The Journey Continues – Willow to Skwentna
March 23, 2007

I’ve always enjoyed the Anchorage start and this year was no exception. Bonnie described it well in her article, the only thing she forgot was that I broke my Bernie Willis sled while trying to do minor repairs two days before the start. One of the nice things about good friends is that someone will always help you get through. In this case Bonnie loaned us two sleds for the start instead of just one. Mostly I remember good friends, good times, and good dogs.

With bib number 21 (again – remember that redo I wanted last year?) my start time was 2:40 PM in Willow. Due to traffic we had to be on location before 11 AM. That meant getting up about 6 AM to feed the dogs before loading them for the drive north. For mushers the restart is a little tenser than it is in Anchorage. When you leave Willow anything you forgot will have to be done without or mailed to you. Of course the first checkpoint after Skwentna the Post Office serves is Nikolai – well down the trail. Luckily I had Lexi Hill as my crew chief and I let her do all the worrying while I played with the dogs, schmoozed with my friends and fans, and packed my sled.
When it came time to get dressed for the trail I pulled up my Arctic bibs, ran the zipper down the left leg and clear off the bibs! These bibs have two way zippers just like a parka to make it easier to get on and off, but we couldn’t get the zipper back on. The concern was the bibs would separate down the zipper (on the outer part of the leg) and I would frostbite something I’d rather not. God was watching over me and an angel and volunteer named Julie Ross from the Los Angeles area sewed my bib over the zipper so it wouldn’t pull apart. Turns out she was an emergency room nurse and had stitched lots of people together so this wasn’t a far stretch. Julie’s patch held up fine and was still there when I got back to Anchorage.

At almost the last minute I decided to take Dijon instead of Rom, so my team was Bass and Basil in lead; Rosemary and Platinum in swing; Throttle and Lycos, Dash and Balu, Mocha and Dijon, Thyme and Jewels, Keiko and Picard; and Sisco and Dukat in wheel – good dogs one and all.

The restart was even better organized than last year with the team staged on the lake across the starting chute from the highway. From the starting line it was a straight shot across the lake, and small portage through the trees and back onto another lake. We quickly got onto the trail system that Lexi and I trained on last year and then onto the Susitna River. Think of the river trails out of Willow as the interstate highway of trail systems – wide, flat and smooth travel. At the start the dogs and musher are nervous and hard to control (some mushers more so than their dogs), so it is nice to have easy familiar trails to work the wiggles out. The wind hit us almost as soon as we left Willow. The weather forecast had high wind warnings for the Parks highway north of Talketna and we knew Rainy Pass would be nasty.
With the wind and cold I changed my plans from 6 hour runs and 6 hour rests – which meant I wouldn’t stop in a checkpoint until Rohn – to staying in all the checkpoints (even crazy Yentna Station) to take advantage of the water and straw for the dogs. One hour into the run Platinum (in swing) was trying to pull the team to the right of the trail (a sign of stress) so I swapped him for Balu to move him further back in the team (less stress and less leverage on the team). Two hours into the run Bass started showing signs of stress so I moved Balu into lead with Basil. At 6:26, after 42 miles and just under 4 hours on the trail, we pulled into Yentna station for a short rest before going on to Skwentna where the dogs would get a longer rest. Yentna was sheltered from the wind and very pleasant. The vets checked the team and everyone but Keiko looked excellent. Keiko had a high heart rate that wasn’t returning to normal like the rest of the team. We checked her again before we left and the vets said to watch her closely in Skwentna.
After caring for the dogs and eating a wonderful meal from Dale and Trish I went up to the roadhouse for something to drink and keep my hydration up. At 8:55, after 2 ½ hours rest, we left Yentna for Skwentna. This is almost the same strategy I used in the Knik 200 – breaking the long run into two with a short rest – it worked well than and seemed to work well here.
With the relatively warm temperatures (around zero) and short run (about 35 miles) I decided not to bootie. As we went further up river the trail split into several distinct trails. With the wind in their faces I had trouble getting the dogs to stay on the main trail. I don’t normally worry about this, but when the team tried to leave the river on two different trails it became an issue. Trying to get the team to cross from good trail on one side of the river to good trail on the other side with several inches of soft snow in between and the wind in their faces was a challenge. Doing this three times as the staked trail crossed from one side to the other and the trail they followed didn’t, made it more interesting. I used several leaders on this part including Lycos and Dash and had Platinum and Rosemary in lead when we got to Skwentna.

I had expected Skwentna to be a zoo like Yentna and was pleasantly surprised. They had hot water waiting for us, not just a hole in the river, lots of room for the dog teams with easy in easy out design, and a warm – if just a little crowded – place to sleep. Of course the extra friendly volunteers didn’t hurt any either.

We arrived in Yentna at 00:19 – just after mid-night – and stayed until 8AM, partly because my checkpoint routine was not as smooth as it could have been. I could not have been more pleased with the performance of the team. We were averaging 10 mph, just as I had planned. I was still riding the drag to keep the speed down.

The soft snow we had to cross as we lost the staked trail on the river frequently had an icy crust and several dogs had cuts and wear spots on the top and sides of their feet, but the vets were not too concerned. However Kieko’s heart rate didn’t recover like it should have. She was a little dehydrated and didn’t eat when we came into the checkpoint. She did eat before we left, but these are signs of stress and being tired. With the toughest parts of the trail still to come I dropped Keiko and she was resting comfortably in Anchorage before the day was over.


Keep ‘em Northbound
Eric
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