Ultiamte Iditarod Update

On Saturday, heavy snows fell all day at my house in Seeley Lake, while the University of Montana Grizzles beat the Demons from Northwestern State University of Louisiana in the first-round of the football playoffs. Not much snow fell on the game, but luckily we didn't need the weather on our side to win the game.

A 6-dog team driven by Jim's uncle, Rich, returns from a run Sunday morning.

By Saturday night, I was at the kennel in Seeley Lake hauling the sleds out of their storage shed and getting them rigged with ganglines (the lines the dogs are attached to), snowhooks (our anchors to keep the team stopped when we decided to do so), and snub ropes (lines that we can tie off to trees, posts, or the occasional Fiat parked beside the trail to act as a more permanent means of holding the team). My mom and I quickly inspected the brakes to make sure that they would work, and we headed into the dog yard with our sleds in tow. We decided that we would need more snow before we could run large (10-14 dog) teams, so we split one of my 14-dog teams that had been running with the four-wheeler into two 7-dog teams, and we hit the trail.

This picture was taken on the same trail the following morning. The team is approaching the top of the ridge. The valley is to the right of the trail.

The moon was almost full, and the clouds opened up just enough to allow it to peak through and illuminate the woods. With such a bright night, we shut off our headlamps mounted on our hats and we run in the glow of the moon. The scene was perfect for our first sled run of the year. The dogs flew over the snow, and the sleds silently sliced through the powder as our shadows bounced along on the trees and chased us down the trail.

Soon we were on top of a ridge overlooking the valley. The Swan Mountains across our little valley glowed with their bright snowy jackets and the small cluster of twinkling lights below us and just to the south represented the town of Seeley Lake.

The lights disappeared as we made our way quickly and silently down the ridge and back toward home. As we approached home, I began to get a little nervous. We have a sharp 180 degree hairpin corner about a mile from the house. On the way out from the kennel, you go uphill around the corner, and at worst you have to tip the sled onto the outside runner and run around the corner. But on the way down, it can be a little hairy, and the first attempt at it every year seems to be an indicator of your success on the corner for the rest of the season.

Mushers stand on the back of the sleds on the tails of the runners. The handle bar is the arch-shaped piece on top of the stanchions. Steering is accomplished through leaning and by relying on the wheel dogs (the dogs in the very back of the team).

I kept telling myself to lean into the corner and to hold on--no matter how many of those larch trees on the outside of the corner that we slammed into. I even turned on my headlamp so I could see exactly what I was doing. The dogs were going faster and faster as we approached the corner because they could sense my slight bit of nervousness, and they like the adrenaline rush they get when the musher on the back of the sled starts to worry. Hold on; lean in. And the corner was there.

The leaders started into it. I took my foot off the brake (you can't use the brake on a sharp corner because it pulls the sled into the inside of the corner and guarantees that you will crash into something), and I shifted my weight to the inside, grasped the handlebar, and leaned in. The sled tracked directly behind the wheel dogs, passing within 8 inches of one small tree on the inside of the corner, and the nose of the sled seemed to always point just a bit too much to the inside of the turn. But the laws of physics were with me. The centrifugal force of the sled and my weight pushing out balanced perfectly with my leaning in, and the sled gracefully finished its arc around the corner and began to follow directly in behind the team. No fishtailing or skidding--just right behind the team like freight cars following a locomotive around a curve in the tracks--the equivalent of "sticking the landing" after a triple lutz on the skating rink. The whole event took just over two seconds.

"Good dogs! That's it," I said as we finished the corner, but I wasn't sure if I was complimenting them or myself. I guess we have started the sled runs off on the right foot.