. I knew that he'd be able to free-run the distance to the cabin with no problems, and I wasn't planning on hooking him up with the team although I did bring a harness for him just in case. When we arrived at the trail-head, however, he and Marley, my friend's one year old lab-golden mix, did not hit it off well. He was uncharacteristically growly with her, and I made a last-minute decision to hook him in with the team (putting Norrin back up with Billie) to keep them separated until they could work out their differences. Pico was ecstatic to be back in with the other dogs, but his lack of conditioning this year showed and he stopped pulling about two miles in. He kept up, however, running happily with a slack tug and wagging his tail whenever we stopped for a break.
And we stopped for a lot of breaks. Even though the trail to the cabin was only eight miles, it was a steep, hilly eight miles. The dogs were carrying all of my gear (their heavy food, bowls and chains were in Jenny's sled) as well as Jenny's son Sawyer who was perched happily on top of my duffel bag taking it all in. I ran up the hills behind the dogs, sweating through all my layers and glad I hadn't put on a parka as we left the parking lot. The views from the ridges were worth it though, the hills of the interior giving way to the sharp white peaks of the Alaska Range further south and everything covered in snow and sunshine. I was happy to stop at the top of each rise to catch my breath and take it all in.
We arrived at the cabin in one piece, Sawyer having ridden like a champ on top of all my gear without complaint the whole way in. We stayed two nights, spending most of Friday on the trails gathering firewood to restock the meager store at the cabin and running the dogs along the ridges further down the trail. Jenny had brought a rickety little sled from a friend, and we tried to split the team in two so she could get a feel for running dogs again. I put Billie and Norrin in front of Devilfish and Parka, but Norrin - again in the unseasonable heat - wasn't willing to pull up the hills and Billie wasn't willing for force him. Although Jenny's chase team of Reese, Pepper and Xtra were on our heels the whole time, it wasn't hard since we stopped every ten paces going up anything resembling a slope. Jenny had fun, but it wasn't a very successful run as far as that goes. I was left pretty frustrated with Norrin, and more sure than ever that Billie does best up front alone.
I let Pico run free with Marley and the snow machine on the trip back to the road on day three. Initially, he ran ahead to the snow machine and then bolted back to the middle of the team, causing some chaos and eliciting lots of yells and frustration from me. But eventually he tired of this game and just ran a few yards up ahead of Billie. This was great for me, as the dogs charged up the hills chasing him and I didn't have to do quite as much work behind the runners. But he tired even of this the last couple of miles, and decided he wanted to be with his pack. Much to the confusion of Xtra and Pepper, he took a place right next to them - no harness or lines - and ran the rest of the way back to the truck head held high, right in the middle of the team.
Overall,
I got a good sense of what I would (and wouldn't) need camping with the team,
and the whole thing was incredibly enjoyable. The dogs did great camping
out. It was clear which dogs had raced before, as the race-savvy crew settled
down immediately to sleep when they saw straw in the snow but Norrin and Pico
stood confused for several hours before figuring it out. One thing that concerned
me, besides the weight of the food, was the amount of time it took to melt
enough snow for the dogs on the woodstove in the cabin. It took hours. I knew
that "dog cookers" - camping stoves designed specifically to melt
large amounts of snow for camping with dogs - were commercially available but
prohibitively expensive for our little outfit. I'd heard that DIY versions
weren't hard to make, and realized now that this was something I'd have to look
in to if were were going to do any more overnight exploring.
The
temperatures were so mild that the cabin stayed warm for most of the night even
without a stoked fire, and it felt good to be able harvest and leave so much firewood for
the next cabin users - something that would have taken a lot more work without
a snow machine and trailer to haul it all out of the woods. The trip
re-energized my desire to do more overnights - both cabin and camping - before
the suddenly fast-approaching end of the season. We got back to Fairbanks ready
for more. My new plan was to spend the next few weeks doing longer runs, hauling more
weight and hatching plans to get out again overnight, hopefully sooner than later.
After returning from Circle, I was eager to get the team out on the trail. Based on our last run, I knew I needed to focus on my leaders - particularly on turns and on confidence. The temperature as we headed out that morning was unseasonably warm for February, sitting between twenty five and thirty above zero. I hooked up a very restless team with Billie and Norrin up front, and we started out towards the lower Rosie Creek crossing.
