March 12, 2006

• Meanwhile back on the trail….

  Yesterday, just after I’d posted my entry for the weekly_photo_challenge, and was uploading new photos for the Photo Blog-Along,
  Doug got up and informed me that he needed the computer.  He was
  de-emming yet another Saturday online session.  I had him looming
  behind me, with occasional breaks while he paced the floor, and one
  longer respite as he walked the dog, but I had no time after posting to
  read and comment.  Today, I am compelled to choose between looking
  up the Iditarod news and digesting it to report here, or reading and
  commenting on your sites.  Guess which one I chose.

  ---

  The Personal Touch

  Roxy Wright
  is the mother of Iditarod musher Ramy Brooks, and is a champion sprint
  racer, having won both the North American Sled Dog Championship and the
  Fur Rendezvous World Championship Sled Dog Race multiple times
  each.  For several years, I have enjoyed sharing with readers her reports from the trail. 
  From her, I get not only the stats and standings, but an insider’s view
  of the dogs’ condition and occasional bits of gossip.  She gets credit for some of the information in this entry, and for three of the photos here.

  Photo below by Roxy Wright

  I
  am a few days behind in these reports.  When I left off, Paul
  Gebhardt was in the lead.(He is shown on the left in the photo at
  right, talking to Ruby resident Emmitt
  Peters, the Yukon Fox, who won the Iditarod his rookie year in
  1975.)

  Paul was first into Ruby.  Each year the first musher to reach the
  Yukon River is rewarded with a special meal.  A chef flies out
  from Anchorage to prepare the seven-course gourmet feast.  This
  year, Paul’s prize included $3,500 cash.  The First to the Yukon
  prize and the gold nuggets won by the first musher to reach the halfway
  point provide more than just an opportunity for additional race
  sponsors to get their names in the news.  I think it also adds
  some speed and interest to the early days of the race when mushers
  might otherwise be holding back, conserving their teams’ energy. 

  Paul Gebhardt seemed this year to be going for that gourmet meal. 
  He held onto a slim lead, postponing his 24-hour layover while those
  now in contention for the championship were resting their dogs. 
  He fell behind as he took his 24 and his other mandatory 8-hour Yukon
  River layover.  At the latest update, he was out of Kaltag and had
  moved up into tenth place.

  Sunset on the Yukon at Ruby, by Roxy Wright.
  This
  race is never easy for anyone, but it has been harder than most for
  many this year.  Noah Burmeister is training a puppy team for his
  brother Aaron.  One of his dogs, Yellowknife, was slowing and
  showing labored breathing on the trail.  Noah loaded him into the
  sled and carried him into Rohn, where Yellowknife was flown out to
  Anchorage.  He died in hospital.  A necropsy showed that he
  had regurgitated, aspirated and developed pneumonia.

  David Sawatzky’s dog, Bear, a three-year-old male, died yesterday
  between Cripple and Ruby.  No details yet on his cause of
  death.  Please don’t let my bald statements in reporting these
  deaths give you the false impression that either of these deaths was
  taken lightly.  There have been tears on the trail, and the sounds
  of strong men’s voices breaking in grief.  It is going to give
  fresh ammunition to the animal rights activists who would love to see
  this race shut down. 

  I should probably devote an entire entry to some of the arguments in
  favor of dog racing.  The simple truth is that huskies love to
  run, and some of the happiest, mentally healthiest dogs alive are those
  who know the pleasure and pride of working in an inter-species
  partnership with humans.  There is little difference between these
  dogs and those who work with shepherds to protect sheep from predators,
  except for the racing dogs’ being under constant veterinary attention
  and care.  Everyone involved in the Iditarod dreads and regrets
  every injured dog, grieves the deaths, and keeps working toward
  preventing them.  Few dogs on the planet have more frequent
  contact and more intimate relationships with veterinarians.  These
  teams, besides racing, serve science as they are observed and the
  observations provide data to improve veterinary medicine, animal feeds,
  etc.

  One particular trail hazard created by the stupid, ignorant snowmachiner volunteers who pioneered the trail this year, a tree stump
  on the side of a curve where the dogs naturally run,
  has gotten at least a dozen teams.  (Of course, one of those snowmachiners
  died earlier this year in a self-created avalanche, a fact which is now
  providing some consolatory satisfaction to some of the more
  cold-blooded fans and maybe a few battered mushers as well.)

  Robert Buntzen’s team passes a snow angel going into the
  
  Galena checkpoint.  Photo credit Marc Lester, ADN.

  Martin
  Buser’s encounter
  with the stump sent him flying out over the sled, broke the sled to
  pieces and
  injured a dog.  He managed to limp into the Cripple checkpoint,
  where,

  …he started thinking of ways to fix the broken sled.

  “It was cold, and I had limited resources. I didn’t build a new sled. I just made it go to Ruby.”

  He cut one of his ski poles, making it into
  two parts, which became one upright and one cross-section. Two trail
  markers became the other cross-sections. He used rope, bailing (sic–I love finding typos in the newspaper) wire and
  clamps to create a makeshift handlebar that lasted until Ruby.

  “It made it real difficult on those side
  hills,” he said, “but I eventually made it. Seems like I’m losing time
  everywhere I go.”

