Capturing dogged determination — Documentary follows Junior Iditarod musher from training to finish

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

What’s it like to be 14 years old on the runners of a dog sled mushing in the most prestigious junior mushing race in Alaska?

For 26 minutes, audiences can find out.

“Trails North — One Girl’s Quest to Run the Junior Iditarod,” is a 26-minute documentary film following Meredith Mapes, a young musher from Wasilla, as she trains for and races in the 2008 Junior Iditarod. The film will be shown at 4 p.m. Saturday at Triumvirate Theatre in the Peninsula Center Mall in Soldotna. Admission is free.

Joe Rizzo, president of Triumvirate, got a grant to film the documentary with his daughter, Miranda, who is a junior mushing fanatic herself. Bob Mabrey, who has a production studio in Nikiski, helped with the filming.

The documentary follows Mapes as she trains for the race in the summer of 2007 up through running the Junior Iditarod on Feb. 28, 2008.

“We wanted to do something on the Iditarod and have a way to teach kids about the Iditarod in a way that would capture their interest and attention, so we thought by documenting someone their age in the Junior Iditarod race we could also convey information about the big race to them,” Rizzo said.

There are interviews with Mapes, her parents, one of the founders of the Junior Iditarod, and a special guest appearance by musher Libby Riddles, the first woman to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. During the race, the Rizzos took a snowmachine out to Yentna Station checkpoint and filmed and interviewed mushers as they came in to rest.

Meeting the mushers was the highlight for Miranda.

“It was really fun. I got to meet Meredith, she’s my new friend now. It was fun meeting Libby and going on a dog sled ride and learning lots of new stuff. It was exciting to see Meredith coming in. I waited out there until she got in,” Miranda said.

She said the film would be especially good for other young mushers to watch, because they’ll learn about what it’s like to be in Junior Iditarod and about mushing in general.

Rizzo said he was impressed to learn the determination the kids have in training for and competing in a 140-mile, two-day race.

“That’s a tremendously long way to go on a dog sled. It’s a long ways on a snowmachine, much less dog sled,” he said.

Copies of “Trails North” are on sale for $10 and will be available at Triumvirate.

Quest complete — Peninsula mushers face trials of the trail

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Jason Mackey faced a perfect storm in the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race starting Feb. 14, although weather was one of the few things that didn’t go wrong for him.

“It was just a chain reaction of crazy events that I’ve never seen in training,” Mackey said. “The trail was as good as it’s ever been, it was like a superhighway the whole way. But overall I had many, many issues, right from the beginning.”

Coming out of Braeburn, the first checkpoint, his 14-dog team started getting sick with vomiting and diarrhea. He dropped one dog in Carmacks and another in Pelly, but just two hours after leaving Pelly on a 200-mile run to Scroggie, he already had one sick dog and another injured one in the sled, along with hundreds of pounds of food and gear.

“I worked my butt off. Man, I never worked so hard in my life,” Mackey said.
Those two were dropped in Scroggie, and another in Dawson, leaving Mackey’s team at nine dogs, with still over half of the 1,000-mile race to go.

“It wasn’t through the whole team at one time, just here and there throughout the team, so it was pretty disheartening,” Mackey said of the illness. “I had full faith in those dogs. I thought that I had everybody weeded out.”

A new form of disaster stuck as he was leaving Dawson — three of his females went into heat.

“By the end of 850 miles I had dealt with a little bit of everything. It got to the point where they wanted to give up, they wanted to breed and fight amongst each other, but I didn’t want to give up,” Mackey said. “We’ll walk over the (Eagle) Summit together, even if I had to take them over one at a time. I didn’t care, but they had something else in mind.”

Mackey has always told his family that if they get a call from him during a 1,000-mile race, something’s wrong.

“I called three times in that race,” he said.

One call was to his brother, Lance Mackey, who has won the Quest four times and also won the last two Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Races.

“He’d been there before and he knew what I was going through. ‘You need to do what you need to do. Either they’ll go down the trail or they won’t,’” he said.
Mackey scratched in Central the morning of Feb. 25.

“After day 11 or day 12 of dealing with those situations a guy gets pretty burned out. As bad as I want to get to the finish line, it’s kind of one of those things where s--- happens and everybody’s been through it. My brothers, my dad, the best mushers in the world,” Mackey said. “I felt like I let everybody down, including myself and the dogs. They didn’t learn anything by turning around and getting in the truck, except they think they can do that now.”

To say Mackey is disappointed is an understatement; especially considering the investment of time, money and effort it took to get him to the start line. But he sees a silver lining. For one, he learned more about his dogs, including one of his leaders, Banger.

“She was absolutely incredible the whole way. She’s 48 pounds and she’s pulling 400 pounds of gear down the trail basically by herself. Everybody else is screwing around and she’s all business and she didn’t ever want to quit,” Mackey said.

