Casualty

Well the first victim was had at The Bird Cafe. It took Little Kitty all of 30 seconds to go out in the balmy 37 degree weather and bring this back to the back door. The boys watched the whole thing and laughed hysterically. Poor thing never saw it coming.

And I found a really awesome girl to cut my hair (Kim at The Beauty Room for any of you in Anchorage). It was a bit pricey, but then again everything is in Alaska. Here is a really awful picture of me after a dinner at McDonalds. I swear I look cute in mirrors! It is really short in the back. In fact on the way home after my haircut, I ran my hand through the back and felt a little violated...it was short!!

I am still having difficulties with Photobucket and Iditarod pictures. Here are a few pictures for now.

The plane from Anchorage to Unakleet

At Unakleet the piles of food for the dogs and mushers are frozen and separated alphabetically by checkpoint.

This is what is taking JaDee and all the food to Kaltag

Everyone takes a 4 wheeler of a snowmobile to the store, as in this is the only one.

JaDee in front of the Bering Sea. With a scope you can see Russia from Unakleet. See Sarah was right...some Alaskans do have Russia in their backyards!

Yes, that is a boat buried next to that house!

Off to Kaltag!

And it was cold!!!!

A dog on his way out with the frost from his sleep on him!

Musher putting on his dog's booties.

The booties protect their feet in this cold temperature. It was funny when the dogs get to a pile of straw the lead dog pulls to the front pile, and stops. Then all the other dogs are stopped in row next to their pile. The first thing they do is bend over and rip their own booties off! Each dog can pretty much take his own off but it takes the musher at least 30-40 minutes to re-bootie his dogs. They get a new pair at every stop.

Rows of teams in after a long 10-12 hour pull in -20 temps with a 40 mph head wind.

During a race each dog eats 10,000 calories a day!! Each check point is an average 8 hours apart so the musher carries enough food to feed his dogs every 90 minutes. They have this alcohol fuel supply called Heet that they burn to boil the frozen blocks of food for the dogs in about 30 seconds. In -20 it cools pretty fast so that they can eat it.

Some mushers stayed in Kaltag because they had a community building to sleep in. One stayed for 10 minutes, got a bale of straw, picked up his food and decided to camp out up the trail a ways. He got ahead of the bad wind and temperatures and ended up in 2nd place!

One lady-musher had a dog riding in her sled when they got to Kaltag. He was just pooped. Not only was there wind there were 8 foot drifts across the trail that the dogs had to fight through. One team refused to follow the mushers commands and weaved in and out around the drifts and managed to keep in line with the trail markers. (In 40 mph wind a trail does not stay broken for long so the stakes that mark the path are vital to see). One musher did get lost for hours and hours. He and his team went home and did not finish.

All mushers start with 16 dogs. They cannot swap dogs or replace dogs, but they can leave a dog at a check point to be flown back to Anchorage. Mushers try to avoid this because that means for a bad race experience for the dog and it is hard to "train" that kind of a trauma out of a "dropped" dog. The dogs live, eat and breath with their team and musher 24-7 so to be left behind with strangers and strange dogs is very traumatic. Kaltag was one of the checkpoints with 4 vets on hand that gave each dog a thorough once over.


This little guy was so wore out he got to stay inside after being dropped.
The rules specifically forbid dogs from going inside unless they are dropped. JaDee said this was even the only dropped dog that came inside. Dog teams are NEVER inside. It makes them nervous, but he was so sick he didn't care. He had round the clock care and did just great by the time he flew to Anchorage.


One group of mushers that came in on the worst night really worked together and helped each other get to Kaltag. They took turns breaking trail for each other, made sure no one got lost, kept each other's spirits up and remained within shouting distance of each other the whole time. JaDee said they came in laughing and having a great time. In fact, instead of crashing in the mushers quarters, they were up still having a great time long after the dogs were bedded down.



The sleds of the teams that worked together that long cold night

Another musher was so beat by taking that stretch by himself he almost dropped out. His team was ready to go, but the musher's morale was effecting them too. Then JaDee told him, "You know, your dogs look great!" The musher looked at his team and replied, "Yeah, they do don't they!" He went to each dog and patted them with glove enclosed hands, said some encouraging words to them. After visiting with each dog, he had each of his team wagging their tale and ready to go.

This is the team that almost dropped out, but here they are headed out of Kaltag.