Sunday - Restart Day

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** sorry this has taken so long to post!**

At last, the day I've been waiting for! I got on the 8 AM bus from Anchorage to Willow, about an hour and a half north and a bit west of Anchorage. As I walked from the bus to the registration cabin, the trees were sparkling and beautiful from the hoar frost. It must have been very foggy that night, and all the trees and bushes were covered with glittering velour. I had never seen anything like it. Surprisingly, the covering lasted throughout the day, even though the sun was out in the blue sky. What a beautiful day!

I worked 2 hours at the volunteer registration desk, where we checked in volunteers and helped them find their assigned locations. There are so many jobs out there...security, handlers (work with the mushers, the dogs, and the VIPs), stagers (get the teams in line for their proper time in the starting chute), trail guards (keep people from crossing the chute and the trail during the start sequences), vet techs, and so many more. It really takes a small city to pull of this event!

After my shift, I still had 2 hours before the start to explore the area. First, I went to the dog lot, where all the trucks and trailers were parked, and the teams were getting ready to race. It was interesting to wander among the trailers to see the variety of accommodations custom-made for the dog teams. Some were simple plywood kennel boxes built into a pickup truck bed, others were custom metal kennels on a trailer, and still others were box trailers with the kennels built inside, so they could be loaded from inside the trailer, rather than loading from the outside. All the kennels had ports with open grids for the dogs to watch outside. After the trailers were parked, the dogs were out in the lot, being tended by the musher, the musher's handlers, or the volunteer dog handlers. It was also interesting to see the variety of sleds that will be in use; also, a sled is allowed to have an additional conveyance behind the driver to carry additional supplies (which can double as a seat for the driver in this 1,000 mile marathon). I'm sure there are elaborate rules governing the configuration, but there was still quite a range of sleds.

Actually the rules detail exactly what they are, and are not, allowed to take along and/or to send out on the trail. For example, the rules dictate how many sleds a musher can use during the race; they may send 1 or 2 sleds ahead to checkpoints along the way to swap out during the race. In 1993, Martin Buser rigged a sail to his sled to benefit from a strong tail wind. Oddly enough, he didn't win that year but did succeed the next. Using a sail on a dog sled was subsequently banned, but innovation continues. For example, Jesse Helms, a reality star of "Life Below Zero," a National Geographic TV show, wore a GoPro camera and has been followed on the trail at points by a camera crew, but found that the temperature quickly killed the GoPro battery, missing the worst of the dramatic storm they endured. According to an interview in the Anchorage Daily News, they lost the trail, and the snow was up to his waist. The team got tangled and he had to release all of them from the harness so they could find the trail together before he could hook them all up and start again. Another musher is experimenting this year with 4-inch wide sled runners, twice as wide as traditional sleds, which should help in deep soft snow. It will be interesting to see if that gets banned or adopted!

From the dog lot, I made my way over to the start area. There was a banner across a large framework to mark the starting line, and it was fenced off on both sides, along with barricades making a kind of "funnel" from the dog lot to the starting line. Beyond the start, running out several hundred yards, there was a long barricade on either side, enclosing the length of the run, from the start out on the lake. Spectators started lining up on both sides 1-2 hours before the start, each trying to secure a spot in the front. If you didn't get there and stake out your spot early, it was a LONG walk across the snow covered ice to get a clear place at the fence. It wasn't an easy walk through 4-6 inches of somewhat-packed-but-mostly-loose snow, and it was cold standing on the ice and snow!

But the atmosphere reminded me of a tailgate party. There was a large contingent of snow machines (DON'T call them "snowmobiles" up here!) racing about, and people brought folding chairs, tables, foam pads to sit on, food and drink (at least one group even had a grill!), baby strollers, sleds, cross country skis, and at least one cornhole game! I heard later that some of the elaborate set-ups with grills and coolers were usually groups of family members of one of the mushers. I came across one guy gnawing on a huge shank of some fragrant and steaming meat.

There was also a group selling Girl Scout cookies. They brought along cases of cookies on a sled then canvassed the hungry crowd for sales. It seemed like they were doing pretty well with their enterprise!

The order of start was determined by "bib draw" at a banquet before the race; the mushers wear these bibs at the start and end of the race. To ensure the fastest racers will be early in the sequence, the top qualifying racers were in the initial draw to award the lowest numbers, and newer teams in a second drawing of higher bib numbers. The #1 bib is reserved to honor a musher for contributions to to the race, and that person or their proxy rides in the first sled in the Ceremonial Start. There were 78 teams registered this year, though 10 of those withdrew before the start.

Once they were ready for racing, the first team was positioned in the chute, then teams started every two minutes. This demanded great choreography among teams of people. To continue the starts in a timely manner, teams were lined up in sequence behind the team at the starting line. Teams of stagers wrangled 68 sleds, each with a team of 18 excited dogs, into the starting order. One team was at the gate, followed by 4 or so in line in the chute directly behind the one at the gate, and the rest of the dog lot filled with row upon row of racing teams 4 teams abreast. Each volunteer team of handlers was about 12-16 people, each pair trying valiantly to control the dogs in their charge. Standing hundreds of yards away along the exit chute, you could hear the cacophony from the dog lot as the dogs yowled and sang in their excitement.

As the time counted down for the start, two announcers sat in a red car just beyond the gate. The man was reading a prepared biography of each musher, providing information about their background, race history, etc., while a woman sitting next to him watched a rolling start timer, counting down the seconds to the start. It really reminded me of the start sequence for sailing races! There were no "over early" errors, and I don't know how they would handle that, because by the time they could get the team stopped, it would really mess with the precision of the race.

Just so you know, the multiple 2-minute start lag for each racer is added on to his or her mandatory 24-hour rest stop. The last racer to start takes a minimum 24-hour rest, while each racer with an earlier start tacks on 2 minutes per racer before the final bib number.

It was exciting to watch the teams start off down the chute and whiz by, with their fans cheering along the barriers. Most of the racers have ardent fans, even the newest rookies have their supporters. As they whooshed by, fans would reach out to slap hands with the mushers, and more than one time I wondered if they'd tip the sled! There were also volunteer Trail Guards several miles down the road where they helped control traffic where cars or snow machines might cross and endanger the sled dog teams.

With 68 teams at 2-minute intervals, it took over 2 hours for all to start the race. Afterward, volunteers were needed to help breakdown the race area, pulling out and rolling up snow fence, wooden start barriers , and take down the starting gate banner. All in all, it was a long day, and pretty cold at that, since we were standing on ice on thick ice.

But when we left there was nothing on the frozen lake but foot prints and sled tracks in the snow! If you enlarge the photo of me in the chute after the last racer, you can see the banner at the start. I was probably about 1/3 of the way to the end of the chute, which may give you an idea of how long the chute was!

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Photos

Me in the Chute
Click to enlarge and you can see the start gate in the background.