Brutal though the lessons may have been, Mackey said the Quest was a learning experience for him and he’s shooting to reapply his knowledge within the next three years.

“I was bummed but I think it made me a better musher in the long run. How do I fix the things I saw fall apart in front of me? And I do have answers for that now, so my goal is to be back in the Quest with a whole different outlook on the race,” Mackey said. “I also have unfinished business there in the Quest. That’s what I have in mind — to race and win. That might sound confident from a guy who just scratched, but I’m not going there to come in second place.”

Third place, second to none

Jon Little’s team put forth a winning effort in the 2009 Yukon Quest. Even though they finished two spots and 58 minutes behind the leader, he said the race was a victory for him.

“In lot of ways (the race went) as good as can be expected, and I expect a lot, so I’m very happy with the dogs. My mission is always for the dogs to do their best, and I feel they did,” Little said. “… I left nothing on the trail. I tried everything I could and just two teams had a little more conditioning there at the end.”

Little said he tried a new approach this race of running his dogs longer but at a little slower pace, at times tackling eight-hour runs and resting for about four and a half.

“My attempt was to hustle things up a little bit. I wanted to set a pace where people could either stay with me or give up. But you run the risk of hurting your own chances because you’re kind of in the red zone of resting the dogs,” he said.

Little was in the lead coming out of McCabe Creek, Stepping Stone, Scroggie and Dawson, but slipped to third and couldn’t make up the difference.

“Eagle Summit always affects the race somehow,” Little said.

He and the two other frontrunners, Sebastian Schnuelle and Hugh Neff, reached the formidable ascent at night. Blowing snow had obscured the trail and created drifts.

“There were no discernible trail markers at night, no reflectors. It was only my second time up. I wasn’t quite sure where I was supposed to go up the hill. As it turns out, you go up anywhere. I couldn’t convince my dogs to go up in a headwind with such steep drifts on a hill,” Little said.

He found Neff camped out in his sled bag, waiting for morning to try the climb.
“At the time it seemed like a good idea to me, too,” Little said.

At dawn, Neff and Little took turns helping each other get their teams to the top, with one pulling the gang line in front and one pushing the sled from behind. As they were getting Little’s team to the top he spotted Schnuelle and William Kleedehn doing the same thing.

“At that point the first three were in the same spot. Sebastian basically said, ‘See you later Will,’ and he went for the win. His dogs had just incredible conditioning and good training. He was able to maintain good, steady speed. And Hugh has an amazing ability to go fast even late in the race,” Little said. “My guys coming off Eagle Summit slowed down to an easy trot, which ordinarily wouldn’t have been bad if I had a little lead. It was a fine speed for finishing the race but I couldn’t gain on anybody.”

Little wonders what might have been had his team not been involved in a vehicle collision on the Sterling Highway in October. Four dogs died from the crash and two others were injured.

“My lack of leaders was directly a result of that accident. Probably three dogs were in the rotation to run lead, and who knows which one of them would have done well,” he said.

Eagle Summit also looms as a “What if?” but Little isn’t spending much time looking back.

“It’s pretty hard to convince a dog team who doesn’t want to go a certain direction to go that way,” he said. “They didn’t want to go until morning. It boils down to better training in the preseason, a little longer runs and working on leaders.”

Finishing with a healthy team, gaining confidence with a more aggressive run schedule and being within striking distance of the lead were victories for Little.

“I’ve never been in position at that point in a race where I’m in the hunt to win. That’s a plateau I’ve never been on before,” he said.

“I thank everybody who helped me out. There’s been some local support and several people chipping in to help,” especially with veterinary bills and surgery following the accident, Little said. “It’s a community effort to get any one musher up the trail, so I’m really grateful.”

Challenged to succeed

An American musher from Kasilof traveled through Canada and Alaska with an Englishman, a Jamaican and a French Canadian.

Colleen Robertia was looking for a unique experience in her rookie run of the Yukon Quest, and she definitely found it.

“Overall, it went well. It was quite the adventure,” she said.

Robertia’s main goal was to maintain a healthy team while finishing the race. She and her husband, Joseph, maintain a small kennel with several rescues. One of her late-addition Quest team dogs, Arrow, came from the Kenai Animal Shelter.

“I’m really proud of my guys, especially because my philosophy is a very humane approach. We have a small kennel and they have a lifelong home here. It’s really hard to finish well and finish in the money, so to do that successfully and still have all the same guys here, it’s really rewarding because you know, even though I haven’t turned heads, you can do this humanely if you choose to,” she said.

The race was a series of firsts for Robertia — her and her dogs’ first 1,000-mile race, Robertia’s first tangle with massive expanses of jumble ice and her first experience with the isolation of multiday runs between checkpoints.

She led in some respects, too, maintaining the biggest team for most of the race, and finishing the last leg in the fastest time. She ended up placing 12th in her rookie run, sandwiched between Mark Sleightholme, of England, and Newton Marshall, of Jamaica, and ahead of Luc Tweddell, of Yukon Territory.

