FROM ALASKA

FROM ALASKA

FROM ALASKA 21 January 2007:

Anne finishes the Copper Basin 300 in 9th place!

At the musher meeting before the race, the trail breakers told us it would be a hard fast trail. I am sure it was that way before the area received the 6-24" of snow that blanketed the area in the 2 days before the race started, and continued to fall during the race! As a result of this snow, it turned out to be a slow and tough trail with over half of the teams electing to scratch. With only a few brief exceptions (generally associated with having to carry a dog in the sled), I had a fantastic time on the race. The trail was better than I expected after hearing about all the snow that had fallen. I was able to conquer the fears I had before starting the race, and managed problems that I never even anticipated. Despite the fact that the race took much longer than I had anticipated, I had fun, and was very pleased with how the dogs and I finished.

Run 1: Start line in Glennallen to Chistochina (about 55 miles): I started 24 out of 26 mushers, so as a result, some of the early parts of the trail were very soft. The previously hard trail had been battered by the teams that went before me, so periodically the dogs would sink in up to their shoulders, or one runner of the sled would suddenly drop 6 inches. I had to be constantly alert to keep the dogs from getting injured and the sled from tipping over. As we neared Chistochina, the snow became very sparse (for this one section of the trail), and in several places trailbreakers had simply punched the trail through willow-filled ditches along the road. I was beginning to wonder what I had done to deserve being flogged by so many willow branches, and then I arrived in Chistochina. The run took a little longer than I had hoped, but the front-runners also took longer than last year by almost an hour, so I was content.

Todd was there and helped me park my team in a nice quiet spot where they would get a good 6-hour rest. Rose and Grace came out to welcome me and the dogs, then I went in to spend some time eating with them and trying to get some sleep. I was too geared up and not tired enough to do more than rest for an hour or two. I was also nervous about the next stretch of the trail which promised 70 miles of hills, open creeks, and overflow (wet areas where water has seeped on top of the ice and can be up to a couple of feet deep, although it is usually just a few inches). I would also face all this in the dark. I talked with Todd and other handlers and mushers, then went out to get the dogs ready to go. When I came back in to fill my thermos and say good-bye to the girls, I was just in time to see Rose throw-up. Todd was out watching the dogs, but luckily our neighbor Jeanne Sawatzky had stayed around to help Todd manage the girls and camp clean-up. She also happens to be an RN and she took charge of Rose until Todd came back in (between the two of them I knew Rose was in good hands).

On their way back to the motel, Todd was following another handler who pulled over to let him pass. He glanced in his rear-view mirror and saw her truck drifting too close to the shoulder and stopped to make sure everything was okay. It was not. The truck had leaked brake fluid and although they had tried to re-fill it, the brakes were still not working well. Todd gave the handler a ride back to Glennallen and took charge of the two dropped dogs she was caring for, while she arranged to for the truck to get towed in and fixed. Once Todd and the girls returned to the motel, they had a 2 am bath!

Run 2: Chistochina to Paxson (70 miles): This longest leg of the race was the one that I was most worried about (actually downright scared!). It is the most remote, I thought it would have the most difficult trail, and most significantly I would be doing the entire run in the dark. Slightly after the half-way point in the run, the trail goes over a summit that is the highest mountain in any dog race in Alaska.

When I left the checkpoint it was not only dark, but it was snowing. As I shot out of the checkpoint with 11 well-rested dogs, I felt as though I were on board the Millenium Falcon trying to make the jump to light speed. We did not have enough power to go that fast so the stars (snow) just keep coming at me near light speed. The first mile of trail shot through nearly snowless parking lots, across a creek, and around a couple of sharp corners, before settling into a nice trail. During the first half-hour after leaving the checkpoint, I comforted myself that if I ran into any problems, all I had to do was stop and wait for one of the mushers behind me. He lives in Chistochina and was thus running on his training trails. We ran into no problems- just lots of hills and snow. We passed one team about an hour into the run and another about three hours into the run. A little while after passing the second team, we crossed Excelsior Creek (the open water that my team flew across like champs) and began the long climb up the summit. Many times from here until Paxson I would catch sight of another musher somewhere in front of me. We never quite caught him, partly because of the fact that I was stopping every 20 minutes or so to reboot several dogs. The deep snow and overflow resulted in the booties coming off at much higher frequency than I am used to (on the first leg of the race I lost more booties than all season in training). Some of them had sore feet from the first leg so I really wanted their feet to stay protected now (one of the maxims of mushing is "no feet, no dog").

Each time I though we must finally be at the top, I would catch sight of the headlamp, still higher in front of me. The closer we got to the top, the windier it got. Luckily the trail breakers had done a good job establishing a base and marking the trail, and I never questioned whether I was in the right place. The wind was blowing fairly hard on the top and it was still snowing, but the dogs ran great and I felt we were making good time. The downhill part went well and after some snaking around an open river we ended up traveling along the Alaska Pipeline. This section was still hilly, but fairly straight and required less work driving the sled. It was about 6 am and I started to realize that I was tired!

