SPK Dog Log

It’s 7:45pm. Feeling: Drained from watching the tracker inch up the coast. Mind-eased that they are in Koyuk.

Aliy and team pulled into Koyuk checkpoint at 7:21pm after a long battle with the wind up the coast, running with Jessie Holmes. Their run time was 9 hours almost exactly. They have passed Nic and Mitch and are now running in 4th position but it remains to be seen if Mitch even stops in Koyuk, having rested on the ice for a few hours. Aliy will rest the team here a while as they have been running since 10.20am (including several snack breaks along the way)

I did capture this screen shot on the right – me thinks it was just a glitch… they were travelling between 5 and 6 miles an hour for the most part.

Returned dog update

Driver and Amber are not coming to Anchorage tonight but they will be just fine where they are for another day. Volunteers and vets will be caring for them so we are not concerned about them still being out on the trail. Commando is enjoying some inside time while he’s the only one home at the Chateau.

Earlier

Doug captured some pictures and video when they saw Aliy in Unalakleet. You can see the crowd of people and media around the team.

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I ended up killing the sound on this video below because of the wind noise coming through the recorder made it almost un-listenable – small dogs and children might be frightened – plus it was picking up some spectators’ private conversations so it is a silent movie about Aliy’s arrival into Unalakleet. It shows that Aliy had just given the dogs some cool water to drink and, because at this stage of the race the dogs are eating all and sundry, she put the high-fat/protein kibble right on the ground as a high calorie snack, and as you see, the gobbled it right down. She later made a proper meal for them but it was a great way to get instant high quality calories into them. Later you see her removing booties and the dogs settling down for a nap.

The crew picked up the kennels today and took them to the dog yard, an exciting part of the race for us as it means they are not that far away. We ship travel kennels out to Nome to transport the dogs home. Before the teams arrive we set them up in the dog yard with fresh straw and blankets but until we know their finishing positions and know where in the dog yard they will be situated, they are stored in a connex in the dog lot. These connex boxes serve a couple of purposes – storage and wind breaks to shelter the dogs from the notorious Nome wind.

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It’s 1.00pm. Feeling: Reassured that Aliy and Jessie are travelling together across the Sound through the weather.

Aliy and 11 team mates left Shaktoolik after just over a 5.5 hour break. They will be well rested for the run over the Sound. She and Jessie Holmes are running together for now. On the live feed we see it is snowing and blowing in Koyuk so out on the Sound we can only assume it is worse. We often see mushers teaming up together on this section, it reminds us why we love this sport. Aliy and Jessie will be wanting so badly to beat the other but sometimes they put that aside. They will take turns leading to give their lead dogs a break. Aliy told Allen she is enjoying running with Jessie.

They have both passed the shelter cabin and onto the Norton Sound just now.

Katie Polcyn is at the Shaktoolik checkpoint and sent us some pictures. This one in particular shows just what I was talking about – Aliy and Jessie leaving the checkpoint a few feet apart.

Don’t be alarmed if it looks like they are off the trail after they pass the shelter cabin. The actual trail is further towards the coast than is depicted on the GPS. If you click on one of the other mushers that are ahead you can see their actual path behind them. See right: blue line is GPS line but red line is the trail Pete Kaiser took.

While you are waiting and refreshing you might like to catch up on the Iditapod by KNOM in Nome. Alaska Public Media’s Zachariah Hughes and KNOM’s Ben Matheson are on the trail and getting some great interviews with the mushers.

Here are a bunch of other photos from Katie in Shaktoolik. Thanks for sending them through Katie!

In this photo we see Aliy putting booties on Decaf as they prepare to leave.

We’re loving seeing the transformation in Decaf. He is normally such a silly, enthusiastic happy-go-lucky youngster but in most of the photos and videos we’ve seen it looks like he has taken lessons from Commando in perfecting the serious “blue steel” look. Good boy Decaf!

This is a really good picture to illustrate how an Alaskan Husky’s coat works in the snow. This is Five – he is quite comfortable in this situation. He is not curled into a tight ball, burying his nose under his tail so he’s not cold. The snow is just sitting on top of the guard hairs on his coat and as soon as he stands up and shakes it will fall right off. These dogs can function in -50F so a bit of snow and wind is not a problem.

Go to sleep Nomex!!

Aliy talks with Palmer and Fena Sagoonick. Palmer ran the Iditarod 2001-2003.

As the team leaves the checkpoint notice Aliy is wearing her white windbreaker gear. It is still warm as you can see from lack of gloves and fur ruff but certainly windy.

Returned Dog Update

Driver was Aliy’s team mate that finished his race in Unalakleet. Allen phoned from the checkpoint and said he was doing very well all race up until just before the checkpoint when he started favouring his front end. After a rest he wasn’t any better so she decided it was best he came home. As Unk is a hub for returned dogs we are hoping he got on a flight right away and he will be at Linda’s soon.

Amber was the team mate she had to leave at Shaktoolik. Amber developed a sore wrist and Aliy thought running over the Sound in the wind was not the best place for her. She is getting well cared for out in Shak until she can get on a plane to Anchorage to stay at Chateau Steiner.

