Hike to the Frozen Falls

---

This race is always full of unexpected events. Due to heavy snow, storms, and high winds, one of the checkpoints has closed before it opened, since the planes have not been able to fly in the checkpoint supplies and mushers' drop bags. As you can see on the map, the trail goes mostly west until it gets to Grayling on the Yukon River, where it heads up the frozen river to Kaltag before heading west again. That stretch is about 125 miles long, with the Eagle Island checkpoint about in the middle. Eagle Island is the checkpoint that closed, meaning that all mushers had to pick up all their supplies for a leg that will be twice as long as they planned. The change was announced late enough that some of the teams in the lead would have no idea when they left Anvik that Grayling would be their last checkpoint for the next 125 miles. But they have to be ready for anything!

After my work shift, I went back to my room to get ready for an afternoon hike with a friend, Denise and 6 (yes, six) big dogs. A friend of hers, Linda, picked me up at the hotel to drive me to Denise's house; a good thing because with the best of directions, I never would have found my way, and the cell phone signals there are pretty poor. Besides, my rental car was not up to tackling those snowy, icy, mountainous roads! Linda brought her two big dogs, and we set off for Denise's house with her 4 dogs. Plenty of dogs to go around.

We had a delicious lunch of salad and homemade soup before we set off on our hike to the falls. I wanted to get a picture of all the dogs together, but they literally would not stand still for that! We sat in the living room after lunch before our hike, and the dogs all relaxed a bit before our hike. One time they all bounded on top of me! After we bundled up, we needed two cars to drive to the trail head, mostly because of the number and size of the dogs! When we arrived, we all tumbled out of the cars and headed toward a frozen waterfall, Barbara Falls. It was a beautiful winter day, not too cold, but crisp and clear. When we got to the falls, you could hear the water running beneath the frozen surface of the falls and river.

The local paper has daily coverage of the race, including profiles of some of the mushers, background information about their kennels, interviews with them on the trail, etc. It's surprising in a way that something that gets so much attention up here is not covered at all anywhere else. Here are examples of the stories they have covered:


• The oldest musher to start this year is Jim Lanier, who is 77 and is starting his 20th Iditarod. Surprisingly, have been two older men in the history of the Iditarod finishing the race: Norman Vaughan, who was 86 when he started his final Iditarod in 1990 (he competed his first Iditarod in his 70's), and Joe Reddington, Sr., one of the founders of the race, who ran his final race at age 80 in 1997. At one point, Reddington had a kennel of about 500 dogs!
• After about a week on the trail, mushers are starting to hallucinate, seeing trees as giant dog heads, house cats running along the trail, a huge green garbage bin, and an overpass that a musher ducked below, even though he knew it couldn't be there. Many of the mushers stand up for most or all of the race, and falling asleep on the skids is not unheard of. Falling off could be disastrous.
• At least two mushers have found love on the trail, marrying each other and combining their kennels.
• "10 Things Mushers Are Eating on the Trail" including melted gelato, frozen taquitos, frozen pouches of baby food, and home made meals vacuum sealed and heated in boiling water. One musher had to chop his beef with an axe because it had frozen into a big solid clump.
• The mushers get "mail" along the route, messages called into the headquarters phone bank and relayed via phone to checkpoints.
• Jesse Holmes, of National Geographic Channel's "Life Below Zero," was one of the mushers wearing a GoPro camera on the race, but apparently didn't plan very well, since he complained that the battery died in a few minutes; he probably should have had some sort of insulated case for it....? He also had a camera crew that flew from checkpoint to checkpoint to cover his race and interview him periodically along the trail.
• Dropped dogs are cared for by women in Hiland Mountain Correctional Center until they can be picked up by their kennels. It's therapeutic for the dogs and the women.



This has been a fun and interesting trip so far!

---