Sleightholme, Robertia and Marshall were been dubbed “the triplets,” since their teams were well-matched and ended up running more or less with each other for the second half of the race.

“The team did very well. I’m really happy with how they looked. I guess I’m proud of how I did with the dog team I had. … I got a lot of compliments just of how great they looked and how great their attitudes were,” she said.

Robertia said she started out slow and conservative, and made it a point to rest her team longer than she ran them.

“The only time I cut rest was to move with (Sleightholme and Marshall) over Eagle Summit, because I knew that was going to be the biggest challenge, likely of my mushing career. I wanted to be able to move with them for the benefit of the team. If they can see other teams around them, if nothing else they can chase them. Dogs just have a different attitude when other dog teams are around,” she said.

Long runs on the Yukon River posed a new challenge for Robertia.

“Jumble ice. Not just jumble ice, we’re talking about 100 miles of jumble ice. Three days at a time on it,” Robertia said. “The trail markers did a good job kind of weaving a path through it. There were times when I felt like a pinball in a pinball machine. I really felt like I got to be a better sled driver from this race, as well.”

She got to be a better pilot during her descent from Rosebud Summit when her brake broke.

“It’s 100 yards long but basically beyond vertical, so you’re dropping but you’re basically not even in contact with the ground,” Robertia said. “It goes by so fast you don’t have time to panic, but I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I think I’m flying right now.’ I think the dogs were even like, ‘Oh my goodness, I think she’s flying right now.’”

The distance between checkpoints was both a hardship and one of the things Robertia enjoyed about the Quest. It was difficult having to haul enough gear and being on her own for days at a time between official checkpoints, but it also meant taking advantage of the unofficial checkpoints along the way — remote cabins where people share a fire, dish up some moose or bear stew and swap stories.

“For them, it’s their television. That’s really exciting to hear all about the trail and what we’ve encountered. It’s almost like a symbiotic relationship because they get something out of it, but it’s really nice for you, too,” Robertia said.

Putting her dogs to the test and watching them succeed was another reward of the challenge.

“Seeing my dogs go through something that they’d never gone through before, something so challenging for them and just hoping they’ll still trust me and hoping I’m not breaking that bond I have with them. Wanting to explain to them, ‘There’s 200 miles, guys, hang in there.’ They’d keep their tails wagging. That was definitely the biggest challenge for me to see them go through something and not be able to explain to them what the end goal was, just hoping that they sensed it through me,” she said.

In the end, it was the most difficult parts that will make the fondest memories.

“The hardest things to overcome are things I’ll keep with me forever. As hard as it was when I’m out there, I wouldn’t trade it now that it’s over and I’ve gone through my first 1,000-mile race. I wouldn’t change it,” Robertia said.

Special delivery — Dog mushers had treacherous job of Alaska’s first overland postal routes

By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

When the price of sending a letter through the U.S. Postal Service rises to 44 cents in May, people will complain, even though that 44 cents can carry their letters all the way across country, often in just two or three days. A hundred years ago, when the price was about two or three cents per letter, the mail took much longer to reach distant destinations, traveling much more difficult routes.
This increase in difficulty was perhaps more true in Alaska than anywhere else.

For instance, a resident of the village of Kenai a century ago might receive mail occasionally by boat from Homer in the summertime, but seldom or not at all throughout the winter. When ice made boat traffic unsafe on Cook Inlet, any mail that actually reached Homer would have to be transported overland to Kenai, or held onto until better conditions existed.

According to Ruth Grueninger’s postal history in the book, “Once Upon the Kenai,” the beach and overland routes were used initially by Paddy Ryan, who toted the mail on foot to Kenai’s first postmaster, Eugene R. Bogart, who was appointed in 1899, and to Bogart’s many successors.

Ryan was followed by Gregory George Brown, who used a horse to make the trip, and by Nick Kalifornsky, who employed a dog team for the task.

According to Alan Boraas, anthropology professor at Kenai Peninsula College, many Dena’ina men other than Kalifornsky also ran the mail route. When any of these mail carriers encountered the wide swaths of water presented by the Kenai and Kasilof rivers, they most likely used a boat, left by canneries operating near the river mouths, to cross to the other side. When the boats were on the wrong side, he said, they probably hailed the cannery caretaker or winter watchman to bring them across in his dory.

At smaller streams, such as the Ninilchik River, Deep Creek or the Anchor River, they likely headed upstream to find a suitable crossing over the ice, he said.

When most of the mail began to channel through the “Gateway City” of Seward — arriving in the ice-free port via steamship, and then heading out from the southern terminus of the recently established Iditarod Trail — the challenge of hauling the mail to Kenai changed. In 1918, longtime Kenai resident Paul Wilson Sr. was awarded a Star Route contract to carry the mail by dog team to Kenai.