My leaders took the turn from the road at the trailhead on cue. There was a tiny patch of refrozen overflow on the edge of the creek, the ice brown and churned from passing hikers and skiers, but it was covered in a dust of new snow and the dogs didn't notice it until we were already over the ice. It wasn't long before I noticed Norrin slacking his tug line. His tongue had been lolling nearly to the ground before we even started running, and it was clear that in the heat his motivation was bottomed out. Billie wasn't willing to keep up the pace if Norrin was lagging behind. Before we had gone a mile, the whole team had stalled out in the sun.
It had been over a month since I had last - unsuccessfully - tried to run Reese up at the front of the team. Thinking this might have been enough time for the Reese Brain to forget its obsession with U-turns, I started the process of switching him with Norrin up front. Eager to go, Reese looked back at me and began shrieking and slamming his harness before I'd even gotten Norrin backed up and clipped in. His enthusiasm caught on. Parka and Devilfish began slamming their harnesses, popping out the snow hook as they did so. I grabbed the sled as it passed, using its momentum to swing onto the runners with a sign of relief. But no sooner were my feet down and my eyes back up on the trail than the sled slowed and I saw Reese weaving his way back through the team, bounding towards me in a blind ecstasy of enthusiasm and energy. The snowhook was still in my hand, so I set it and dove into the fray in one motion. I hauled Billie and Reese back up front, unclipping Reese as I went. Stepping over lines and tangles, I hauled Reese back to wheel, leaving him with Parka and moving Devilfish up, working hard to figure out what to do next.
I put Devilfish in swing, and moved Xtra up front with Billie. Reese and Devilfish were now both yelping in tandem for us to get moving again. Norrin, alone in the team position, stood with a slack line, watching and panting and occasionally taking a mouthful of snow. No help. I was sweating from running back and forth along the team. Xtra hung back, and Billie didn't seem willing to line out with her pressure on his neckline. I pulled the hook and called them to go anyway. Billie took up the slack between his collar and Xtra's, and when she didn't move forward with him, he stopped. Xtra looked back at me, sideways in the trail. It was clear she wasn't going anywhere next to Billie. Pepper dove into the snowbank. I set the snow hook again.
I unhooked Pepper, who was now tangled in a knot around Devilfish's line, and moved her up with Billie. I got Xtra back into Pepper's spot in swing, but as I was giving her a reassuring pat on the shoulder I felt a bump. Pepper's squat, powerful little body had managed to haul Billie by his neckline back down the trail towards us, and she was smacking her head into my legs and trying to climb up on my back to get some of the attention I was giving Xtra. I walked Pepper and Billie back up front, gave them a pat and told them to line out. I turned. I took two steps back towards the sled and a still-shrieking Reese. I felt my knees give as Pepper bolted back towards me and knocked me off the trail into the snow. Now that I was at her level, there were kisses all around. Devilfish and Xtra joined in, creating the biggest, most complicated tangle to date and effectively pinning me in the snow. Billie hung back and stared at the chaos in the snow bank. Reese continued to yelp at full volume, nearly in my ear. Pepper yipped along with him, tail wagging happily at all the excitement. Norrin stood on the trail, panting, lines slack. A mile from home. I wanted to cry.
Instead, I gently fended off Pepper's affection, righted myself and got my feet back on the packed trail. I unclipped, untangled and reclipped the mess of lead and swing dogs. I took off my fleece and threw it back into the sled basket and threw my hat in too, for good measure. I held Billie and Pepper forward by the neckline and stared back at the team. What to do?
I unclipped Pepper completely, and walked her back to Norrin's single spot in team. Unclipping his neckline, I secured her with it. His huge, unmoving bulk kept her on the trail while I walked back up to Billie. I took the second leader tug and started working it backwards out of the gangline. Billie was going to have to lead on his own, or I was going to be walking in front with him, all the way home. I got Pepper set up with a tug next to Norrin. To my surprise, Billie was still up front when I turned. The gangline was slack and sitting on the trail, but he was peacefully munching snow and hadn't made a move back towards the team. I walked forward and pulled him with me until his lines were taunt. I gave him a pat on the shoulder and said, "Line Out, Billie." I walked backwards down the trail towards the sled. Billie sat down primly on the trail and turned watch me over his shoulder. He didn't move.
I tentatively pulled the hook, calling "OK, let's go." Billie took a couple of steps forward. Everyone else took off at a dead run, weary of the extensive stall-out in the sunshine. Devilfish and Xtra slammed into Billie's hind end and he jolted forward, hitting the end of his tug hard ... and he stayed up front, tug straight as an arrow, leading the team over the hill, past the old burn and behind the Quist farm.
