Day 43, 2/12/2011

Hello everyone, I'm back in civilization again, and it will take me a few days to get caught up here. There's no way I can limit myself to one photo a day for the next few entries, so I'll try to keep it down to five...

Today we finally had a break in the weather and were able to fly out to Slaven’s Roadhouse in the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. Not a moment too soon, either, because the first musher, Hugh Neff, has already arrived, and last I heard, the race official and the vet had not been able to fly, so there was still just the startup skeleton crew on the ground.

It was a nice, smooth flight, clear skies and very little wind.

We arrived to find Hugh Neff up and around and getting ready to leave. He was still there about an hour after we landed, so I had plenty of time to get some photos of him and his dog team. He is hours ahead of any other musher, so he was able to take his time here. He seemed well rested and in very good spirits, and so did his dogs.

We contacted the Eagle office via radio to find out who to expect next, and when. The SPOT trackers that the mushers were carrying were not always accurate, so it was good that our dispatcher had other ways to attain the information. Hans Gatt and Sebastian Schnuelle came in around 5:30 and 5:45 PM, respectively. Ken Anderson was not far behind, he showed up around 6:00 PM. Other mushers that came through on the 12^th were Dallas Seavey, Brent Sass, Allen Moore and Dan Kaduce.

This was my first taste of the routine, start to finish, which was pretty much the same with all of the mushers. They would appear on the east side of the cabin, and someone would yell “team!” Then the person who was on that shift (day shift or night shift, 6 to 6) and designated to “park the dogs” would run outside and guide the team in by the lead dog to a good spot to bed them down. There were bales of straw ready, and a bed was made for each dog to curl up and rest in. The musher would then come inside and place an order for food that the second person on shift could be preparing while the musher fed and watered their dogs (no musher EVER ate before taking care of their dogs).

There was a large pan of hot water on the woodstove at all times. The musher would bring in a cooler of food for the dogs, which generally consisted of some type of fat, mixed with other varied ingredients and was always frozen in one solid block by the time they stopped to feed. They would dip out some hot water to melt the food enough to where they could break it into chunks, then sometimes take it outside and cook it some more with portable stoves that they carry with them. (the whole time I was there, the temperatures ranged from -35 to -55)

The vet and vet’s assistant would then go out and check each dog, and if the musher had any special concerns about any particular dogs they would address those more thoroughly. Once the dogs were snuggled up in their straw beds with their coats and blankets on, and their booties were off and hung to dry, the musher would sit down to a hot meal and go upstairs for some rest, which they needed, because they had just traveled 101 miles since the last checkpoint.

There was a chart on the wall with numbered bunks, and someone had to follow the musher upstairs to see what bunk they were sleeping in, because there is no electricity, so it’s very dark, and other mushers may be sleeping, so we needed to know where they were when we went to wake them up without having to take a headlamp and shine it in everyone’s face to find the right person. The musher would let us know what time to wake them, and we would mark the board on the wall with the musher’s name and wake up time in the appropriate bunk. Sebastian Schnuelle said he needed to sleep with earplugs, because Ken Anderson “snores like a son of a gun.”

When they got up, they went back out to check on their dogs and give them a snack. If there were any sick or injured dogs that shouldn’t go on from there, they were “dropped” at Slaven’s, and the next plane coming in would pick them up and take them back to the musher’s handlers. Once the dogs were ready to go, the musher would sometimes come back in and have another hot meal before hitting the trail again, because they had 58 miles to go to the next stop, and that’s a long way at 40 below. It usually took at least an hour to get everything ready to go, and then they were off again.