Star Routes were developed by the U.S. Congress in 1845 to provide the swiftest and most secure means of mail delivery possible at the lowest possible price. A contract, which typically lasted four years, was put out to bid, and the lowest bidder was usually awarded the deal.

In Alaska, over terrain that could change drastically with each passing storm or warming trend, the task of arriving on time and in one piece could be exceedingly difficult, according to Dr. Linda Chamberlain, a Homer-based sled-dog musher and epidemiologist who is currently writing a book on the historic use of dog sleds to deliver the mail.

The first Star Route in Alaska was awarded in 1894 to Tlingit musher Jimmie Jackson, who had the prodigious task of delivering mail from Juneau more than 1,000 miles to Circle, north of Fairbanks. He managed the feat a single time, traveling from Juneau by a canoe to Atlin Lake, British Columbia, and then on foot and by dog team the rest of the way.

On the trip, Jackson had to hunt and fish to feed himself and his team; however, the rigors were too much.

“Two dogs dropped dead in their tracks,” Chamberlain said. “He had to use the last one for food.”

Another tough Star Route pioneer was Ben Downing, who ran a mail sled between Dawson and Eagle, starting in 1899. In 1903, on the way to Dawson, Chamberlain said, Downing and his dog team went through the ice. He managed to extract himself from the water but the dogs did not survive. Alone and with his feet frozen, he walked the rest of the way — nearly 300 miles — to Dawson.

“When he arrived in town, the bloody footprints came all the way in,” Chamberlain said. Downing refused to allow his feet to be amputated, and he died two years later of complications resulting from his injuries.

Downing’s story is indicative of the toughness and perseverance of the pioneer sled-dog mail carriers, Chamberlain said. They were expected to be on time, and they knew they could lose money or even their contracts if they were late.

Star Routes were “a very important source of income for rural Alaskans. There were many, many Native carriers. The Star Routes created a whole economy,” Chamberlain said.

This economic boost became particularly evident when the Alaska Road Commission surveyed the Iditarod Trail, from Seward to Nome, in 1910, and when it became the official northern mail route in 1911. Roadhouses sprang up every 25 to 50 miles along the trail as people in the Bush found ways to tap into local travel, said Chamberlain, whose book, “Mushing the Mail,” she hopes to have ready for publication by the 100th anniversary of the Iditarod Trail in 2011.

The trail sprang up initially as a means for prospectors and fortune-seekers to reach the gold-mining towns of Iditarod and Nome.

“It was brutal out there,” Chamberlain said. “So the Iditarod Trail created a system of safety and support.”

Chamberlain recalled one particularly gruesome pretrail tale: “They found a mail carrier frozen (in 1907). He was buried in snow outside of Nome, and somebody saw a protruding hand and dug down and found him with his dogs wrapped around him. And the mail was dated 1901.”

From the main Iditarod Trail sprang up ancillary trails, such as Paul Wilson’s route to Kenai, which began in Cooper Landing or in Lawing, depending on which site had the official U.S. post office at the time.

According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service historian Gary Titus, who has researched and traced the Seward-to-Kenai mail run, the route varied somewhat from winter to winter because the conditions were so variable. In 1923, he said, the ARC performed a reconnaissance of the route and prompted some upgrades.

Those upgrades included new shelter cabins, some repairs to existing structures and widening of the trail in places. Eighteen miles of new trail was cut to a width of 9 feet, Titus said, and 27 miles of the old trail was widened to 5 feet.

In virtually all types of weather, carriers traveled with freight sleds, often packed with hundreds of pounds of mail. These sleds were longer than a modern racing sled and narrower and more sturdily built, usually of hickory or ash. Carriers rarely rode on the backs of their sleds, and travel could be very slow as they occasionally walked in snowshoes out in front of the dogs to break trail in heavy snow.

Generally, according to Titus, the carriers followed this route into Kenai: From the west (river outlet) end of Kenai Lake, they followed a light-duty wagon road along the southern bank of the Kenai River until they reached Schooner Bend, where a bridge had been constructed in 1920. Now on the river’s northern bank, they followed a continuation of the wagon road until they moved onto a higher bench for easier travel.

They followed the bench until they reached Jean Creek, which they followed up to Jean Lake. They crossed the length of the lake and climbed the low pass to Upper Jean Lake, from which they descended into a series of lowland lakes and swamps that led them to the Moose River. They followed the Moose River to its confluence with the Kenai River, and then followed a Native river trail on into Kenai.

The round trip could be made in seven to eight days under good conditions, but the carriers were given 30 days in which to do it.

In 1930, airplanes began to land on the Kenai beach once a month with the mail, and by 1934 an airstrip was created on the bluff. By 1940, the end of the mail-sled era was at hand. The bulk of the mail throughout Alaska was now being carried by airplanes, which could arrive every day on the airstrips carved next to some rural communities.