We skidded down a little hill to one of the intersections that had given me so much trouble with Reese in November. I called "Billie, Gee!" sounding much more authoritative than I felt, mentally preparing for another giant tangled mess of dogs and lines. Billie banked right and disappeared around the corner. I let out a whoop of elation, and nearly lost the sled as it whipped through the turn and hit the snow bank on the other side.
Billie charged up the next little hill, and I thought about what I knew of this trail. We hadn't gone this way all year. Last year, with the old girls, Pico and Norrin we'd kept straight and hit a huge, steep hill about a quarter mile further along. I didn't want to stall out Billie's spectacular progress with a challenge like that, not now. Up ahead, I saw where a snowmachine had plowed a trail to the left. I called, "Billie, Haw!" and like a miracle (it felt like a such a miracle I nearly burst with the relief of it) my stocky blond boy sped up and whipped to the left, disappearing behind the snow bank, never looking back. The team followed at full-tilt, and I hung on for dear life. Finally, I had my leader.
For the next week, I left Billie out front alone. Devilfish and Parka went back to wheel, Norrin and Reese pulled together in team, Pepper and Xtra were my swing girls, backing Billie up. He thrived. We did a series of short ten mile runs, testing out commands. He wasn't always perfect, but he corrected and kept going. The temperatures stayed warm. Overflow built up on the lower Rosie Creek crossing causing some stall-outs and tangles but we worked through it and kept on trucking. Over the weekend, I had another Paramedic from work come out to the house. For the first time, I took someone on a sled ride out of the yard, over the big road berms and overflow and maze of trails across the creek - and it was a success! Billie turned on command like a dream, the team hauled us over everything without wavering and my friend had a blast, asking to come out for another run any time we were willing.
I did a lot of thinking about Billie over that week, as we navigated turns that had us stymied all year and explored trails we'd never been able to negotiate before. I hadn't bonded with him much. He's a reserved guy. I'm not even sure I'd ever seen his tail wag. Instead I put my energy into the potential leadership of other dogs and took Billie's position up front for granted. A placeholder, nothing more. When the other dogs stalled out, Billie took his cues from them and stopped. When they took a wrong turn or refused to correct, he stood by and watched. This week, I began to realize that Billie and I have more in common than I thought.
I am a relatively new paramedic in a position of unusual leadership at my job for no other reason than that there aren't any better qualified medics in the area willing to work where I do. Whenever there is a doctor or nurse or even another paramedic around, I automatically defer to them because I assume they must know better. But in doing so, and getting burned by my deference on many an occasion, I am (slowly, painfully) learning that the training and experience I do have, and the instincts that are growing as I practice pre-hospital medicine, are worth something. Worth a lot, in fact. I'm beginning to trust myself more, but I still find that I let go of my own control and leadership at the drop of a hat. I stand back and watch instead of stepping up and engaging. And when I defer what I know, and what I know I can do, I usually regret it. Like Billie, I do best when I'm left out there on my own. When I'm given a chance and show what I am capable of without the easy out of someone else to fall back on, I usually manage to do just fine.
I hope I can begin to step up when I find myself out front, alone or not. I want to learn to charge around those corners with courage, trusting all that is behind me and acting on the training and knowledge I've built up there, even if I don't know what lies ahead on the trail. Billie and I have a long way to go, but for a while this winter, we can work on getting there together.
I had been told that the checkpoint in Circle was at the fire house, and I should report there on arrival. Having been in Circle for the wildfire two summers ago, I knew that it wouldn't be hard to find, even after dark. Circle is a primarily Athabascan community of about one hundred people. There is a school house, a community building, a washateria and a gas station with a few shelves of dry goods. If you fly your plane into the little air strip there, you must taxi down the main street - which is also the highway - to the gas station to fill up your fuel tanks. The one road into town terminates at a boat ramp on the banks of the Yukon river.
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.
It's been a month, now. The Quest is over and done for another year, and Iditarod starts tomorrow. I've caught up on sleep and had several conversations with other folks - mushers, handlers and volunteers - about it all, the good and the bad. I'm glad I went out to Circle, and grateful for the experience. But even after all the time that's passed, I'm not sure I would do it again. Given my rabid fandom of the sport and pipe-dream hopes of running a thousand mile race myself some day, I feel weird about saying that. And weird about my newly mixed feelings about racing at all. Admitting it is uncomfortable, and seems somehow wrong. Which makes it hard to write about. Which is why it took me so long.