  Buser lost his best lead dog, Hot Foot,
  because of this stump. The impact was so powerful, it “bummed out” her
  shoulder, he said.”

  adn.com

  Jeff King’s frosty mustache in Ruby Friday, by Roxy Wright
  Jeff King was in the lead, 36 minutes
  ahead of Doug Swingley, out of Kaltag between midnight and 1 AM
  today.  [last-minute UPDATE:  King was first into Unalakleet at 12:26 this afternoon] [update to UPDATE:  Doug Swingley got into Unalakleet 22 minutes after Jeff King.  It's close.] They, and all the rest of the top twenty teams, have
  completed both the mandatory 24-hour layover and the 8-hour Yukon River
  rest.

  The leaders, King, Doug Swingley, DeeDee Jonrowe, Aliy Zirkle, John
  Baker, Bjornar Andersen, Jason Barron, Ed Iten, Mitch Seavey, and
  Gebhardt were through Kaltag by 9:30 this morning.

  In Kaltag at the 10:34 update are Lance Mackey, Ramy Brooks, Hugh Neff,
  Sonny Lindner, Aaron Burmeister, Ramey Smyth, Jessica Hendricks, Jessie
  Royer, and Melanie Gould who has just passed Rick Swenson and moved
  into twentieth place.

  Dogs can sleep on their feet.  Marc Lester captured the proof,
  
  two of Lance Mackey’s dogs resting in Galena on the Yukon.

  Rick,
  whose frosty mustache appeared here a few days ago, was out of Nulato
  on his way to Kaltag just before six this morning.  Martin Buser
  was making up a little of his lost time, going through Nulato in 27th
  place, just under four hours behind Swenson.

  Each team started this race a week ago with sixteen dogs.  As of
  noon today, only two mushers were still running sixteen dogs: 
  Sonny Lindner in 17th place, and Danny Seavey in 62nd.  Cim Smyth
  and Jessica Hendricks in 14th and 15th places, are down to eight dogs
  each. 

  About noon yesterday, John Barron became the eleventh musher to scratch
  from this year’s race.  A couple of days previously, Terry Adkins,
  who came back this year after an eight-year retirement, was the eighth
  musher to scratch, about 80 miles short of the halfway point. 
  According to adn.com,

  The worst of it came dropping out of Rainy
  Pass into the Dalzell Gorge on the way to the remote Rohn checkpoint in
  the Alaska Range early in the week. Adkins had two dogs falter there.
  He loaded them into his sled to carry them to the checkpoint, and the
  extra weight in the basket made a nightmare of what is normally a wild,
  white-knuckle ride.

  “I don’t know how you did that,” fellow musher Lynda Plettner of Big Lake told Adkins.

  “I prayed every step of the way I wasn’t going to die,” he said.

  If you follow only one of the links in this entry, that last one above would be a good one to read.

  
  Lance
  Mackey, both hands occupied applying ointment to his dogs’ paws, holds
  the tube in his teeth in this shot from Galena by Marc Lester of the
  Anchorage Daily News.

  If you’ve read my Iditarod series this year, you may recall that I’m
  putting my inconsequential and purely mental/verbal support behind
  Lance.  He has won the Yukon Quest two years running, despite
  having to haul his dogs around in a truck that barely runs.  He
  has said that he could really use the new truck that Anchorage
  Chrysler-Dodge supplies to the first-place finisher, not to mention the
  $29,000 winner’s purse.  The latest standings just before noon
  today show Lance still in Kaltag since about 2 AM, in twelfth place.

  One of John Baker’s dogs,
  captured by official Iditarod photographer Jeff Schultz.

  There had been some questions over whether Paul Gebhardt would be
  penalized for the help he received from Doug Swingley and from a hunter
  at the buffalo camp when Gebhardt’s team got loose after the sled hit a
  tree stump and the gangline parted.  Race marshall Mark Nordman
  decided that the three hours Paul lost in recovering his team was
  enough of a penalty.  “It’s funny it happened this year,” Nordman
  added, “because I told them
  at the drivers’ meeting, I don’t care what it takes — a helicopter,
  local people, whatever it takes to get your team back. Ride with
  another driver. It doesn’t matter. Get your team. That’s the most
  important thing.”  (source:  adn.com)

  Four-time Iditarod Champion Susan Butcher flew out to Ruby on Friday to
  visit with some of the mushers there.  Susan has found a donor and
  is scheduled for a bone-marrow transplant on May 16th, to treat
  leukemia.

  The leaders are off the Yukon River now.  The next big challenge
  for them is the long run up the Bering Sea coast.  The pack is
  strung out on the river from Ruby through Nulato to Kaltag.  
  There’s nobody left in Takotna enjoying Jan Newton’s cheeseburgers and
  pies.  The current Red Lantern, rookie Ben Valks from the
  Netherlands, is out of Ophir on his way to Cripple, the halfway point.

  It is past lunchtime, and I’ve been at this going on four hours with
  only a quick breakfast grabbed at the keyboard.  If you want to
  know more about the race, you can follow some of the links above and
  you can find more links as well as news on the Alaska Public Radio Network’s website. 
  I have been watching the crew set up the famous Burled Arch and the
  crowd-control fence along Front Street in Nome on the nomecam.

  

  • 5:03 pm
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