By 1940, Kenai had had 13 different postmasters and had moved its post office nearly a dozen times, usually from one person’s home to another, but the price of postage to send a letter across the country was still three cents.

The price rose to four cents in 1958. As usual, people complained.

Dog days of fashion — Special jackets will help keep team ready to run in Iditarod

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

As Dallas Seavey mushes his sled dogs through temperatures that could plunge to minus 50 degrees or colder during the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race starting this week and beds his team down at rest stops along the trail, Julie Bowman will be warm and comfortable in her home in Sterling. But she’ll still have a hand in keeping Seavey’s team cozy and their muscles limber, even from thousands of miles away.

Seavey, son of 2004 Iditarod champ Mitch Seavey, approached Bowman this winter about making adjustable jackets for his dogs to use in the Iditarod. Bowman, who runs a sewing business, Julie’s Ideas, out of her home, was intrigued.

“I had a lot of fun with it and just think it was a neat project,” she said. “I certainly enjoy doing special-order things like that, instead of making 400 pairs of socks. I just enjoy the different projects and enjoy the challenge of making something new.”

Seavey brought Bowman a jacket he wanted her to modify and re-create for his team. The jacket fits over the front legs of the dog and fastens with Velcro over the shoulders, so it’s adjustable for different-size dogs. The material is an insulating polar fleece on the inside with a wind-resistant coating on the outside. She also made some from a less-expensive fabric with a more rubbery exterior, so Seavey can compare how each holds up on the trail. Bowman also sewed in three pockets, one over each shoulder and one over the chest, that can hold packets of chemical warmers to keep the dogs’ muscles warm and limber.

Seavey said he uses the jackets mostly when he’s resting the dogs to keep them warm, and to prevent and treat muscle soreness. He also uses them on the trail when it gets particularly cold.

“In my case if I have a dog that’s thin or a shorter-hair dog, in a year like this when we could see 50 to 60 below, it really helps them to stay warm and conserve calories. If they’re a shorter-hair dog it lets them stay more comfortable and rest a little better,” he said.

He’s bought similar jackets before, but the outlet in Alaska he used to get them from isn’t open anymore, and he didn’t want to shop in the Lower 48. He also wanted someone who could customize the jackets.

“I thought we could make them a little bit better than we were getting. More to fit my dogs, which tend to be little bit smaller than most people’s,” Seavey said. “I also have a lot of sewing stuff I have around mushing. When I found Julie’s contact information, I thought it would be good to start building a rapport, to kind of have this stuff done locally. My parents have run a business on the peninsula all of my life, and now that’s what I’m doing, so we like to have as much done locally as we can.”

Seavey and his wife, Jen, are living and training in Kasilof this winter. In the summer they run WildRide Sled Dog Show in Anchorage, an extension of the Ididaride Sled Dog Tours business the family operates in Seward in the summer.

Seavey has trained dogs with his dad for years and ran training teams of 2-year-olds in two previous Iditarods, just like his wife will do this year. This is Seavey’s first year running competitively in the Willow-to-Nome race, which starts Saturday.

“My dogs are looking absolutely incredible. It’s the first team I’ve trained entirely by myself, for myself. It’s been fun doing things a little differently, and it’s working out well. All my dogs are happy and healthy and ready to race,” he said.

Keeping his dogs healthy is one of his primary goals.

“For me, being my first competitive Iditarod, I really want to not overpush the dogs and see that the dogs are maximized and they place as high as they are capable of placing, and having a nice healthy team the whole way,” he said. “Halfway through you see teams in rough shape and I would really like to avoid that.”

Having the jackets will help.

“Especially if it is really cold you put everything warm on them to keep them a little bit warmer,” he said.

The same goes for the mushers. Bowman made neck gaiters for Dallas and Jen Seavey, as well as Rachel Scdoris, a legally bind musher.

Bowman said she started her business in 1995 doing primarily knitting, but has since switched to fleece products.

She sells her hats and other gear at Sweeney’s and Trustworthy Hardware locally, as well as craft shows. Beyond that she occasionally takes on custom projects.

“A lot of it is just people saying, ‘Do you have or can you make?’ Or, ‘I have this really cool hat I like but I can’t find it anywhere,’” she said.

A lot of Bowman’s work is for family or charity, including donating 300 to 400 hats to SOAR International, a Christian outreach mission, to distribute in Russia each year, so she didn’t mind the extra work and tight deadline to help out local mushers.

“Dallas called and said he wondered if I could make them and can I have them ready in two weeks? I needed something to think about. It gave me something interesting to do,” she said.

On ice: Mushing, carving events postponed or canceled due to lack of winter

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Organizers of an event the size of the Peninsula Winter Games have a challenging task in ironing out all the details required to hold a communitywide event, but they’d gotten it all taken care of — volunteers were lined up, space had been reserved, announcements were made; everything was ready to bring the peninsula out to the games.

But somebody forgot to take care of the “winter” part.