It has been almost a month since the Quest started in Fairbanks and I followed it out to Circle City and the banks of the Yukon River. It was a whirlwind sixty hours between leaving Fairbanks and returning in a daze of elation edged with disappointment and no lasting ill effects from the lack of sleep or footsore hours standing on the trail in the cold. This year's Yukon Quest turned out to be the closest in history, with only twenty six seconds separating Hugh Neff and Allen Moore's finishes. It was also one of the mildest, with no snowstorms or teeth-shattering temperatures to contend with. In fact, the second half of the race was too warm for teams to run comfortably during the day. All the teams have been in for weeks now, but it has taken this long to get my own thoughts and experiences sorted out. And I've had my own team to run in the mean time, with our own adventures and mishaps filling up February's days without much room to spare. But it is March now (suddenly!) and I should start writing again before too much time and detail get away from me.
Paige leaving the start line on Saturday morning.
The Quest start itself was quite chilly. Although there was good sized a crowd lining the starting chute for half a mile, the temperature on the river was sitting at about twenty below zero and after the first few teams left folks started to trickle back to their warm vehicles to thaw out. My attempts at keeping my camera battery operational in the cold out didn't go well, but the video camera kept working thanks to sticky chemical foot warmers plastered on all sides of the case. There isn't much to say about the start. It was crowded, cold and fun. The announcer had the irritating habit of announcing the next musher approaching the chute before the musher who'd just taken off had gotten twenty feet past the start line. But the crowd was in to the action, and it was cool to see all the teams and dogs and get to share the excitement of the start with several friends from work.
On Sunday morning, I packed up my truck and started driving out to Circle. I wanted to arrive before dark, but certainly before eight that evening - in plenty of time to get settled and oriented before the first musher arrived. My first stop was about an hour down the road at Dew Claw Kennel, to say hello to Jodi Bailey and the kennel-mates of Reese, Xtra, Devilfish & Parka. Jodi was in the midst of preparations for her Iditarod run - drop bags were due in a few days. She gave me a run-down of some of the food preparations they were working on: boiling a mush of meat, water and psyllium to be frozen in sheets and then cut into candy-bar sized trail snacks for the dogs, as well as regular and freeze dried meat and kibble and frozen fish chunks being sorted & packed for the team. We sat in her cabin for a while, chatting and rolling dog booties into four-packs for the trail. After availing myself of their doorless outhouse with a spectacular panorama of the white mountains, I hit the road again.
The drive was spectacular. I had forgotten just how beautiful the drive out the Steese Highway is, and even though the day was overcast I was mesmerized by the valleys and mountains rolling out ahead of the truck. I pulled off the road at the Mile 101 Checkpoint, parked in the row of dog trucks next to the highway and walked up to the small cluster of huts at the top of the rise.
A team checks in at Mile 101
This was the first time I'd been to any checkpoint on a race trail. The leaders were long gone, having arrived and left in the wee hours of the morning, but many middle-of-the-packers and Quest 300 teams were resting and some still arriving. The checkpoint consisted of a small hut with coffee, a woodstove fire, a leader-board and some food for the mushers, and another hut with communications gear (race updates are generally transmitted back to Fairbanks via ham radio) and space for checkers to stay warm. Far down the yard full of resting dog teams were more huts, ostensibly for mushers to get some sleep. There was a couch sitting out in the snow by a four-foot-tall spruce tree decorated with Christmas lights where checkers sat in bright orange reflective vests watching the trail for incoming teams. A banner on the communications hut announced the availability of Hughs Net remote internet at the checkpoint, but a quick check on my phone proved that it was password protected.
Just as I walked up to the "Officials Only Beyond This Point" where several spectators and, to my surprise, handlers, were hanging out, a Quest 300 team arrived and I watched as they were checked in and directed to a parking spot to rest. Several Quest 1000 mushers were working with their dogs, feeding, checking feet and massaging muscles after the run over Rosebud Summit. I was delighted to spot the wild hair of infamous and semi-retired musher Sebastian Schnuelle, who was following the race this year by snowmachine to report on the teams and trails to fans following the race on Facebook. I got a picture of him taking a picture of the Checkpoint sign, but was too shy to say hello.
"Armchair Musher" Sebastian Schnuelle takes pictures for his Facebook fans.