After what seemed like hours on the pipeline, I saw the flashing lights that indicate a road crossing, which I thought meant we were within an hour of Paxson. I still do not understand what the trail did, but it took another half hour to reach to road crossing. As we crossed, the volunteer told me it was another hour and a half to Paxson. I asked how many miles and she did not know. This was not the news I wanted to hear! I had though we were almost there. Depending on whose team she based her estimate on, we were still over an hour from Paxson and possibly two hours away.

Traveling across what I assumed was Summit Lake, I caught another flash from the headlamp of the musher ahead of me. It cheered me to know we were not alone on this long run. As we approached the shore of the lake, I encountered the place Todd remembers best from his Copper Basin in 2003. He had described crossing a lake and seeing this path go straight up a huge hill. I thought this was before the summit and assumed we had already done the worst of the hills. Not so. Todd's description was perfect. The trail gets to the edge of the lake and proceeds STRAIGHT up a 100 foot hill that I would have a hard time walking up in the summer! Luckily I was with 11 fantastic athletes. I do not think they could have pulled me up if I stood on the runners, but as I walked with them up the hill they were definitely pulling me along with them. Many mushers help their dogs by running up the hills or pedaling (pushing with one foot). I quickly discovered that I am not in good enough shape to do much of this. Thankfully the dogs are in great shape and they needed almost no help.

Shortly after, our trail joined the Denali Highway and I knew we were almost in Paxson. The dogs would get an 8-hour break and I was able to get almost 3 hours of sleep.

When I awoke from my nap, the previously full room was empty and I had a moment of panic that I had overslept or something was wrong. Todd and the girls arrived and sat with me while I ate. Todd brought me up to date with the progress of the race. Although I felt like the last one in the checkpoint, there were still quite a few teams there, and a some had not yet arrived. They had rerouted the next leg of trail (normally a flat 17 mile run on the west side of the highway) due to excessive overflow. The trail now crossed the highway and ran along the pipeline again, climbing some significant hills in the process (the distance was uncertain).

I got the team ready to go, then went up to the checker cabin to wait for my departure time. The musher I had followed for so much of the run from Chistochina, was in the cabin trying to decide whether to scratch. This was to be his 300-mile Iditarod qualifier and he was having a number of problems. One of the checkers and I encouraged him to continue. As I headed out to start my run he said "You are tougher than I am". After I returned to Healy I looked up his biography and found out he runs marathons and triathalons and had finished 3 Ironmans. He does not sound like someone lacking in toughness, and I find myself wondering about what made the difference for each of us there in Paxson.

Run 3: Paxson to Meier's Lake to Sourdough (60-70 miles). Just after dark the team left Paxson and we were quickly moving down the trail. Less than a mile out we had to cross the highway. After years of perfect road crossings, my crack leaders Mike and Fuji decided to go onto the road and head south. I immediately slammed on the brake and tried to set the snowhook, but the plow had just gone by so there was no slowing them. Luckily one of the volunteers at the road crossing sprinted towards the dogs. Just as she was catching them, I threw my sled onto its side and skidded it into the berm at the side of the road. She helped me turn the team around (still not an easy feat) and get us back off the road and onto the trail. As we were climbing the umpteenth hill on the trail to Meier's Lake, I realized that Mike and Fuji were actually smarter than I thought. They must have looked at the highway and said "hey, this is a much firmer and more direct trail to where we are going, I bet we can get there in a little over an hour if we take this trail!" They probably would have been right. Instead, it took us a little under three hours, mostly traveling along the Alaska Pipeline. Before we left Paxson, the race official made sure to let us know that when we went under the pipeline, we needed to duck! There is a road along the pipeline on which we traveled and there are periodic gates which the trailbreakers do not have the authority to open. As a result, we had to make little jogs around the gates. Twice this entailed going under, immediately turning, and coming back under. On one of these I was literally ducked below by handlebar while the trail almost wrapped us around one of the huge upright metal cylinders that support the pipeline.

About halfway through the run another team passed us, but we stayed within headlamp distance all the way to Meier's Lake. In Meier's I was met by Todd and quickly dropped one dog. She was the one with the sorest feet and was not pulling well. I was glad to see our friend Susan Whiton was the vet at that checkpoint (many of our dogs have come from the kennel of Susan and her husband Vern Halter). In addition to being a top-notch veterinarian, Susan has studied chiropractic and accupuncture for dogs, and has completed both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest as a musher.

After putting on a few booties we headed out of Meier's Lake to Sourdough. Luckily, our neighbor David Sawatzky had warned me that there were some substantial hills on this stretch of the race, otherwise I would have been unprepared for everything about this section of trail.