With the Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race, Al York Memorial Junior Musher Sled Dog Race and ice carvings scheduled to begin over the weekend, the weather turned from a two-week, below-zero cold snap to rain and temperatures in the 40s, washing away hopes of events that depend on winter conditions.

“The weather’s the one thing we can’t control, and that’s frustrating,” said January Yeager, project coordinator for the Soldotna Chamber of Commerce.

Typically, the first weekend of the Peninsula Winter Games includes volunteers cutting 2-ton blocks of ice from the pond along Marathon Road in Kenai, which local carvers use to create ice sculptures around town.

On Saturday, the pond was covered with water.

“There’s like a foot of water on top of the pond. We can’t ask volunteers to go out there and do that. It’s not safe. You’re working with 2-ton blocks of ice and cold water on top of that, so it’s not good,” Yeager said.

The ice carving was canceled.

“It’s a total bummer,” she said. “There was just way too much water on there to get equipment out there and everything. And that’s one of the best things. They’re so cool to look at.”
Well, not so cool at 40 degrees.

“Yeah, exactly,” Yeager said.

While the carving event fell victim to a lack of good ice, the Peninsula Sled Dog and Racing Association’s Al York kids’ mushing races fell victim to too much ice.

Warmth, rain, then overnight freezing have left the mushing trails by the Soldotna Airport bare in spots, icy in others and with just a weak layer of crusty snow in the trees.

“It would be bad for the dogs. Dogs can’t negotiate this ice, there’s really nothing we can do for them,” said Mindee Morning, one of the event organizers. “They have a little bit of a stud system built in, but I’ve had a few dogs fall in the dog yard, hitting their chins or splaying their legs out. Put a load on that and try it, it’s not the best of things. People can do it and dogs do it all the time, but I voted for no, especially with kids. It’s really hard to fall on the ice.”

Danny Seavey, race organizer, said the event is now scheduled for March 21, to be held in conjunction with the Clark Bradford Memorial Race on March 22 — if conditions improve by then, of course.

“Just do a snow dance every single day, because dogs don’t ice skate,” Morning said. “I have a bunch of dogs, they don’t know what happened. They don’t know why they’re not running.”

Morning asks that people and dogs stay off the trails until they do get more snow.

“It’s just better right now for everyone to stay off the trails. Hopefully we’ll groom as soon as we can,” she said. “In the trees, there is snow, similar to what you’re seeing on the side of the road or any trails where snowmachines can’t go. It’s crusty on top and they’ll fall through and just pound it down into little lumps of ice.”

The Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race is in a holding pattern waiting for snow, as well. It was supposed to start this Saturday, but has been pushed back a week until Jan. 31 in hopes of better conditions.

“The reason we did that is the lack of snow and the trail conditions, so we’re giving it another week,” said Tami Murray, executive director of the T-200. “We got 4 inches of snow on Saturday night up in the hills, but we still need a lot more down low, so keep your fingers crossed.”

Pushing the race back creates some logistical challenges, especially for mushers who may have had other plans for the 31st.

“We had a couple that had to withdraw, one because of the Yukon Quest. The food drop is that same weekend,” Murray said.

Kasilof musher Jason Mackey will miss next week’s T-200 in order to get his food distributed in preparation for the 1,000-mile Quest race from Whitehorse, British Columbia, to Fairbanks.
But they’ve picked up a few more mushers by extending the registration deadline to Jan. 23. They’re up to 23 for the T-200, and nine or 10 each for the T-100 and the junior race, Murray said.

Race organizers are also trying to make sure their volunteers are ready to go a week later.

“We’re just confirming everybody as we speak. Our vets are our main concern. They take time off from their practices to volunteer for this,” Murray said.

All of this depends on snow showing up — on a timeline that coincides with forecasts and schedules.

“It will, it always does,” Morning said. “That’s where humans have to make plans, and the weather doesn’t have any plans.”

A schedule of events for the Peninsula Winter Games is available at www.peninsulawintergames.com. For information on the T-200, visit www.tustumena200.com.

Cool advice — Dropping temperatures don’t have to mean dropping activities

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Baby, it’s cold outside. But that’s no reason to stay inside.

Thermometers on the central Kenai Peninsula have registered single and negative digits since last week. But just because the temperature drops off, doesn’t mean outside activity has to.

“We live in Alaska, you know? If you’re gonna live up here, you gotta stay outside. Otherwise, you might as well move out,” said Justin Moore, of Soldotna.

Moore puts studded tires on his bike and rides in the winter. He used to be an avid snowboarder and lately he’s predominantly a cross-country skier. He did the Gatineau Loppet ski marathon in Canada last year, and is training for the 50-kilometer classic ski Jizerská padesátka marathon in the Czech Republic and the 60-K freestyle Dolomitenlauf ski marathon in Austria in January.

He said he tries to get outside and do something every day, no matter what the weather on the peninsula brings.

