Life on the trail

The storm

We got out of Mile 101 just in time Sunday night. We decided to head back to town and worry about picking up Rod’s gear in Central and Circle later. Twelvemile Summit was already drifting over at 8:30 p.m. and we could barely see the road markers. Eagle Summit must have been a nightmare.

We wound up spending the night at Chatanika Lodge. When we got home Monday morning, we saw the reports of mushers stranded on Eagle Summit and on the trail to Mile 101. Although Rod’s early exit from the race had nothing to do with the weather, today I’m happy that he quit when he did. Since he got lost in a blizzard on the Tustamena 200 a few years ago and went missing for six days, I worry a bit more about him on the race trail than I would if his race history was unblemished. If he had been out in this storm, I would have been a basket case.

Eagle Summit is more exposed than the Caribou Hills on the Tustumena Trail, and I think it’s the most dangerous part of the Quest Trail. Although the mushers are generally capable of taking care of themselves, a storm like the one that hit Sunday night is a dangerous situation for them and their dogs. Even before the storm hit, the front-runners who crossed Eagle Summit early were saying the trail was scary this year. Those are all very tough, very experienced mushers. I don’t want to see a trail that scares them.

A race veteran asked me today why the Quest doesn’t reroute the trail around the summit, but I don’t think there is a viable trail or they would have done it years ago. Even in gold rush days, the trail from Circle to Fairbanks had to cross Eagle and Twelvemile summits. Maybe if a proposed road from Circle Hot Springs to Chena Hot Springs ever gets off the ground, that could be an alternative, but that’s years away, if it ever happens.

The latest reports are that the National Guard airlifted five mushers and teams off the summit Monday. I applaud the Yukon Quest for getting help so quickly. It seems everyone is OK, too. Snowmachines were heading out to break trail to get the remaining Quest 300 mushers into Mile 101.

I don’t know what the status of the airlifted mushers is. I doubt any of them had enough food for another 24 to 36 hours on the trail. Communications are poor. Mile 101 is basically a couple of mining shacks surrounded by tailing piles at the base of the hills. The only reason it works so well is that there is a team of terrific and dedicated volunteers who put it together. The ham radio operators are the chief communications link there, although the Quest may also have satellite phones.

I hope for good news, when there is any news.

Mile 101

I woke up at 10:30 Sunday morning after a two-hour nap and checked the weather for the Steese Highway. It was terrible and supposed to get worse. Rod figured he’d get into the checkpoint between 1 and 2 p.m., so I hurriedly fed the dogs that were left in the yard, repacked the truck and left, stopping to fill the truck and a five-gallon can with gas.

I wanted to get to 101 Mile so that I could pick up any dropped dogs in case he decided to make an early run for the summit before the storm moved in. The road was slick, so I had to drive very slowly and I worried I was going to miss him or cause him to fall behind. Silly me. I can only remember one time he turned up at a checkpoint before I expected him to, and sure enough, when I arrived at 3:30 he was nowhere to be found.

I walked around for a couple of hours talking to other handlers and mushers, who said the trail from Angel Creek was horrible. Jennifer Cochran said her team fell over a bank and got tangled up in some driftwood and Rod helped pull her out. She had a big bruise under her left eye. Other mushers were banged up and bruised and all had stories to tell of running into trees, teams balking at overflow, mishaps and near-misses. I knew Rod wasn’t going to be happy.

He wasn’t. A friend came over to say Rod had told a passing musher he was going to scratch. Damn. Damn. Double damn. He arrived about 6 p.m. as darkness fell and it began to snow heavily. I thought the dogs looked good coming in. I hoped I could talk him into continuing race so I could get over the summit before the storm shut it down.

But, he’d had enough. The team wasn’t up to the conditions they had had to go through and the leaders were totally bummed out. He’d lost confidence in them, and they in him. He had also come to the conclusion that running a long-distance race just wasn’t compatible with our lifestyle, with both of us working full time on opposite shifts and a toddler to take care of. There just aren’t enough hours in the day (or money in the bank.)