The first half of this run required some very alert sled driving. There were many hills and turns and most of the trail was only a snowmachine wide. On many sections, I was fighting to keep the sled from going wide on the corners and "falling off the trail" into deep snow which would bring us all to a halt (when I got to Wolverine, Todd told me some of the Yukon Quest veterans were saying the same thing so I felt better). There was one stretch that felt like forever, but was probably less than a mile, where the trail wove back and forth between and around little trees. As we entered this stretch, the trailbreakers put up a warning mark (two trail markers crossed). As I was registering that this meant some trail hazard, the leaders dropped down a short hill and made a sharp left turn. As I hit the turn with the sled there were lots of branches at eye level so I had to close my eyes. I though "great I am going blind into some hazard." Somehow I made it through and only bumped one tree (which promptly covered me with snow; enough so I was temporarily blinded and also realized I must have been the first moron to hit that tree!).

One we made it through the first hairy part of the trail, fatigue set in. It was about midnight and I was going into my second night with only a few hours of poor sleep. Now that the sled did not require every ounce of my attention and muscle, I realized that I needed to find a way to stay awake. After trying several songs to no avail, I started in on a rousing "100 bottles of beer on the wall". To my amazement it was working. Around bottle 88, I decided to put Maverick in the sled. He had not been pulling well for over an hour and looked like he could use a rest. He got into the sled and rested pretty well for a while. Then he started "humming" along with my song. It was quite cute while it was humming. Around bottle 18, the trail suddenly came out of the woods, followed the highway for about 50 feet and headed back into the woods. This also helped wake me up, because I knew we could not be too far from the checkpoint now. As I finished the song, we hit the pipeline again. Maverick decided that this would be a good time to start barking/howling/whining. The rest of the team seemed to dislike his antics as much as I did. I tried to keep him quiet, but that command has always been lost on Maverick. All I could think about was the fact that there were videocameras installed at places along the pipeline, and wondering if there was a security guard somewhere watching my progress down the trail with howling, barking dog on board.

Finally we made it into Sourdough around 2:30 am. I knew Todd and the girls would be sleeping at the motel, and luckily Kaz Zirkle was out and about and put me in a great parking place. This checkpoint is a campground so there were unheated outhouses and a shelter the race organization had wrapped in plastic and tried to heat. The heating part was largely unsuccessful, but at least it was sheltered from the snow. I climbed into my sleeping bag and was able to get one solid hour of sleep on my left side, and another sleeping on my right side. After I woke up, I heard a team leaving as I put my gear back on. When I went outside I saw that I was one of only 3 teams left at Sourdough. What I did not know until I talked to Todd at Wolverine, is that a bunch of teams had scratched here in Sourdough, and a bunch more had scratched in Paxson.

Run 4: Sourdough to Wolverine (60 miles). Another Healy neighbor, Bobby James, helped lead my team out towards the main trail and we headed towards Wolverine. Gabon was not pulling hard from the start, but as all of them were moving a little stiffly at first I figured he would warm out of it (Todd had told me about how teams often look worse leaving checkpoints than coming into checkpoints in the late part of Iditarod. They get their muscles warmed up and take their potty breaks and are soon moving well down the trail. I figured this was my first look at that phenomenon). Soon the rest were moving well down the trail, and Gabon was running along, but not really contributing. Since he weighs close to 60#, I decided to leave him in the team unless it would be detrimental to him.

This part of the trail was relatively uneventful. The dogs moved well. We had a couple of big lakes to cross, and I ended up bagging Gabon across the first lake, and until we got off the second lake (Crosswinds). On Crosswinds Lake, I was glad to see the "soup people". These are folks that hand a cup water and a cup of soup to the mushers as they pass by. Both tasted WONDERFUL. They told me it was 25 miles to the next checkpoint, so I figured it would take about 4 hours to get there since we were not moving very fast at this point.

About 2 hours down the trail I came across a team camped on the trail as darkness was falling. I stopped to talk to the musher and it turned out that the dogs had quit running going up a long incline and the musher could not get them started again. They had fed all their snacks to the dogs already since it was only about 10 more miles to Wolverine. We decided to see if the team would follow me, and if not I would send help from Wolverine. I put a couple of dog snacks and some moose sticks for the musher in the other sled while I waited. I got my team past and going on, but the other team showed no desire to follow. I continued on the remaining distance and both the snow and wind picked up. The last few miles are crossing the ice of Lake Louise and I saw several lit up dwellings before finally seeing the bar that serves as the checkpoint. It was great to be there! After showing my mandatory gear, I passed along the information about the stuck musher and they organized a couple of snow machines to go see what the musher wanted to do.