“It’s better than Fairbanks. I talked to guys up there and they’re skiing in 40 below zero. It’s been 20 below every day, so we have it easy down here,” he said.

The key is to carry plenty of water to combat dehydration and dress in layers for extra warmth to match the temperature — but not too many layers. Overheating leads to sweating, which makes clothes damp and even colder.

“I’m usually overdressed, which is not good,” he said. “I always worry about falling on the outside loop or a moose catching you and you’re stuck, so I end up wearing too many layers and paying the price, I think.”

Moore said the coldest conditions he’s been out in is biking at minus 35 degrees, which was more like minus 50 with the wind chill.

“I survived, barely. It was a difficult ride. No gears would change,” he said.

On Sunday, Moore was freestyle skiing around Tsalteshi Trails behind Skyview High School in comparably balmy 4-degree weather. Skyview cross-country ski coach Kent Peterson and Skyview skiing alum Tommy Honer, now a freshman at University of Alaska Anchorage, were also out circling the trails.

Peterson said the ski team isn’t allowed out at minus 10 or colder, but the weather doesn’t keep him inside when he’s skiing on his own. He’s skied at minus 18 before.

“The nice thing is when it’s cold it’s really pretty out,” Peterson said. “… It’s kind of cool, you’re outside doing something when everyone else is inside hiding.”

The flip side is if he got hurt, there’d be no one around to help. That’s why it’s a good idea to ski with a friend. Two people can also check each other for the telltale white patches of beginning frostbite on faces, where it’s difficult to feel it happening. Dressing in layers was the skiers’ main advice, including wind briefs for guys and different thicknesses of underlayers depending on the weather. As a general rule, synthetic materials are better for active pursuits, since cotton gets soggy with sweat and loses its insulating abilities.

“They say cotton is really bad, but I still wear cotton socks,” Peterson said.
“You just said your feet were cold,” Honer pointed out.

For heads and faces, warm hats, headbands, neck and face gaiters and balaclavas are options, especially if an outdoor enthusiast doesn’t have nature’s insulator.

“I never wear that stuff when I go out and ski when it’s really cold. Facial hair helps,” Peterson said.

Keeping skin covered is important to protect against frostbite, especially in windy conditions. Skiers sometimes smear petroleum jelly on earlobes, cheeks and noses, or cover them with tape. Glasses or goggles keep eyes from getting cold in the wind, and there are products — like the oh-so-appealingly named Cat Crap — that can be smeared on glasses to keep them from fogging up.

“The best way to get warm is just go outside and do your activity,” Honer said.
Once someone gets going in an activity outside, keep going.

“The most important thing is to not stop,” Peterson said. “If you stop, you get cold, or get sweaty and then get cold.”

When someone is attached to a team of dogs, stopping can sometimes be a challenge. For mushers, it’s important to bring warm, trusted gear.

“The first thing you need is appropriate gear,” said Ashley Irmen, with the Peninsula Sled Dog Racing Association. “With any cold-weather situation you need to be well-equipped and have your gear tested and not just go out in 30 below with something you’ve never tried before and go, ‘Hey, this doesn’t work, I’m cold.’”

Irmen, of Sterling, has been mushing for four years now, after an acquaintance got her hooked on it. She’s been out in 30 below to 35 below zero before. She prefers dressing in a wool base layer, since wool insulates even when wet, and a synthetic or down parka. She brings extra gear in case of emergencies, and checks the weather before she leaves.

“Make sure you have what’s appropriate and know how long you’re going to be out and what weather you are going to face and plan for it,” she said.

That advice holds true for any outdoor winter activity. For snowmachining, there’s one important addition:

“If you’re going to go out on a machine, make sure the machine is in good shape,” said Nolan Compton, of Soldotna, with the Caribou Hills Cabin Hoppers. “Make sure everything’s in good condition and just be prepared if you are going to go out in cold temperatures, it’s always good to not go out alone.”

Specially designed snowmachining parkas and gear mitigate wind chill, are durable and breathable with zippers to control body temperature, and they’re padded in case you’re riding rough, Compton said.

Having a properly fitted helmet also is key. Anything below minus 10 can be difficult for snowmachiners because it’s tough to keep helmet visors from fogging up. Compton has been out in minus 30 on a search and rescue team around Eureka and said the lack of visibility and fogging issues make the ride uncomfortable.

But as long as gear holds up and safety precautions are met, cold is no reason to limit activity.

“I’d rather it was cold than warm any day,” Irmen said. “You live in Alaska. You’re cold nine months of the year. You better figure it out if you’re going to do outside stuff, you know?”

On a Quest to start early, finish strong

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Eagle Summit got the best of Kasilof musher Jon Little three years ago in his rookie running of the Yukon Quest.

Little was leading the 1,000-mile sled dog race from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, to Fairbanks when his team reached the base of Eagle Summit in between Central and Chena Hot Springs.

