The Beginning of Food Drops

January 1, 2001

Seavey's Iditarod Racing Team--Tyrell Seavey

The author of this article is actually caught on film doing some work.  (Note that this caption is written by a Montana Iditarod Musher)

The countdown is upon us. Every day from now to the start of the Iditarod counts. We have started to prepare the food drops for the Iditarod. The next few weeks will be spent packaging the food and supplies that will be sent out along the Iditarod Race trail in February.

The salmon filets are cooked with the rice, oat flour, oil and chicken fat then frozen in large sheets to be later broken into peanut brittle like pieces. This is the base for most of the dogs’ meals in the yard and on the race. Yesterday we thawed the lamb fat, cut it into thin strips and laid it back out to freeze again, and today we bagged it. We also measured out the dry food and put it in single serving bags.

The two most important things to keep in mind while packaging the food are clarity and convenience. We want it to be very simple for our frozen half asleep musher to be able to tell the beef fat from the lamb fat, or the horse from the salmon. Clear, re-sealable plastic bags make it easy to tell at a glance what is inside, and also you can repack the leftovers into the sled and use them later.

It's not quite the Iron Chef, but it's close.  This giant, propane-fired burner with a large rectangular cook pot are what we use to cook the fish, rice, oat flour, and "secret sauce."

When we have assembled all that different foods we pack them into large burlap grain bags that are well marked with fluorescent spray paint as to what checkpoint and which musher they belong to. We also add to the bags the human food and the material supplies the team will need. Booties, runner plastic, sweat wraps (wraps for the dogs’ wrists), massage oil, drop chains (used for dropped dogs) and spare harnesses are just a few of the many spare and replacement items we need. We use a lot of straw and HEET (alcohol fuel for stoves) but that is supplied by the race so we don’t have to worry about shipping it out.

As I mentioned above every minute counts now. The musher is constantly thinking, planning, focusing... getting mentally prepared for the Iditarod. The days just fly by now and next time we look up it’ll be mid-February. The work that must be done in the next few months is routine--the same every year--so we aren’t really concerned about getting it done, rather it just happens simultaneously with the training. When we surface in March at the starting line, we will have a well trained team of dogs and a musher who is capable, both mentally and physically, of handling the next thousand miles alone. This is the fine madness of running the Iditarod.

Happy New Year!,

Tyrell Seavey

Sterling, Alaska

© 2002 Ultimate Iditarod, Snowcrest Racing Sled Dogs, Seavey's Iditarod Racing Team
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