It was time to go, and with the weather worsening, there was no time to lose. We found a race official, Rod signed the scratch papers, we packed up the dogs and the truck and headed out into the storm.

Tidbits from the Trail

FRANKLY: After running every Yukon Quest in the race’s history, winning once and setting the all-time course record, Yukon musher Frank Turner is on the sidelines for this one while his son, Saul, runs it.

The view from the “other side” is very different. During the handler’s meeting, Frank asked whether he could drive to the North Pole dog drop. We all laughed, but realized that Frank has only seen it from the river.

Saturday night, I asked him how he felt and he said he felt wonderful. “My back doesn’t hurt, my shoulders don’t hurt.” He was keeping a close eye on his son, but wasn’t hovering over him offering advice.

I don’t know that Saul necessarily needs the advice. When he pulled into Angel Creek and Frank moved–too slowly, apparently–to lead the team into their parking spot, Saul hollered, “Keep up, old man!”

• • •

LESSONS LEARNED: While watching a vigorous discussion between one musher and race officials over whether a dog should be dropped, the handler — an Iditarod finisher — sitting next to me leaned over and whispered, “Mushing teaches you a lot about yourself, and sometimes you don’t like what you find.”

• • •

STORM CLOUDS: I live along Chena Hot Springs Road, so when Rod left Angel Creek, I drove home to take a nap before heading over Mile 101 Steese Highway dog drop and the road over Eagle Summit to Central. I just looked at the weather forecast, which is calling for 30 to 40 mph winds and blowing snow over the summit tonight. I’m heading out the door and hope to beat the storm. I hope Rod does, too.

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.

And, he’s off

After months of preparation and watching our credit card balances soar into the stratosphere, Rod is finally on the trail.

After years of entering sled dog races, we’ve got our pre-race timing pretty much figured out. Rod fed the dogs a meaty broth about 7 a.m., we started loading them in the truck at 8:15 and we left for the starting line at 8:30 on the dot. The first team left the gate at 11 a.m.

When we got to the staging area behind the borough building, we took the dogs out of the truck so they could pee and stretch their legs and eat a snack. Then we loaded them up again so they wouldn’t get overexcited while Rod finished loading his sled and made last-minute adjustments. An hour before we were due to start, we unloaded the dogs again, started putting booties on them, then harnessed them and put them on the gangline right as the snowmachines arrived to help us down to the river and the start line.

The Quest handled the start very well. We had lots race volunteers help us get to the line, so the team stayed under control and the timing was perfect. It’s probably the easiest time I’ve ever had getting to the starting line of a race.

And the crowd was tremendous! I’ve never seen so many people hanging out downtown. The weather was perfect for spectators, although a bit too warm for the dogs. I had my camera with me, but was too busy meeting up with old friends and getting the dogs ready to take any pictures. I hope someone else will post one.

People always want to know our dogs’ names so, here they are: Slug, Zorro, Freddie, Shadow, Blue, Margarita, Nugget, Summit, Barney, Ethel, Roger, Spruce, Tank and Star. This is roughly in the order they are in the team, starting from the front on back.

Oh, Calcutta

At the Start Banquet on Thursday before the race, organizers sprang a new fundraising strategy on the unsuspecting mushers. When it was time to draw starting positions, organizers announced that they were holding a Calcutta. In essence, they wanted the audience, made up mostly of friends and families of the mushers, to bid on the mushers in two categories: first musher to Angel Creek and first musher to Whitehorse, with handicaps for rookies and veteran mushers who had not finished near the front of the pack in the past.

While I do applaud the Quest officials for trying to find creative ways to raise money, I think this event could have been handled differently.

First of all, no one knew it was coming. Second, it was too personal. The mushers were standing on a stage being bet on like they were a date package at a bachelor’s auction. It was especially hard on the rookies and the mushers who just wanted to finish, for whom finishing in the top 10 or even in the money isn’t an issue. No one was going to put money on an unknown. And, for a race in which a third of the mushers scratch every year, this is the wrong kind of pressure to put on mushers who are just trying to complete the 1,000 mile course.