I ran into some folks I know from town - notably Cody Strathe who was handling for his wife Paige. I ended up hanging around the checkpoint for much longer than I'd planned. Paige had recently woken up, and had wandered in a bit of a daze up to the warming hut. It was her birthday, and a picture of her leaving the starting chute the morning before had ended up on the front page of the local newspaper. I decided to wait until she left, so I could get a picture of her team headed for Eagle Summit. While we waited for her to start sorting out her team and getting ready to go, I asked Cody about handling. I had been a little confused to see all the handlers hanging out with the spectators behind "the line" at the checkpoint. I knew that handlers can't actually help mushers take care of their dogs on the trail, but I had assumed they would be with the dog team while the musher slept, or perhaps just hanging out with the musher away from the crowd giving moral support. Cody said that in fact handlers weren't allowed near the teams at all, except to help navigate an exit from the dog yard back on to the trail. Once the musher was clear of the checkpoint, they gathered unused gear, raked up straw and then drove on to the next stop along the trail. Talk about a thankless job. I can't imagine being so close to dogs I had trained and worked with all season, and not be allowed to go over and say hello and offer an ear scratch.
A hot meal, then a nap.
Paige stopped to chat for a few minutes, recounting a harrowing ride down the backside of Rosebud. She still had all fourteen dogs, but one had been riding in the sled when they started down. Wind had scoured the mountain of snow, and her brakes were essentially useless against the rocks. They careened down the steep slope, "My dogs were trying to kill me! They heard the brake scrape against the ground, and just took off," as she and the dog in her sled bag stared at each other in terror and held on for dear life. She told the story wide-eyed and a little shaky still, the fear still not far removed after only a restless few hours of sleep. Then she walked back down to her team to prepare to leave for the next summit - the much more notorious Eagle.
It had been warm at the checkpoint - twenty degrees above zero felt balmy after yesterday's cold start - but it began cooling off as the sun started to sink behind the mountains. Paige was a tiny dot far down the dog yard, circling her team, putting on booties, repacking her bag. I was getting cold, standing around with nothing to do, but I had decided to wait for her to go so I stamped my feet and shook out my arms and waited.
I was glad I did, because Michael Telpin, an eastern Russian musher from the Chukchi region had arrived with his team of nine traditional trapline dogs that he used to hunt marine mammals for a living back home. He participated in the race as part of an educational program in Europe, and back at Dew Claw, Jodi had told me to take a close look at his unusual (for Alaska) northern working dogs and his traditional hand-made harnesses. I was glad I'd waited. His dogs were built so differently from the Alaskan Huskies I've come to expect, with curly tails, short muzzles and thick, powerful shoulders. And the harnesses were a new thing altogether, looking like they'd been stitched together from old seat belts and leftover nylon webbing. I knew his dogs had run into trouble adjusting to an American-dog diet of kibble and supplements, after being raised almost exclusively on marine mammals in Russia. He had been able to start the race with only nine dogs (most teams start with fourteen,) but the nine looked strong and happy. He steered his team over to the parking spot and started making their dinner as Paige continued making preparations to leave.
Michael Telpin's Chukchi dogs in their hand-sewn harnesses, waiting while he checks in.
I got pictures of Paige as she took off, but by then was pretty chilled from standing outside for nearly four hours - a sign of things to come in Circle. I rushed back to my truck and hit the road again, enjoying the sunset and full-blast heaters as the truck made the climb up to Eagle Summit. I stopped for a while to watch a herd of caribou cross the summit (you can't see the race-trail from the road) and slowed on the other side to follow a few more of the beasts traversing the highway near Central - the next checkpoint on the route. I had planned to stop in Central to see which teams had come in and get a hot bite to eat, but the bar/restaurant/checkpoint was packed full of handlers and locals watching the super-bowl and the tiny parking lot was bumper-to-bumper with dog trucks already. It was dark now, and I still had a long, slow drive down the curving, narrow, hairpin road to Circle. I decided to forgo the hot meal and keep on driving.
Paige (lower right) leaving Mile 101 for Eagle Summit.
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.
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.
With another cold snap threatening, I was eager to take the dogs back out on our seven mile loop across Rosie Creek with Billie and Norrin in lead. I wanted to take the lower Rosie Creek crossing, but with the dogs still refusing to turn off the road there, I needed some help. For the last few runs, I've had Peter hold Norrin out in lead while I got the other dogs hooked up, but now I also needed him to drive down to the trailhead and guide the dogs onto the trail. But I didn't want to leave Norrin up front by himself while I hooked up the rest of the team, both because I don't trust him to keep his teeth off his harness and because I don't want to let him get in the habit of walking away from his leadership duties to socialize while I run dogs to the line from the yard.