At this stage of the race a team of 11 is still a big team.

Allen and Doug have arrived in Nome from Unalakleet so the handler/family crew has all arrived safe and sound. Just need one more human and 11 dogs and we’ll be complete.

It’s 7am. Feeling: Edgy as I watch the teams work their way up the coast over sea ice. That concept always freaks me out a bit.

Aliy and 12 team mates left Unalakleet at 1am on the dot, after just over four hours rest. At this stage we do not know who she left there, we will try to contact Allen and Doug later to find out this information and get it to you asap. Aliy will be bummed to leave someone behind, but buoyed by the fact that Unk is a hub for returned dogs so whoever it is should hopefully get back to Linda quite quickly.

In an Insider interview with Aliy in the Unk checkpoint she said the trail over from Kaltag was great in that there was an actual trail and there was no swimming! I guess the benchmark for “good trail” is fairly relative in this race. Having dry feet is underestimated. A quote from Ed Hopkins earlier in the race “All I need is as pair of dry socks and I’d be a happy guy.” Aliy explained she stopped the team at Old Woman to give them a break from the heat and get them hydrated and fed to continue down the trail.

The pictures also showed the dogs enjoying their nap immensely, some under fleece blankets to keep the rain/snow off them and a few precautionary wrist wraps to head off potential sore wrists. In this screen shot you see Violet getting herself super-comfy. Aliy, Allen and Doug would have enjoyed the hospitality of the checkpoint and the community of Unalakleet.

The team’s run time over to Shak was 5:40. She and Jessie Holmes are ‘there or there abouts’ with each other at the moment and Aliy arrived there in 7th position, making up some time on Jessie. They were moving very nicely towards the checkpoint which is exciting to watch at this stage of the race.

Skatoolik is an interesting village set on a sand spit bordered by the Tagoomenik River to the east and Norton Sound to the west. Aliy says: “One of my absolute favorite villages on the Iditarod is the tiny Eskimo village of Shaktoolik out on the Western Coast of Alaska. The people out there have a life different from much of the mainstream world – and they are proud of it!”

Aliy will rest the team here before hitting the trail to Koyuk. Trail notes say the trail is “bleak, flat, and deadly monotonous. Locals say the actual distance is under 50 miles, but it always seems like a hundred. There is not so much as a shrub on this stretch, most of which is over the sea ice of Norton Bay“. Aliy and team will run this section in the daylight.

Returned Dog Update

Commando arrived at Chateau Steiner yesterday. He is great! He is not much of an indoor dog so at the moment he is enjoying naps in his box, snacks and meals to order and lots of loving from Linda. He’s had an interesting couple of days travelling from Eagle Island but now he’s somewhere familiar and can rest and recuperate, and set about healing. Thanks Linda and Midnight for taking great care of our returned athletes. They won’t want to leave!

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It’s 10:15pm Nome time (which is the same as everywhere else in Alaska) Feeling: Pumped that the team is on the coast!

After checking out of Kaltag this morning at 7:37am Aliy took the team over the portage trail for about 45 miles before stopping for a 2.5 hour break at Old Woman Cabin. Check out this link from the “Iditarod the First Ten Years” Facebook page that shows a beautiful painting and short story by Jon Van Zyle about the “Old Woman”.

The team then pulled into Unalakleet checkpoint at 8:43pm to a huge crowd of people and press. They are the 7th team to the checkpoint. It looked to be raining in the village and the live stream camera was smattered with rain drops. So much so that the scene looked like an impressionist painting.

Aliy has bedded down the team and will rest them for a while (pretty vague huh? I have no idea how long they will break here). Even in the smudge we managed to discern that Allen and Doug made it to Unk! They have very distinctive gaits. Aliy will be really happy to see them both and they will be able to watch over the team as she goes for a rest. They are unable to help her in any way – feeding or petting the dogs, helping with her gear and equipment – but they can be there as cheerleaders and to make sure the dogs are undisturbed.

Sebastian Schnuelle is also in Unk and posted this post and pictures.

After Unalakleet the teams follow the coast up to Shaktoolik. It will be dark when they travel this trail but last year Aliy took a couple of videos from the area. You can find them here and here. She will travel through one of her favourite sections of trail, the Blueberry Hills.

Marc Lester from ADN is following the race and was in Eagle Island yesterday and captured this wonderful picture of Aliy and Nomex. I would love to hear what you reckon she is whispering in his ear. Click here to see the original.

In the meantime, the first wave of family/handler crew made our own trek to Nome, albiet a bit quicker and easier. Here’s a few pics of our journey today.

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Its: 8am. Feeling: excited the team is back on the trail with two green ‘mandatory rest’ ticks next to their name. Back on even ground with the other teams.

After resting a mandatory eight hours in Kaltag, Aliy pulled the hook with 13 team mates towards the Western Coast at Unalakleet (Unk). They left the checkpoint in eighth position.

Watching the Live Feed as Aliy prepared the team, she took time to walk the dogs around after they woke up to stretch, shake and settle – like we do in the morning. They, like us, can’t go from full sleep to running down the trail without a few minutes of limbering up.