Looking around at the expressions of other mushers at the banquet who realized that they would be “sold” in front of a couple hundred people, many of them loved ones, I wasn’t the only one to feel like this.

Nice try, but wrong venue.

Millionaire musher?

In her biography on the Yukon Quest Web site, Wasilla veteran Kelley Griffin listed “game-show contestant” as her occupation. Kelley was sitting at my table during the Start Banquet, so I asked her about it.

It’s true.

Last fall, Kelley appeared on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” She flew to New York, at her own expense (she said she used frequent flier miles and stayed with a friend in New Jersey.) Contestants on the show have to pass an exam before they’re considered to appear on the show. Kelley made four consecutive appointments to pass the exam, which she did on the third try. Then, she said the magic words, “Alaska” and “Iditarod,” (she’s an Iditarod veteran) and was accepted to appear on the syndicated show.

Although she said it only takes answering 15 questions correctly to win $1 million, she didn’t get quite that far during her appearance in October 2005. The show aired in December. However, she brought home $25,000 after answering questions about the moon’s gravitational pull and the origin of the term ‘jodphurs,’ among others, and was very pleased with her showing.

The rules

Whoo hoo! I got a new rake!

While this may seem like a weird thing to get excited about, it’s the first time I’ve ever gotten anything, besides little abuse and a smattering of gratitude for being a handler on a sled dog race. Even more so, because I can recall trying to clean up a musher’s leftover straw with only my hands and a shovel because I forgot to bring more appropriate tools. This year, the Quest gave one brand-new broom rake to each team during the annual handlers meeting to help with the cleanup chores that are a major part of our duties during the race.

The rakes were given out during the meeting race officials have with the handlers before the race to go over the rules and let us know what we can and can’t do on the trail. The main rule is that mushers cannot get outside help during the race, and that remains in force. What has changed is that race officials acknowledge that the dogs’ safety is paramount, and that while handlers still can’t touch the dogs, we can help ensure that they stay safe while in checkpoints.

In years past, I thought the rules were prohibitively restrictive. After the mushers left the starting line, we were told all we could do was show up at the checkpoints to pick up dropped dogs and clean up after the mushers. Officials didn’t want us to have any extraneous contact with mushers, out of fears that we would somehow give them assistance and help them to cheat.

This year, the rules are more realistic. Handlers still can’t give mushers any gear or hands-on help, but we can help them park the teams at checkpoints and stay in the vicinity to keep an eye on the dogs while the mushers rest. I always thought it was unrealistic to expect the mushers to be able to rest at checkpoints and leave their teams unsupervised, especially early in the race while the dogs are still fresh. As a checker during local mid-distance races, I can think of a number of times I had to scramble to find a sleeping musher to tell him/her that dogs were loose, or worse, fighting.

If the dogs are in danger of being hurt, such as if a fight breaks out or the dogs swerve onto a road, passers-by can help break up the fight or turn the team around to prevent a potentially serious problem. Mushers still have to deal with routine tangles and handlers can’t help care for or feed the dogs in checkpoints. But we can keep an eye on them, and that is a tremendous relief, especially this year when a thin snowpack means the mushers may have a difficult time keeping teams anchored.

On the trail again

We’re running the Quest again.

Although Rod and 14 of our dogs will actually be running the 1,000 mile trail from Fairbanks to Whitehorse, I say “we” because I am going on the trail as his handler. In the Quest, more than any other mid- or long-distance sled dog race, the handler plays an important role, although it’s largely behind the scenes.

In the Iditarod, once the mushers leave the starting line, race volunteers take care of the various chores associated with sled dog racing such as cleaning up the straw and leftover food and gear at checkpoints and taking care of dogs dropped because they’re tired or injured. In the Yukon Quest, a musher’s handler takes care of the cleanup and the dropped dogs. We also help keep our mushers on the trail. Read more »