The Run to Chistochina
(58 miles)
The
first stretch of trail was down Main Street in Glennallen which also happened
to be the Glenn Highway. Essentially we were traveling through the ditch on the
side of the road, crossing side roads and driveways every block or less. Some
of the stretches of trail were a bit tricky, such as the one going over about
½ - 2 inches of snow through a sewer line construction project. The leaders
did great, and we emerged on the other end of town unscathed and started our journey
to Chistochina in fine shape.
I did indeed gain a bit of experience getting passed from behind in this first
stretch, even with a #14 starting position, and all but one pass went very smoothly
with no tangles. This first leg was approximately 58 miles, and the team hadn't
been on a run longer than 28 miles since we did a long 150 mile training run two
weeks ago. So we took this run rather slow. I had two dogs which I had paced when
we had trained with the 4-wheeler, and I knew that if they were able to trot (a
more sustainable, typically slower gait) and not lope (more like a gallop - faster
but more difficult to sustain over the long haul), the speed would be about 10
miles an hour. So I kept the speed slow enough so Jim and Steele could comfortably
trot, and we slowly but surely put the miles behind us.
This
section of trail had a few tricky sections with some sharp turns as we made our
way down to cross a few rivers: the Gulkana and the Gakona. Both of these crossings
went fine in this leg of the race, even though there was minimal snow over the
ice and little opportunity to do any steering or braking. The dogs stuck tightly
to the trail and followed the markers dutifully as we then climbed off the Gakona
river and up into the scrub spruce forest above the Tok Cutoff highway. We followed
a powerline for a while which had some stretches of wide open trail - perfect
for more passing or stopping to snack the dogs which I did about 2 ½ hours
into the run and again at 4 ½ hours.
The rest of this leg was through scrub spruce forest with little windy stretches
of trail with some tricky corners thrown in every once in a while to keep both
the dogs and mushers from daydreaming. JJ, Wayne, and Bill had caught up to me
by this point and found a few spots to watch me coming down the trail.
One of the key responsibilities for JJ and Wayne as handlers was to keep the dog
truck running and at the same time out of sight of the dogs. Mushers have had
to scratch in races before because of vehicle issues - I witnessed one musher
at the 2nd to last checkpoint scratch last year because his handler didn't keep
the truck running as the temperature dropped to 50 below. The dog truck we were
using was a rather ragged Ford F350 with plenty of miles and a few issues. It
would normally be fine if it could be kept plugged in when it wasn't running,
but at most of the checkpoints this wasn't an option. So as the race progressed
and the temperatures dropped, JJ and Wayne just needed to keep the gas tanks full
and the truck running … all the time.
The other critical issue with the truck was to make sure it was out of sight as
I pulled into a checkpoint or as they stopped to watch along the trail. The dogs
very easily recognize the truck and will throw all instruction and trail sense
to the wind and head straight for it if they see it. JJ and Wayne did a great
job of hiding the truck throughout the race, and I never had to give it a second
thought after hitting the trail.
The last spot where JJ, Wayne and Bill watched me go by on the trail to Chistochina
they shouted out "just 10 miles to Chistochina!" I thought "Great!
This run is going so smoothly and has been quite easy." That all changed
right then and there as the last ten miles of "trail" essentially was
a run in the ditch along the road through foot deep sugar snow with 3 foot high
willow or birch saplings growing up all along the way. The route was marked, but
the trail was either never set up to begin with or the 20 or so teams before me
had churned it up pretty thoroughly. It had to have been a bit challenging for
the dogs to run through as they were constantly getting whapped in the face and
the drag on the sled was quite significant.
We pulled into Chistochina around 4:20pm, and we went through the typical check-in
process of showing the checkers that I still had my required gear in my sled:
cooker, booties, ax, snowshoes, fuel, dog food, people food, and sleeping bag.
I initialed their sign in sheet and was free to go park my team. JJ, Wayne, and
Bill met me there and had scouted out a nice camping spot right next to the water
pump house for me to park the team. This was my first race checkpoint, and I was
a bit overwhelmed by what I had to do. It wasn't that I couldn't do everything
or remember it all, but rather it was just trying to efficiently and methodically
work through everything which had to get done so that both the dogs and I could
get a little rest. As was the case for this checkpoint and all the others which
I camped at, the dogs got quite a bit more rest than I did. Of course they were
the ones doing the majority of the work, so they deserved it.