I decided to try Billie up front first (he is supposed to be a lead dog, after all) but without the distraction of intact (and probably going in to heat soon) Pepper right behind him. I would hook up the dogs from back to front once Billie was installed in lead and see what happened. He would only have to ignore Pepper while I got Norrin, a much smaller interval of temptation.
Billie surpassed my expectations! Once he was up front, he pulled his line tight and sat down, watching me over his shoulder and never budging from his post. Maybe I've underestimated this dog, as well. I hooked everyone up and sent Peter to the trail head in the truck.
Launch went well, except for Devilfish and Parka. I realized two runs ago, when Parka ended up on the right side as we left the yard, that Parka is a left-side dog. She only wants to run on the left side of the line, and will do whatever it takes to get there once we are moving. This time, I had made sure she was on the left when I hooked her up, but without necklines on my wheel dogs, it was easy for Devilfish to make a lane-change a few seconds before I pulled the snow hook. Parka backed away from him, running with the brushbow nearly clipping her hocks, trying hard to get enough space to jump over his tug line and the gang line. But on our narrow trail from the house, she was having a lot of trouble. I ended up stopping the sled completely about two hundred yards out, and without the momentum of the team she got herself over the lines and it was smooth sailing the rest of the way out. But stopping the team so soon out of the yard is confusing and frustrating for everyone, and Parka's determination to never, ever run on the right side of the gangline puts her in a potentially dangerous situation so close to the sled. I'll have to remember to be sure she is in the right spot from the beginning, from now on.
Peter helped us get around the corner with no problem - once Billie and Norrin saw the trail, and with Peter giving them some momentum, they were full-speed-ahead down to Rosie Creek without a glance back. The trail across the creek was clear, and the overflow by the banks was frozen and crusted over with just enough snow that Norrin didn't notice it. (I learned on our few runs last spring and several walks on the banks of the Tanana this summer that he is terrified of water.)
At the intersection with the main trail system, the dogs again didn't want to turn right, away from the more straight-ahead looking left-fork. As soon as I realized my calls for a turn were getting us nowhere, I set the snow hook and hauled the leaders around in the direction I was determined to take. Too late, I saw I had stopped too far back down the creek trail and my sled was going to head straight for a birch tree when they got their momentum going around the corner. For a second, I thought I could guide the sled around it, but in that same second the sled lurched forward and my hand - or more specifically my pinky finger - took the brunt of the force of the team as the sled bounced off the slender tree with my hand in the way.
I stowed the snow hook and shoved my throbbing finger into my mitts - no use worrying about it at this point. We flew down the trail, and I watched for the slight left-hand turn the trail takes up into the hills for the loop. We ran on, and I saw that my snowshoes and the extra snow hook were starting to bounce loose. I don't have a real sled bag, at this point. They have to be custom made, and given our ever-shortening tenure in Alaska the expense hasn't seemed worth it. Instead, I have a duffel bag with extra layers, first aid supplies, rudimentary camping gear and a small hatchet lashed down in the sled basket. Now that the snow is deep enough to sink in to, I've added snow shoes but the lashing wasn't keeping them in place on the bumpy turns. I stopped several times to readjust, but nothing save a complete reworking of the load seemed to do the trick.
After several stops to adjust the snowshoes, I started realizing that the trail didn't look familiar at all. We should have been climbing the switchbacks through the birch by now. There were no switchbacks, and no birch. Just alders and spruce and unfamiliar corner after corner. I had no idea how I had missed a trail that had been the ONLY trail option a month ago, the last time we'd taken this route. But here we were, following a clearly packed snow machine trail and veering more and more east.
When I looked up again, I saw that Billie and Norrin were coming out into a clearing and then realized that the clearing was a road and they were in the middle of it. I yelped and hit the brake but they were already there. I occured to me in that instant that they might take my stopping them in the middle of the road to mean I wanted them to turn down the road, and if they did that there was no way I'd be able to stop the sled and get the team turned around again. I let off the brake nearly as quickly and yelled for them to go straight. They obliged and I was relieved to see that the road was both empty of cars and not the big 50 mph main road out of our neighborhood - just a little neighborhood side street in the more populated area closer to the highway.