Todd, Rose and Grace met the team and it was great to see them all. Neighbor Jeanne Sawatzky was there and Susan Whiton was there to take a look at my dogs as well. With all these great people it felt like coming home. Todd told me I was currently running in 10th place, which I had a hard time understanding since I could think of about 15 teams that should be in front of me. He then told me about all the teams that had scratched and that there were only 12 teams still in the race.

I slept a good three hours on the wooden bar floor and woke up slowly, but ready to take them to the finish.

Final Run: Wolverine to Tolsona to Finish (50 miles). Them team moved out of Wolverine under a sky full of stars and the coldest temperatures we had seen for the entire race (around 5-10 below zero). There had been two inches of fresh snow since I arrived in Wolverine, but our neighbor David Sawatzky had departed Wolverine about an hour before me so I had a wonderful, fresh trail to follow. The trail was mostly flat with gentle hills and curves. I greatly enjoyed the night full of stars and northern lights that flickered faintly across the sky. We made good time into Tolsona just as the edge of the sky was turning orange and pink. I left Tolsona feeling like we were home free.

We moved well out of Tolsona for the first 45 minutes. The one of the dogs, who had some sore muscles but had been moving well into Tolsona, slowed up climbing a hill. After a little more distance I decided to put her in the sled. We started moving again and over the next 15 minutes one of the little females threw up 5 times. Although she continued to pull hard in between times, I was worried about her, and it disrupted the momentum of the team. After a ways of starting and stopping, I decided it would be in the best interest of the dogs to stop and rest for a couple of hours. I stopped in a nice sunny spot, gave them a snack of soaked kibble, and took off all their booties. After having something to eat and drink myself, I sat down on the sled and took a half-hour nap. Then I walked up the line, gave each dog some attention and rubbing, and put booties on the few feet that were still sore. An hour and a half after I stopped for the rest, we were moving slowly down the trail. Within 15 minutes we were cruising along at about 6 mph again. Twenty minutes later we reached the highway and only three miles to go. One of the race officials drove by in a pick-up and told me I was only a mile from the end. We pulled up to the finish line with all the dogs looking great and all of us ready for a good long rest!

Reflections: One of the things that made this such a challenging race, was that it was a series of long runs (9-10.5 hours each) with relatively short rests in between (6-8 hours). In a race like Iditarod, most mushers start the race giving approximately equal rest and run (or maybe even longer rests than what they have run). So what I did in 5 runs, would have been 8 runs on Iditarod. The deep snow and many hills also made it a challenge for the canine athletes.

I felt great about how well our dogs handled the hills and deep snow, especially considering that neither are conditions they had seen in training this year. I was proud of myself, because the things I was worried about before the race turned out to be no big deal. The biggest challenges I faced were things that I had not anticipated, but that I was able to effectively solve. I was extremely grateful to Todd and the girls for being there at the checkpoints. Just seeing them made me feel we were all one team, even though I was out there by myself. Todd also knew just the right things to say, and not to say, that made me feel like everything was going great. The stories he has told me from his Iditarod and other racing experiences help me immeasurably as I dealt with the unexpected crises on the trail.

I have been considering running Iditarod for the last couple of years, but one of the conditions I made for myself was that I would have my qualifying races done before I signed up. This is partly to not have the additional pressure the year of Iditarod, but also to make sure I enjoyed running longer races and felt comfortable doing the races. From the start of the Copper Basin 300 (and even before the actual start of the race) I was far more relaxed than I ever thought possible. I survived the sleep deprivation, and quickly adapted to catch short, but sound sleep when available.

That night after the banquet I found myself thinking that it was fun for three days and 300 miles, but I was not sure I wanted to go 11-13 days and 1100 miles. Then I got up the next morning to feed the team. Watching how well they ate and jumped around even after such a hard race, I found myself thinking about the 24-hour layover in Iditarod, which most mushers take 250-450 miles into the race. I observed that this was probably the point for most teams when they need a good, long, break. After the break they are able to come back even stronger than they started the race. I was thinking about the possible checkpoints, and evaluating the merits and drawbacks of each one and thinking about where I should stop. Needless to say, I will be watching the Iditarod this year with a different perspective.

FROM ALASKA 10 January 2007:

This year at Hoof 'N' Woof Sled Dogs, it is Anne's turn to race.

Training has gone very well this year. I am working with the main team from last year, as well as nine 2-year old dogs that we hope will become the core of our race team over the next couple of years.

This weekend I will be taking the main adult team to race at the Copper Basin 300 in Glennallen, AK. Temperatures in Alaska are going back up (we have been -20 to -40 for the past week) and I am hoping to have the temperature stick around -10 to +10, a great temperature for dogs and mushers alike!

I will post an update on the race when we return next week. In the meantime, you may track my progress at the Copper Basin website, which typically provides frequent updates (www.cb300.com).

kennel@hoofnwoof.com

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