Iditarod 2011

www.iditarod.com

The official site of all things IDITAROD.  I tell you we love this race.  JaDee is once again off to Kaltag, like he did his first year. (you can link over to March 2009 for information from his first trip out there). He leaves for a week starting tomorrow.  The weather could not be better for a dog race right about now either.  Lows in the single digits at night keep the snow nice and firm, highs in the upper 20s and sunny sunny sunny all day make it almost warm outside all day.  Almost no wind and no change in the forecast for the next 10 days.

My cousin's little girls are following the Iditarod in North Carolina this year!  Their 3rd grade class is following Mitch Seavy and Melissa Owens. We are sending pictures and information and a poster information back to them as they follow the race.

Here is Mitch Seavy's team lining up and ready to go in Anchorage!

here is what I wrote to their class after our awesome day at the start in Anchorage:

And enjoy pictures of Exxon Mobiles warming/hot chocolate tent at the end! Oh and while everyone wears their fur to this event, the picture of the guy at the end of this post was the best fur display I have ever seen!

Hello from Alaska!

Saturday marked the start of Iditarod 2011! The Anchorage start is considered the "ceremonial" start and the actual times for the race do not begin until Sunday in Willow.  The Anchorage start coincides with our winter festival FUR RONDY.  Rondy, as we call it for short, commemorates the time of year that the fur trappers gathered for a Rendezvous, after months of lonely winter trapping.  They would gather to trade, sell pelts, and share stories and games.  We have a winter carnival, complete with a Ferris wheel and merry go round and other rides, as well as tons of events all week leading up the Iditarod start on Saturday. Saturday's race start is a big media event and photo opportunity.  

It is also the time that the mushers get to take someone on their sleds with them as a way to thank their sponsors or as a way to dedicate the race ahead to someone.  In some of the pictures I have attached you will see one or more people on the sled besides the musher.  Some mushers sell the chance to ride on their sled and give the money to charity. Last year Jeff King raised $10,000 by bidding his Iditarod ride for Make a Wish.  The route they take on Saturday is only about 10 miles long and then they load the dogs up in their trailer and make their way up to Willow for the next morning.  

You guys in Greensboro will be happy to see that I got to see Mitch Seavy take off! I got pictures of him and his team at the starting line up!!   Melissa was already gone by the time we got there. It takes about 3 hours to send off 62 teams.  We also saw Mitch Seavy's trailer with some of his dogs after they got done at the pick up point too!   

I am sending pictures of some of the teams, including Mitch, at the start, dog teams waiting to get hooked up from the sled, some of us on the side of the road, and some of the different types of trailers that mushers use.  Most of the mushers do this on a low budget and have homemade trailers.  Some like Mitch, have made this a business, and have custom made trailers for the dogs.  Most of the mushers that take the lead for the Iditarod have 50-75 dogs in their kennels at home that they train and breed all year to get a good team of 16 to make the race.  Many of them also train for other people and sell dogs to other teams too.  It takes a lot of food and a lot of pooper scoopers to take care of that many dogs!

The dogs are almost always very loud while they are on the sidelines at the start of the race. They bark and bark and bark at everything and pull hard on their ropes. But once they get going they are silent and concentrate on the race. They really love to run!

A dog handler helps keep the team in line while they wait to take off. Because once a dog feels a harness on them, they will take off running and won't stop!  A musher can lose a good dog unless someone is hanging on to them. JaDee was a dog handler for the 2009 race start. A few days later into the race, JaDee flew to Kaltag and ended up being the official time keeper of the checkpoint. That means JaDee recorded the stopping time of each musher, how many dogs they came in with, how many dogs they left with, and what time they left. Sometimes dogs that are sick or too tired get "dropped" at the check points along the way. There are many vets who volunteer from all over the world who come to help take care of the dogs. The dogs then get flown on airplanes back to Anchorage where their musher or their family will pick them up later.

The other thing JaDee does as a volunteer is a lot of work! They have to load and unload supplies on and off little tiny prop planes. Each musher can pack 3 burlap bags no heavier than 60 pounds each of supplies for themselves and the dogs. These supplies include food for themselves and the dogs. Straw for the dogs to sleep in, and fuel to burn to cook the frozen food and melt the ice to drink.  The fuel is an alcohol called HEET that can boil water in 90 seconds. All the food and supplies are kept outside and are blocks of ice to start with, before the HEET stoves warm it up to eat or drink.

The volunteers are only allowed to act as a handler for the musher to get his team hooked on or off the sled. The musher has to feed and water each of his dogs. And get the booties on and off each dogs feet.  Remember that is 16 dogs times 4 feet so 64 booties come on and off at each stop. The booties get worn out running over the ice and snow and it is important to take care of the dogs' feet.  Each dog eats around 10,000 calories a day. That means every 90 minutes the mushers stop to feed and water the dogs along the trail or at a checkpoint.

When the dogs sleep they sleep outside in piles of straw. They bury themselves in the piles and curl up and stay nice and warm. The mushers sleep in big sleeping bags next to their dogs and usually crawl in the bag with their boots and everything on. Sometimes the mushers sleep inside, if there is a village at their stop. When the mushers and teams leave a check point, volunteers like JaDee, haul the hay and trash and old booties to a big burn site and burn it all. This keeps litter out of the villages and stops along the way.  Last year, JaDee burned trash for 1 whole day at the Rainey Pass checkpoint.

I got the class picture and it looks great! I also picked up an awesome poster from the race yesterday that Exxon-Mobile was handing out in their hot chocolate and cookie tent.  I am going to put the picture on the poster and send it to Kaltag and JaDee will get anyone who wants to to sign it.  It may not be too many mushers, especially the ones in a hurry to win, but the mushers that are in it not necessarily to win, will probably sign. Although Lance Mackey is a pretty cool guy, if he stops in Kaltag, he just may sign it! I also got a cool magazine given to us from a shop in town. It has a neat article in it about Mitch Seavy's son, Dallas. I will send it all out to you guys!  

Oh, in 2009, JaDee ate dinner with Melissa Owens and she gave him the rest her cookies to take back to back home to his kids.  Her mom had made her the cookies to put in her supply bags along the race.  They were really delicious gingersnap cookies :) She is really nice and we hope she does well this year!

It was a really pretty set up for free hot chocolate, coffee and hot cider.  Thanks Exxon-Mobile! We picked up free posters, a survival whistle, blinking lights for our backpacks and a coloring book from Wells Fargo too.

free cookies!!
as a nod to the gold and fur trade in Alaska, the cookie display was pretty cool. Ethan thought it was real gold and that it was free. I told him they were spray painted rocks and only the cookies were free.

Ethan and I got hot cider

Yup. its real all right!