Golden Sky
What would our life be without good friends? When I opened my emails this morning, there was a friendly reminder from Andy: "Hey what about an Internet update, you must have the time with having good handlers. All you are doing is running dogs, surfing the internet and sitting in your cabin all day with Chips and Coke." Andy is right, it is time for a newsletter, but a few of his statements need explaining.
Drinking coke and eating chips: Surprise, that is not true. I have stopped drinking diet coke by the case and replaced the chips with fruit and nuts. Big change for me, have been drinking that stuff by the case for 15 years. Feeling much better now.
Sitting in the cabin: Well he is almost right. But only for the last 2 days. Most of November has been fairly cold with temperatures into 20 and 30 below. But now it dropped even further, yesterday morning 43 below this morning 46 below, I am talking Celsius here. (I think that if 50 below F). So with that, life has slowed down. The dogs are having a break, no point in running in this temperature. Before the cold snap we haven gotten nicely caught up on our projects from fixing sleds, to organizing food drops, to the endless vehicle fixing saga. One good thing about the cold is, I cannot drive nowhere, and thus not break any trucks. Surfing the internet, sure, yeah addicted to that.
Running dogs, yes he is right about that one. For the longest time, the morning ritual was going outside with the tiger torch to heat up the Honda and go training. Than it got so cold that I needed to leave it running all night, so we could use it to run to town or also to train dogs. I like that little machine, uses only about 50 mpg, its 4x4 and I can use it to train dogs. Sure beats sitting on the Quad all day at 30 below. Music on, warm feet mushing apples, yeahh, could be worse. Running 24 dogs on it, I still have to use the brake to slow it down, so far they have not drug me down any steep banks yet, not even chasing Elk. I am sure that is an adventure which will come eventually. The dogs are looking good, I am very happy with the teams. We are training 3 teams of 20 dogs. This year I plan on running 2 separate Teams in the Quest and Iditarod. And Rich is running the pups in Iditarod. It has been a lot of running dogs, and yes Andy is also right on that one, I do have great handlers this year. Makes a big difference. Us mushers are often in the limelight of things, but we sure could not do what we do with all those helping hands behind the scene. There is a lot of little things which need attention, and the day only has some many hours. Its nice to be able to delegate and knowing it still gets done right. As an example, Laird and Rich spend many hours of the day, trimming each dogs toenails and cut their hair in between the pads, so snowballs can not form. Sounds easy, eh. Well mix 40 below in there, 60 race dogs as well as 20 more tours dogs, that makes for 240 feet to be done, or 960 nails. Anybody doing pedicure looking for a job?
Running dogs: Once I mentally decided to retire most of the dogs from my main string, it has opened up many possibilities for new dogs to come up. In the past I had always divided the yard into Tour dogs and Race dogs. This fall some of the Tour dogs got mixed into the race teams, to fill them up to the 20 dog per team mark. And I am very surprised what I see in some of them. Free and Ibex for example, both born in 2001 were always too hyper for my liking, so I kept them with the tour dogs. People love them, as they are so affectionate. They have an incredible work ethic and are running smooth. That is one thing about tours. When a team only has 4 or 5 dogs, and a sled with gear packed for a 3 day overnight trip, there is no room for slackers, and each dog has to work. Now that Ibex and Free have matured I have hope that they settle down enough to make the long distances. Same counts for a dog called Fatnose. I also bought some dogs from Eric Butcher who retired from mushing and is moving to Arizona (he will be back...) and I am very happy with his dogs. It will take me a while to introduce them all on the "dogs" page. What happened to the old dogs? Some of the leaders like Chevy, Spook, Herring, Marmot, run with Riches Pup Team, teaching the youngsters. The others are running tours at Fish Lake. Who ever gets my old race gang, will sure get a pleasant surprise. The tours have been running since last week and Fish Lake has ideal conditions with the lake being frozen and about a foot and a half of snow. 
We are still in Whitehorse and have put the plans on training in Paxson Alaska on hold. At this point we seem to have better conditions here, as the snow blew off the Denali Highway in high wind. Plus my couches are bigger here and I can take more dogs inside. The other night we had a Business after hours meeting for the Quest. Whitehorse Dodge has signed on as a sponsor, as well as Holland America. They are raffling off a nice 2006 Dodge Cummins Diesel, as well as a 10 day cruise, both things sound very appealing to me. I hope to some of you also and thanks for supporting the Quest.
By 1.30 p.m. today it had warmed up to 38 below , the heat of the day so to speak. Hauke and me hopped on the snowmachines with the goal of breaking out the trail on the Takhini River. Well that mission we only partly accomplished. For one my old Bearcat would not idle, and die as soon as I let the thumb of the throttle. The ones of you knowing how I like to drive, know that keeping my hand on the throttle is usually not an issue. But also we quickly realized, that despite the low temperatures, the river had not frozen very nicely and had lots of open leads. That usually happens if it gets cold too quick and not enough ice chunks form. The open leads were getting so frequent and big, with only a little shelf ice on the side, that putting in a safe dog trail was out of the question. Bad part about that was, that the place where we dropped onto the Takhini was so steep, that there was no way we would make it back up there (the dogs would get up there). A white knuckle drive later we managed to pull up on shore and connect to the Ibex River Trail and go back home overland. Each stop meant a 2 person job to get that Bearcat going again, I know why I prefer dogs. By the time we got back home the thermometer had dropped below 40 again. 
That sure is cold, but also very special and beautiful. In the cold, sounds travels a lot further, and trucks on the Alaska Highway can be heard from miles away. There is not many people traveling on that road this time of the year. In this temperature, when the sun sets, the sky to the east turns into shades of pink to dark blue to deep purple, a sure sign of a cold night. Once the sun settles behind the horizon, it leaves a striking orange glow, eventually giving way to an incredible clear night with the stars shining ever so brightly. Time to put more logs on the fire…. and join the dogs on the couch, before feeding time rolls around.Happy trails
Sebastian and Team
Sab
