Fooddrops
Today
on the 24th of January we have to deliver our fooddrops. There were
some uncertainties about the border crossing, due to the Mad Cow
disease, but thanks to the hard work of the Quest Boards the Yukon
Quest got a special permit to ship the meat. Not knowing what was
going to happen, I opted to pack some stuff in Fairbanks and have
it delivered there by Dieter und Gisela Dolif and packed the rest
of my things here in Whitehorse.
Of
course the packing happened last minute as usual, but the preparations
started month ago with ordering meat and Mike standing on the table
saw for days on time in November to cut all meat and fish in little
chunks, so I do not have to do much chopping on the trail. Any minute
counts, nor really for my running time, but more for my sleep.
Meat is not only meat on the race, the dogs start to realize that
this is a real long trip, and they get picky. Once loved Chicken
is out, and maybe beef tastes better, or Horse...... but in advance
you never know what. That means we have to ship out a big variety
and a lot more meat than they actually will eat. The base of the
diet will be Eagle Power Pack which we have been feeding since last
summer and like it a lot.
A big part of the diet is fat, we add a fat blend as a liquid to
the dry food but also feed chunks of pork and beef fat on the trail
for extra calories, up to 10.000 a day the dogs can consume depending
on temperatures and running time.
But
other than dog food there are also extra Runner Plastic, dog blankets,
belly warmers, booties ( about 1500 ), sled parts in there as well
as spare cloths for me and of course some food for me. In all I
managed to pack 53 bags, I think a bit too much and reveal myself
as a rookie right there. If each bags weighs about 50 lb, that makes
for 2650 lb of supplies not to be distributed by the Quest Organization
to the different checkpoints. Whatever we ship to Eagle will stay
there for local mushers to use after the race, because it has to
be flown in.In the rest of the checkpoint our handler can pick up
excess supplies.
In the next newsletter I will write you a bit more about the final
pick of the team, and about the training miles we covered.
