GinGin 200: Snow Machine Excursion

Once again, “the plan was perfect!”

I’d carried a snow machine down to Paxson in the back of my pick-up truck, with a plan to drive it out the Denali Highway to the GinGin 200 Sled Dog Race checkpoint at MacLaren. I figured that I might be able to shoot some footage of the teams in action along the way, and film them on all their arrivals/departures once there.

The “math” of the plan all worked out perfectly: It’s 50 miles from Paxson to MacLaren, about five hours for the dogs. If I took off after the last team left the start and drove about 25 mph, I’d be there in only two hours — well in advance of the dog teams and ready to get some great shots. I would then stay at the checkpoint overnight and return to Paxson before them. Perfect plan, right?

So, after I sent Allen on his way I packed up the dog trucks and put on all my cold weather gear. I loaded some additional gear in a weather-proof duffel and lashed it — along with an arctic sleeping bag — to the back of the snow machine, just in case of a breakdown or something. You really don’t take any chances in conditions like these.

Having done everything I could think of in preparation, I fired up the sled and headed down the highway. A mile or so out of Paxson I got hit by high winds and blowing snow. Despite all my really great gear, the snow was blowing inside my helmet, clogging up my goggles and frosting up my glasses. Accordingly, I had to slow way down just to be able to see what I could of the faint — and quickly drifting over — trail on the roadway.

Even slowed down to about 15 mph, it was a pretty miserable ride. After a few miles I was passed by a string of six snow machines, driven by the experts from the Alaska National Guard. I tried to keep up with them for a while, but soon gave up and chugged along on my own.

About ten miles into my 50 mile trip, I was really starting to question whether or not it was smart for me to continue. It was bad enough that I’d be driving on my own in miserable conditions, but even if I was successful in getting to MacLaren my reduced speed meant I’d make it there after the dog teams, in the dark, and not be able to shoot any decent footage. It was starting to look like another perfect plan was going down the drain.

As I was pondering this, I came upon the stopped string of Alaska National Guard snow machiners and saw that straight ahead of them were some very large snow drifts that had completely obscured the road. I wanted to take a picture, but it was so cold and blowing so hard that I couldn’t convince myself to take my mitts off!

While I couldn’t see much else through the blowing snow, I could see that quite a little “meeting” was taking place amongst the National Guardsmen. Well, I had a little meeting with myself that lasted about three seconds, just long enough for my brain to formulate the thought: “That’s it, I’m out of here!”

I executed a perfect three-point turn and ran as fast as I could back to Paxson. Upon arrival I was greeted by a few folks in the lodge to whom I said, “Call me chicken if you want, but the heck with going to MacLaren!” None of them called me anything but smart, saying the report they had gotten indicated that even the best of the snow machine teams was having difficulty getting through. I was disappointed that I wouldn’t “be there” for our teams, but I figured it was better not to be there than to be stuck or lost somewhere out in that weather.

As it turned out, I seem to have made an excellent decision because this morning I learned from a fellow videographer named Peter Kamper — who had ridden along with the Guardsmen — that they never made it to MacLaren either and had returned to Paxson in the middle of the night with only four of their snow machines. Two had been lost along the way.

He said his trip was a nightmare and he wished that he had either not gone along at all or turned around when I did. After that I didn’t feel so badly about aborting my snow machine excursion! Peter has graciously allowed me to share this clip that he shot along the way, so you can have a look and ask yourself what you would have done: