EPIC CONDITIONS 10/28/09

The dog yard before we snowshoed in trails.

The dog yard after 2 hours of snowshoeing in trails!

We were up this morning at 4:30 a.m. for a 14 mile run. Sunday 5 dogs went to Krabloonik for the season; so grateful that Dan MacEachen allows us to try out some of his best atheletes. Brought 2 back to try out for the team: Linda and Alison run a 16-dog team;  myself , Steph,Cam or, whoever else I can get to help me run a 20-dog team; the downside to training 36 dogs for an Iditarod team. within the next week or so we should have photos and/or video of some of the runs. This a.m. we went out to hook up dogs it was snowing hard but only about 1-2 inches of snow on the ground; by the time we finished the run there were 8-10 inches and it continues to build! For once this storm was not overrated. Came up the driveway, the last 2 miles or so at just 5 mph., pretty tame for 20 dogs pulling about 850 lbs. Shell and Walter were superb, slugging a way when it was tough but up to 12-13 mph. when conditions permitted. Linda had Ellie and Screamer up front doing great work in tough conditions. The yearlings we’ve raised are amazing! all super enthusiastic even in deep snow. - Lach

Linda - We had a great run this morning, as Lach described the conditions above.  Alison and I took our 16 dogs out and decided to start out with an easy loop around our South Woods area.  It was snowing so hard we couldn’t see the turns, and could see the  reflectors for the turns as we were passing them.  Ellie and Screamer were our leaders and were fantastic, seeming to know that we were having problems seeing.  They put up with me saying straight ahead, even though I wasn’t sure if a turn was coming up,  but knowing it was there somewhere.   At the end of our run we were on a trail that winds through a heavily forested area, and there was about 8 inches of snow on the ground.  The dogs had to break trail, the only problem was that the trail winds through trees and things look a whole lot different covered in snow - to us anyway.   We were looking for the turn that would lead us out of the woods and not really paying attention to the lead dogs,  and  noticed that  they were looking around and a bit confused.  Before we could do anything they turned left into the woods looking for the trail and we were  heading in the wrong direction, and not on the trail.  The woods are pretty dense at this point and you can’t just weave a 16 dog team around in the woods  and turn them around wherever  you want, especailly on a 4-wheeler.  I jumped of f  the 4-wheeler and undid some of the dogs tugs,  as they were all pretty excited about this new “trail” we took and wanted to just keep going and exploring!  We couldn’t go further as the trees were too close together, so we turned them to the right.  I was running in front of  the team (I’m glad I had an adrenlin rush, because it was hard work) and Alison was driving the 4 wheeler.   We found an area that we could safely turn them in a big arc, and get back to the trail we just made.  All went well, with the leaders understanding that they had to follow, however slowly, to get out of our situation.    I was so grateful that Alison was with me, and that our dogs were  calm and knew they had to be obediant and follow me.   Most of our runs are smooth with no problems, but sometimes we get into situations which are less than ideal.  There are times when you have time to think and process the situation, as we did, and there are times when you have to make an instant decision and think fast.   A great book to read is Gary Paulson’s book” Winter Dance”, which is a true story of  Gary’s training for his first Iditarod.  It is very funny, and every musher can honestly say t hat their story is similar to Gary’s in some way!  Have a great day - it’s time to put the snowshoes on and go stomp down the snow in the dog yard.   - Linda

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Training Log. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.