The dogs took one look at the climb from 935 feet up to 3,685 feet and decided that was a good time for a nap.

“They started basically pulling off and taking little naps in the snow,” Little said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like, ‘We’re done. We’re tired.’”

It took Little an hour to figure out how to get the dogs moving, by playing lead dog himself and getting out in front of the team. It took another hour to get them up and over the summit. By then, four teams had passed him, including former Kasilof musher Lance Mackey, now of Fairbanks, who went on to his first of four consecutive Quest wins. Little finished in fifth place.

In 2009, Little is going back to conquer the climb.

“I don’t want them to quit going up that hill this year,” he said. “I’m really working on building team unity and we’re gonna get a lot of practice. When we get to that point in the race it’s going to be no big deal. That’s my goal.”

Little and fellow Kasilof musher Colleen Robertia are the first two Kenai Peninsula mushers to sign up for this winter’s Quest, which begins in Whitehorse on Feb. 14.
Little said his decision to run this winter was a culmination of factors.

“Basically it’s kind of like the stars aligned. They’re not all perfectly aligned, but if I wait for that I’ll never run the Quest.,” he said.

The longer race format appeals to him, since there’s less stress, in a way, because you can immerse yourself in the race for the duration instead of needing everything to go perfectly in the mad dash of a shorter race.

“I love thousand-mile races. And I’m going to be 45 years old. You wonder how long you can wait as the years tick by,” he said.

Little took third in the 2007 Kuskokwim 300, and has placed 15th, fourth and 13th in the Iditarod in 2001, 2002 and 2003, respectively. He hopes to cover the Iditarod as a journalist again this year, so the Quest was his only 1,000-mile option.

His dogs are ready for it, with many of them having performed well in the Iditarod and other races in the past three years — just not with Little.

“I’ve been leasing some of my dogs out the past couple years. It sort of gets under your skin a little bit. You want to use your own dogs. I want to be the captain.”

Building a cohesive team out of his 24-dog kennel is Little’s immediate challenge, especially since he doesn’t have a lead dog singled out yet.

“It’s too early to tell. They’re a good group of dogs. I have to see what I have for leaders. Every team looks great in September. The goal is always to do the very best that the dogs can do.”

Still, early is when a long-distance race can be won or lost. Even though it’ll be nearly five months before Little’s team faces Eagle Summit again, he’s starting the figurative climb now.

“It starts early. If you do well there it’s because things have gone well all year. If you do poorly there it’s probably because things have not gone well all year,” he said.

Robertia also has begun her Quest well in advance. After a first-place finish in the Chatanika Challenge 200, 11th-place finish in the Tustumena 200 and 16th-place finish in the Copper Basin 300 last winter, Robertia wants to move on to her first 1,000-mile race.

“You’re always looking for the personal challenge thing to take on with the team,” she said.

The Quest certainly provides that, as it winds through some of the coldest, darkest, most isolated conditions of any sled dog race in Alaska.

“I’m definitely worried. It’s not just the distance as the challenges that come along with the Quest,” she said.

“It’s just kind of the next progression when your dogs are ready for it. On the flip side of that there’s stresses to the thousand-mile race but there’s a lot of stresses to shorter races because you’re constantly looking over your shoulder.”

She plans to approach the Quest like she did the Copper Basin 300, where her only goal was to finish with a healthy team.

“I really just wanted to have a good experience and not hurt my dogs and get through something that tough, and we did it and it was such a blast,” she said. “I’m hoping it’ll be like a two-week camping trip with my buddies.”

Robertia, like Little, has a relatively small kennel with 30 dogs, so her challenge is going to be fielding a 14-dog team. She and her husband, Joseph, put ethical treatment of their dogs above anything else. Almost every dog in their kennel is a rescue, and if a dog is injured, too old or for some other reason can’t run anymore, they still keep the dog and take care of it.

It’s an animal care philosophy they’re devoted to, but it can make forming a competitive team a challenge.

“I think I can get 14 together,” she said. “I think as far as something that’s a thousand miles, I have a couple of dogs that can’t run 10 miles an hour all day long, but they can run 8 miles an hour forever. They’re straight out of the Kenai Animal Shelter. I don’t even know if they’re huskies. They’re furry.”

Two of their rescues, Ping and Pong, show promise as the possible 13th and 14th spots on the team.

“They’re amazing leaders. They gee and haw on a dime. … I used to have to run in front of the team, that’s how we’d teach them to lead is I’d run and they’d chase me with Joseph on the four-wheeler until I’d get tired, then Joseph would go. It’s amazing just to see what they’ve become as sled dogs.”

Other mushers have offered to lend her dogs if she needs them, but she’s hoping to make it to the start and finish lines with her dogs.

“There’s still something about getting your own small kennel to do it without having to borrow dogs,” she said.

“I just want to finish. It’s like I go back and forth from waves of nausea to waves of excitement.”