I let the team go a few yards up the main trail, then stopped them and checked my GPS. We'd gone just shy of four miles, which would give us about the right distance I'd wanted for this run anyway. And I knew the next road this trail would cross was that big one - and soon. I turned the team around (and this time, the extra snow hook held!) we headed (more carefully) back across the road and home.
Once the dogs were settled in, the yard cleaned up and gear put away I came inside and took a look at my throbbing finger. Only the pinky had gotten caught between the sled and the tree, but it had taken a good hit. It wasn't bending all the way and was starting to show a nice colorful bruise. But it was just one finger - and not a very important typing finger at that. I could just as easily have smashed my whole hand.
The cold snap hit as predicted that night and settled in for the long haul. The local paper reported that we are on track to have the coldest overall January since the 1970s, and the fifth coldest in over a hundred years. In the days since our last run, we've seen some of the coldest temperatures since we moved here six years ago. We've been spending most of our time stoking the woodstove and cycling dogs into the house to defrost. Although their thick winter fur and houses full of fresh straw keep them warm even in these frigid temperatures, ice builds up on their coats as they exhale and eventually diminishes its insulating ability.
Although I'm not adverse (well, mostly not adverse) to taking the team out for a run in temperatures like these, I don't have enough cold-weather gear for all of them. Unlike larger, thick-coated northern freight dogs (Malamutes, MacKinzie River Huskies) Alaskan huskies are bred to race. If they had the crazy-thick coats of their northern counterparts (which would keep them warm outside their houses in these temperatures) they would easily overheat in the average temperatures they encounter on winter race trails. When the temperatures drop like this, mushers use coats and boots to keep racing dogs warm. When temperatures rise much higher than ten or fifteen above zero, extra breaks must be taken on the trail to keep the dogs from overheating.
At any rate, we won't be going anywhere except to the woodpile for a few more days, at least.
Wanting to capitalize on the success of our eighteen mile jaunt along the Tanana river valley and Norrin's so-far positive experience up front, I planned a repeat performance for our next run. After a day off, I fed the team early and got them harnessed and ready as soon as it was reasonably light. I had Peter stand out with Norrin up front from the start, so he wouldn't have the stress of holding the line out alone on his shoulders or be able to get his teeth on his harness. Billie is still more interested in hanging out with Pepper than keeping everyone lined out, so I hooked him up at the end to avoid those tangles. We ran along the same route as our last long run, following the big flat trail down the Tanana river valley. Just after turning off of the road, we scared up a small moose browsing in the bushes along the trail. He saw us coming from a ways off and bolted across the trail and into the trees, and the dogs tore forward in a full sprint for half a minute after they saw him.
On the last of the big right-hand trails I'd seen, I impulsively asked Norrin and Billie to turn right at the junction. They figured out what I wanted without having to bring the team to a complete stop, and we were soon plowing down a broken but not recently run trail over a crust of new snow. This route wasn't nearly as straight or as wide as the big main trail, but it was much wider than many of the dog sled and ski-only trails we've run down. Snow-laden alders bent over the trail, making a tunnel that fit the dogs perfectly but left me ducking or throwing up an arm to protect my face from the thin, whipping branches and snow showers I created slamming into them. The trail wove north towards the hills, ducking down little gullies and up rises and weaving in and out of stands of white spruce. I noticed that whenever we hit a particularly twisting section of trail the team, Billie in particular, seemed to speed up and charge around the corners as if excited by the unseen possibilities offered around the bend.
I was hoping that this trail would shadow the flat path on the valley floor, taking us up to that new highway-like trail under the bare bluff about eight miles out, but I soon realized that even if it did, we weren't going to make it on this run. I had a limited amount of time to explore, since I had to be at work that afternoon. But more than that, this path was weaving around the hills almost haphazardly. One minute, we'd be moving along approximately parallel to the hills, the next, we'd be doubled back and going nearly east, then for a while we'd be heading straight towards their looming slopes before turning sharply west again.
After several miles, I decided to look for a likely place to get the team turned around and head back. The decision was made for me when I saw the trail disappear into a deep gorge ahead of Norrin and Billie. I didn't want to try to turn around on that, or scramble back up the slope on the way back. I hooked in and walked up the team, giving everyone a good ear scratch. Tails were wagging all around, and spirits on this new trail seemed high. I flipped the snow-hook around so it would be less likely to pop free when the team was pulling in the other direction, then hauled Billie and Norrin around. As soon as they saw what was going on, the rest of the team charged back towards the sled. Billie and Norrin, now being dragged backwards by their harnesses, both balked.