Some of the dogs are dressed in wind jackets but not all, she will be carrying other jackets in her sled if (when) they are needed for the rest of the team later on.

What’s ahead?

To paraphrase Bowers’ Trail Notes – This leg of the race travels over the ancient Kaltag portage to the Bering Sea coast. Looking at the trail map it follows a relatively straight valley angling southwest through the coastal mountains. The route has been used for millennia by Interior Athabascans and Coastal Inupiat people. It is normally a well-used snow machine highway. It marks the major transition from the inland river environment to the coast. Conditions can be vastly different at opposite ends of the portage, and wind is a constant threat on the western half.

The first part of the trail is climbing and the team will encounter a number of different landscapes including wooded areas, taiga, and open stretches, across frozen streams and lakes, along flats, up hills and ridges, through tundra and on river.

This year Sebastian Schnuelle reported there is significant snow and combined with the wind we could hear on the live stream, it could make for a difficult crossing – but, hey, it’s the Iditarod. If it were easy we’d all be doing it. (While you are reading Sebastian’s blogs check out this one that shows us inside the Kaltag checkpoint and this one that has great pics of Aliy and team arriving)

Here is an Aliy Cam from last year as she moved along the same trail.

I asked Allen about this trail the other day:

The trail to Unk is 85 miles and the team is not likely to do that in one run. There are two cabins between Kaltag and Unk – Tripod Flats then Old Woman plus plenty of other camp spots at which she could rest the team. She knows this trail and all its nuances well and will pick the best place to maximise her strategy.

Today the family/handler crew is starting the trek to Nome ready to greet the team in a few days. Unfortunately it has been storming in Nome and various flights have been cancelled so we’re not quite sure what’s going to happen. Either way, we’ll be incommunicado for much of the day so keep an eye on the tracker, the Insider videos and Iditarod Facebook page for updates.

Go team! (And go aeroplanes!)

It’s 11:15pm. Feeling: Certain the team will enjoy their eight hour break. And me.

Aliy and her 13 mates arrived into Kaltag at 10:24pm this evening. They slogged down the river (it travels North but is actually ‘down’) from Eagle Island in 11 hours and 10 minutes – including a 1.5 hour break along the way (so, a run time of around 9 hours, 40 mins). The 1.5 hour micro-rest will have been refreshing for the dogs and Aliy. She would have given them several snacks and likely taken the chance to ring out some of her own clothing! We have no sense of what they are going through by watching the tracker – but by all accounts it sounds pretty miserable. The wind is blowing in Kaltag and temps are still warm. But, a miserable day mushing with your best mates is still better than most other ‘jobs’ I can think of.

Sparkie led the team in, in single lead, followed by Dutch and Driver in swing, QT and Five, Mismo and Jefe, Rodney and Bruno, Nomex and Amber with Violet and Decaf in wheel.

On the live feed I noticed the first thing Aliy did was give her team an omeprozole tablet. [As taken from a post I wrote during the Yukon Quest: Omeprozole is a optional medication that mushers give their dogs every 24 hours during a race to decrease the chance of developing gastric ulcers. This came about after studies by Dr Mike Davis and his team a number of years ago and since then we have been very religious about ensuring the dogs receive their doses at around the same time every day during the race. It can be complicated for a musher to give this medication on the trail as the dogs need to have not eaten for at least three hours and cannot eat for half hour after, but the pros certainly outweigh the only con.]

The vet team then did a thorough exam on each dog. We are so thankful that so many amazing vets volunteer their time to all of the dog races we are involved in. Without vets there is no race – thank you all. Aliy then put straw down so the dogs could settle immediately, some started to take their own booties off, impatient for her to get down the line to them. She dressed a few dogs in sleeping jackets but it is so warm out there they didn’t all need one – they looked quite content in the straw. Foot ointment was next, a soothing, antibiotic creme that is massaged between the pads. They will be loving that sensation after being on their feet for so many hours today. Mmmm a foot massage sounds just perfect to me right now also…

Even though where the camera was situated for the live feed made it sound extraordinarily windy it seems the dogs are actually quite sheltered – from my view the straw wasn’t blowing around and jackets weren’t flapping so they will rest easy.

Aliy’s checkpoint routine for an eight hour stop will be focussed on rest with a couple of big meals, the first after an hour or two then the other a couple of hours before leaving. Aliy will get a good chunk of sleep herself and she will feel immediately better for it. Its been a long day on the river and the thought of getting her dogs settled in straw and herself settled in her sleeping bag will have been sooo inviting for the last few hours.

The earliest the team can leave on the portage trail to Unalakleet is in eight hours, which would normally be 6:24am but, because we switch to daylight savings time tonight and we spring forward (just like the dogs – ha! get it?) her exit time will be 7:24am (Alaska time) and it will look like she stayed one hour too long. Don’t be alarmed.

It’s amazing to me that I can be sitting on Mismo’s couch in Two Rivers watching over the team in Kaltag. As much as it soothes me to watch them sleeping I’m switching off now for a while. My refresh finger needs a break.