March 18, 2009

• Nigel Is Back with Nancy – Lou Packer Talks about 2 Dog Deaths – and an update, of course

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  / Trail update UPDATED below /
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  I search the web for Iditarod news, so you don’t have to. 

  Someone called “Atlanta Dogs Examiner” at examiner.com, apparently doesn’t know that the race doesn’t end when the winner crosses the finish line.  It isn’t over ’til it’s over, and the last dog on the trail has gotten to Nome.  But this person did have the news about the dog gone missing when he panicked and took off after a sled crash early in the race:

  Rookie Nancy Yoshida got caught in the trees in the dangerous steps area of the trail near Puntilla Lake, wrecked her sled and lost a dog. Nigel, a five-year-old white dog, went missing last Monday and was found Friday morning nearly 100 miles from the crash site. Nancy and Nigel were reunited in Skwentna with the help of snowmachiners and an Iditarod Air Force pilot.

  [source]

  Another rookie, Lou Packer, MD, from Wasilla, lost two dogs in a much more harrowing and final way.  The Anchorage Daily News carried his story, and it is worth reading in its entirety.  He was out in the open when the wind came up that has slowed the entire race and caused a number of teams to scratch. (photo by Marc Lester, ADN) 

  The phenomenon he mentions below, of having the wind pick up pieces of ice and throw them, is one I have experienced.  Sun and wind together create an ice crust on top of the snow, then gusts break off big chunks of the crust.  When I went through such a storm, I was huddled inside four walls, hoping none of the ice would crash through a window.  He had it lots worse.

  Packer went to the front of his team to try to lead them through the storm to safety. It was a staggeringly difficult task.

  The wind was blowing so hard, Packer could barely stand up. And blowing snow had buried the Iditarod Trail, leaving nothing to follow across the vast emptiness except an occasional piece of wood stuck in the ground with a piece of surveyor’s tape tied to the top.

  Sometimes, Packer said Tuesday, he would stand for minutes peering into the brutal wind before he would spot one of these markers and start walking the dogs toward it.

  “Then,” he said, “if you went off the trail, you’d fall in up to your chest.

  “It was a very, very bad situation.”

  Back home, his wife, Ellen, monitored a satellite tracking device on Lou’s sled and wondered about his faltering pace. When the GPS showed Lou moving, which wasn’t often, it reported his speed to be less than one-half mph. This was not the way it was supposed to go in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

  “I knew he had to be in front of the team,” Ellen said.

  The trail was gone, lost beneath the new-blown snow, and the wind was still blowing, but with the sunshine coming from the east Packer could now see trail markers heading off to the west. He went to the front of the team and started walking them toward the village of Shageluk, marker by marker.

  It did not go well. The team would go a few yards. Some dogs would get tangled. Packer would go back to untangle them. They’d go a few more yards. The same thing would happen.

  “The dogs were pretty well freaked out at this point,” Packer said, and some didn’t look good. Packer decided to turn them around and try to retreat to the woods he had passed through the day before. He thought it would be easier.

  “I had already broken trail behind me,” he said, “but that trail was all gone. The wind was (so strong it) was picking up pieces of ice and throwing them.”

  Packer assessed distances, recalculated and decided he and the dogs had a better chance of making the woods ahead than the woods behind, so he turned the team around again. That’s when he noticed one of his dogs — Grasshopper — really struggling. He unhooked the dog from the gangline and put it in the sled and started forward again.

  “The sled just kept falling over and he looked really bad, and then he died,” Packer said. “I sat there and held him. Horrible.”

  There was, however, nothing to do but keep going or everyone was going to die. Packer pressed on. Then Dizzy started to falter.

  “I felt his shoulder for hydration, and ice crystals in the skin is what I felt. I think those two guys probably froze to death in the high winds,” Packer said. “I didn’t think it possible.

  “Then Dizzy, he died. It was horrible.”

  Both of the dogs had been wearing coats to protect them, and one of the dogs was a thick-coated husky of old, not one of the thin-coated animals that have become common as mushers contend with warm winters. Necropsies conducted by veterinary pathologists have found no obvious causes for the deaths, but hypothermia has not been ruled out.

  With Grasshopper and Dizzy dead and packed aboard the sled, Packer feared for losing the whole team and his own life as well. The father of three children age 10 and under, he knew he and the dogs had to get out of the wind.

  “I held it all together,” he said. “I had to, you start losing your cool, you’re going to die. We got in the lee of this little hill where the wind was probably blowing 15 or so,” he said. “It wasn’t the 30 or 40 up there on top.”

  [more here]
  

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  Lance Mackey still has fifteen dogs.  He dropped Chucko at Eagle Island on Saturday.  They left White Mountain at 2:11 AM today.  People who have subscribed to Iditarod Insider and can follow the race by GPS Tracker know exactly where he is now.  Next year, one way or another, I am going to have that tracker. 

  The trail from White Mountain to Nome is 77 miles.  His team had been doing a consistent 8 MPH through most of the race, but between Elim and White Mountain in cold temperatures, high winds and blowing snow, he averaged 4.6 MPH.  You do the math.   I will sit here and refresh the standings, and post an update when I see that he has gotten to Safety, the last checkpoint before Nome.

  UPDATE:
  Lance spent 8 minutes in Safety, leaving at 8:48.  His time on the trail from White Mountain was 6 hours, 29 minutes, average speed 8.48 MPH.  Next stop, the Burled Arch on Front Street in Nome!

  All 3 leading teams apparently skipped Golovin — either that or the checker there is incapacitated or offline.  Sebastian Schnuelle will be eligible to leave White Mountain at 8:52 AM; John Baker at 9:18.  Sab checked into White Mountain with 14 dogs, John with 10.

  [UPDATE:  Schnuelle and Baker each dropped one dog at White Mountain.  Schnuelle left with 13 at 8:56; Baker with 9 at 9:24.]

  The race for fourth place is between six teams currently on the trail out of Elim:
  Aaron Burmeister and 10 dogs, out at 3:09;
  Dallas Seavey and 10 dogs, out at 3:19;
  Dallas’s dad, Mitch Seavey and 10 dogs, out at the same time;
  Ramey Smyth and 9 dogs, out at 4:03;
  Jessie Royer and 13 dogs, out at 4:38;
  Ramey’s brother, Cim Smyth and 11 dogs, out at 4:40.

  [UPDATE:  Aaron Burmeister checked in at White Mountain at 10:26, followed at 10:30 by Mitch Seavey.  Both will be eligible to depart for Safety, then Nome, at about half past six this evening.]

  Jeff Holt, whose dog Victor died early in the race of unknown causes (the necropsy was inconclusive), is the latest musher to scratch, out of Grayling.

  Chad Lindner, out of Unalakleet with 14 dogs at 6:40 AM, has at least a 3 hour lead on his nearest competitor for Rookie of the Year, Harry Alexie, still in Unalakleet with 12 dogs.

  Rookie Alan Peck is in last (57th) position with all 16 of his dogs, out of Grayling shortly after 9 last night.

  Rookie Jen Seavey is in 54th position out of Grayling about half an hour ahead of Alan Peck.  She still has her entire “puppy” team (really yearlings, in training) of 16.  If you wonder why I’m covering Jen more closely than other rookies and back-of-the-packers, it is because I’m bemused and intrigued at the idea of this newlywed woman training a pack of pups at the back of the race while her bridegroom and new father-in-law are battling it out up front in the money positions.

  Later all — and thank you to everyone who has let me know you are following the race with me.  I’d be just as interested and excited only sharing it with Greyfox, but it’s fun knowing that others are enjoying it too.
  

  • 12:25 pm
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