"Our" Dog Yard
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Hi everybody! It’s been a couple of
weeks since we got here and we and the dogs are
getting pretty settled here in Two Rivers. Our cabin
is cozy with the propane heater, although it
definitely feels weird to not be stoking a
woodstove. This will be the first winter since I
lived in a college dorm that I haven’t been joined
at the hip with a woodstove. Life in general is
pretty cushy with running water, electricity, full
kitchenette, cell service (603 631-3030),
post office just down the road (PO Box 16050 Two
Rivers, AK 99716), Two Rivers Lodge just around the
corner, and Fairbanks being less than 20 miles away.
Fairbanks is a pretty big town and serves as a
regional center for all of central and northern
Alaska, and has every kind of service we could need.
The folks at Cold Spot Feeds, the world’s biggest
mushing store, said “welcome back” when we pulled
in. We’ve already had the chance to visit with our
friends and fellow Quest mushers, Phil Joy (and Kumi),
Brent Sass, and Lance Mackey. We’ve also spent a
bunch of time cutting up hundreds of pounds of
frozen meat for the dogs’ snacks and dinners. It’s
been a little easier, and way neater, using Bill’s
meat band-saw rather than the ax method I used last
winter. All in all, we are very happy with this
winter’s accommodations.
Trip taking a roll in the snow after a
run.
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One of the best things about staying
here is the direct trail access. From here, we can
reach literally hundreds of miles of trail,
including the Quest trail, itself. It’s going to be
a challenge to find our way around without going a
lot farther than we expected to, but our range is
already expanding rapidly and the dogs are now going
in one day what took us all week not long ago. We
have been alternating between running big (16-dog)
teams with the atv and smaller (6 to 8-dog) teams
with the sleds, depending on the day’s goal for
training. Yesterday we got a couple more inches of
snow and that has tipped the scales towards running
with sleds. There are still a bunch of roots and the
occasional rock to watch out for, and in a couple of
the swamps we have to be really careful to control
speed going through the frozen tussocks, but the
difference between sliding along quietly on sled and
bouncing around on a very cold atv is dramatic.
Training with an atv is like work. Sledding is the
joy of running a dog team. With a cold snap coming
in (lows of -25, highs of -10), it makes it even
harder to want to take the atv back out. Standing on
a sled, your body is in constant motion adjusting to
terrain and trail, meaning it’s easier to stay warm.
Sitting on the atv is more like a torture chamber
with a brutal wind chill and back wrenching devices.
We could still use some more snow, but I’ll be
riding my new CB Sled as much as possible from here
on out…
The Trail Home
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16 Good Dogs!
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Home Sweet Home
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As far as racing this year, the
Quest is the main event and the reason we are here.
It starts on February 14th and almost everything we
do between now and then is designed to prepare me
and the dogs for 1000 miles of the Yukon Quest. We
will be doing a few early season races for getting
the dogs and us out in a competitive setting. There
area couple of local races right here in Two Rivers,
but that being said, the first bigger race of the
year is the Sheep Mountain 150 on the second weekend
of December. It will not be a very competitive event
for us. It is a speed race and we will not alter our
“slow and steady” training style to prepare for it.
Instead, we will use it to test a few of the dogs
who didn’t make the team last year by getting them
out in a race setting to see how they do. Our goal
for that one will be to have three legs of similar
time since there is ample rest and three even legs
of 50 miles. After that, we hope to run the GinGin
200 again and would very much like to make the
Copper Basin 300 in mid-January. We’ll see how
things work out and hope for the best…
So that’s most of the news fit to print from here
for now.
Thanks for checking in!
