Angel Creek
Angel Creek Lodge on Mile Chena Hot Springs Road is the first checkpoint on the Quest. It’s about 100 trail miles from the starting line. Beside the Quest, several other races in the area go through or end at Angel Creek. Owners Annette and Steve have been very generous to dog mushers over the years. They also have great onion rings.
Usually, Angel Creek is bedlam on the first night of the race, but Saturday I walked in and actually found a place to sit down. Turns out that the warm weather had lured the rest of the crowd outside where they were standing by the area where teams were bedding down for their two-hour mandatory rest. Most teams stayed between four and six hours.
Rod was the last one in, at 1 a.m., but he was only a couple of minutes behind a group of four or five mushers. He got the dogs settled down and reorganized so that the males were as far away as possible from the two females who had been batting their eyelashes at them all day. Then he went into a cabin set aside for mushers and slept for a couple of hours.
I took out my little camp stool and sat at the head of the team to keep an eye on the dogs. Another handler brought his lawn chair over and we talked for a couple of hours and tried to stay warm. Temperatures at Angel Creek dipped well below freezing with a slight breeze and despite wearing three layers of clothes, I froze.
Rod was up by 4:30 and fed the dogs again, decided to drop Star because he wasn’t pulling and Rod didn’t want to lug him over Rosebud.
He left between 6:30 and 7 a.m. and I spent 30 minutes cleaning up his straw and leftover gear and drove home for a well-deserved nap.
Next stop, Mile 101 dog drop.