I still haven't figured out the best way to turn the team around. We still don't have the looping-trail options to prevent the need to back-track, but it seems stressful for the leaders and there are always be epic tangles to get sorted out when we're done. I've taken to unclipipng Pepper and Xtra's neck lines to help prevent some of them, but this only mitigates line disasters a little bit. I hope that my new-found calmness in all this chaos (perhaps born of having to sort out more tangles than I care to think about this year) is helping. I used to get super stressed and feel rushed to get everyone sorted out. Now I just work my way down the line and use the time to give the dogs a rub-down and ear-scratches as well. At the beginning of the season, when Norrin was faced with a 180 degree directional change, he would lay down and have to be hauled bodily back to the front of the line. Now, he will consent to being walked to where I need him with only a little hesitation, as long as I stay next to him.
Also, I am always a little unsure of what to do with the snow hook. It won't hold the team pulling on it backwards, but I can't always get enough of the tension off to flip it around when I need to. It is probably a little too small for an eight-dog team anyway, but now that there is enough snow on the ground to sink it in deep, and because this team is a relatively mellow group, it has worked out so far. It usually only pops loose during directional changes, but holds the team just fine while we're hooking up or stopped on the trail.
I remembered, as the hook popped out this time before I was ready and I had to catch the sled as it passed me, that there is another snow hook - an insanely huge and heavy-duty one - that came with the extra sled I borrowed. I decided to add it to the main sled for our next run, so I could set it backwards in anticipation of a turn-around to make the whole event even more stress-free.
On the run back to the house, I noticed Pepper glancing into the trees just before we reached the road. I followed her glances thinking our little moose might still be hanging around in the brush. I was startled to see that what I'd taken to be a small yearling moose was just a big calf, now tucked into the haunches of his barn-door sized mother who was looking right at me through the trees. I held my breath and watched her carefully, but she didn't so much as flick her ears at us as we passed. The moose out here seem much more mellow about sharing their space than the aggressive mommas I dealt with last year in Goldstream.
For the next run, we stayed on the straight valley trails all the way out and took a left at the big highway trail when we ran into it. I was intending to run an extra mile out, bumping our total mileage up to the magical number twenty. One of my goals for this season was to get the team running in the twenty to forty mile range, and until our successful eighteen mile run a few days before this was beginning to seem like a pipe-dream. I was excited that things were finally coming together towards this goal.
The trail headed directly south, towards the river. I expected to come out onto the ice at any moment, but I had no intention of running on the Tanana, no matter how well traveled the trails seem. I have heard stories about the variable ice conditions and currents on this huge glacial river and I am still not comfortable enough with ice travel to go it alone with the team. When we came out of a huge stand of spruce onto a vast open area, I thought for a moment we'd hit the river. By the time I got the team stopped, however, I realized we were just on a huge, curving pond - probably an oxbow lake left as the river floods and changes course over the years. But we were stopped, so I hooked in and set my new extra snow hook up under Devilfish & Parka's feet and made my rounds of the team while Pepper borrowed gleefully in the deep snow to the side of the trail.
When we got turned around and untangled, with what I think was less hesitation on the part of Norrin and Billie, I was disheartened to see the sled flying towards me with both snow hooks bumping upside down along the trail. I caught the sled, pulled up the snow hooks and wondered how the monster hook - designed for full teams of fourteen or sixteen dogs - had managed to get pulled loose by my little crew. Apparently there is more to setting snow hooks than stomping on them.
On the way back, I was further disheartened with Norrin and Billie didn't take the direction to turn back onto our trail home off the highway trail. It seems that either their hearing or their understanding is selective when it comes to turns. So far, we have good success when we come to clear forks where a left or right directional decision is about a forty five degree angle from our approach, but any time a turn means hauling over ninety degrees off of the straight trail or road under their feet, they stand with their noses pointed forward and look back at me blankly, no matter how obvious the other trail is.
Eventually we got the directions sorted out and headed down the trail towards home. We had a beautiful run back under the setting sun, and clocked in just 0.2 miles under my twenty mile goal. We pulled into the yard just at dusk, perfect timing, but I'm glad I had a headlamp in my pocket ready to go. We haven't done any night-runs yet this year, but I miss them and now that our forays into the woods are relatively trouble-free I can't imagine we'll go much longer before heading out under the stars.
