February training update
It is beginning of February, only 5 weeks left to Iditarod. This time is always filled with many preparations, but mainly overshadowed by the task of assembling the food drop. Being from Canada the food drop is a bit more complicated, as we can not get meat across the border. Not only is that a change in diet for the dogs, that also entails that we can not precut the meat at home in Whitehorse whenever time allows. 
Now we are sitting in front of a huge mountain of meat and fish….. or better said Matt is, while I am sitting inside with the gang, packing up vet kits, filled with foot ointments, powder, hand warmers, massage oils like Algyval and Zalox..The whole things is times 18 for the Iditarod and times 2 for the Denali Doubles. Some of the other equipment like my personal cloths, booties, dog coats, sled repair kits , fleece blanket etc, were already vacuum packed at home. Why vacuum packing? The stuff takes up less room like that, but also stays clean in case some of the meat bags thaw out during transport. Specially while being flown to the Checkpoints that might happen, depending on where each bag is laying in the plane, as naturally the pilots do not like their cockpits below freezing. 
A few days ago we moved with the whole gang to our training camp in Paxson. It is nice to be back here. Jenny and Audie gave us a nice welcome. Not only did Audie plow the driveway and warmed up the cabin, they invited us to a beautiful bison dinner in their new “grand room“, complete with grand piano which Jenny was playing after dinner. They have a magnificent place for guests, www.denalihwy.com The drive here was uneventful and beautiful. The road were more or less bare, which is uncommon for this time of the year. It was full moon and wildlife everywhere, countless moose and once I got towards Summit Lake, small groups of Caribous were scattered all over the landscape. 
Matt left a day ahead of me with most of the supplies, while I followed a day later with the dogs. Due do my racing motto, slow but steady I did not stop much and arrived only a few hours after Matt, who had stopped overnight. Getting here at the beginning of February also meant I could narrow down the racing crew. At home stayed Zipper due to his age and Beast who is too short coated for my liking. Both were nice dogs though to round out the training teams and have 3300 miles on them. Some unsuspecting tourists will get some pretty seasoned dogs in their teams back at home. More notably I left Vasser at home. He is one of my main leaders, but has a nagging wrist injury which will best heal with lots of time off. That was a tough choice and Grisman is already missing his brother. He now is running with his other brother Scruggs. In total 
I have 23 dogs here: Finn, Skunk, Maggot, Inuk, Scruggs, Grisman, Yonder, Kavik, Antelope, Coyote, Gizzy, Solo, Nemo, Popcorn, Solomon, Moose, Austin, Denali, Sophie, Saffron, Gas, Diesel und Bananas. 6 of them are watching me right now typing this in the cabin. Maggot just slid of the bed into my minus 40 sleeping bag, but he does not seem to mind one bit. The training at home did not quite go as I had hoped for the month of January. I once again made this mistake to mix race training and organizing tours at the same time. While till late December training was near perfect, I kind of consider the month of January a write off, not only did I not get to go to one preparation race, most of the runs were way too short for my liking and on too easy of trails. But as usual I like to look on the bright side of things. The team is very seasoned, they all have seen their share of tough conditions and maybe it was meant to be this way, that they have an easy month. One thing is for sure, during the first runs here in Paxosn the team was on fire and even during a little 30 mile race back in Whitehorse a few weeks back, they showed more speed than I have had in the past. Looking at Jeff Kings runtimes in the Copper Basin and Tustomena, that might come in handy. 
Conditions here in Paxson are near perfect, pretty fast trails, with one exception. The Denali Highway is down to bare pavement between mile 9 and 16. Not nice, specially for the upcoming Denali Doubles Race, which is scheduled to go from Cantwell to Paxson and back to Cantwell, 265 miles, 20 dogs, 2 mushers. For that we worked out a nice tandem Sled Rig, custom build by Hendrick and tried and tested by me and Klaus. The coming week will be busy with food drops, EKG and Bloodwork for Iditarod. Once we have all the stuff here packed for the race, we bring it to Fairbanks, where I still have a huge shopping list, more meat bagging which this year I had 49 er Feeds precut things I bought from them. Hopefully we can coincide that with watching the start of the Yukon Quest. 
I have to admit it is much easier than I thought, to be on the sidelines and not running the Quest. I am not goint to miss the 40 below, but I am going to miss seeing some of my longtime friends on the trail and some of the most beautiful scenery there is. Good luck to all the Quest Teams, specially the rookies, there is a beautiful character changing trip ahead. There are the latest news from the Blue Kennels Team, maybe I manage to write another Newsletter before the Iditarod start on March 6th. www.iditarod.com. If not, I promise to write a race report again. Happy trails SebastianSab
