Rogues Gallery Kennel Blog

After several hundred miles, Cole and the team pulled into Mcgrath today and they all looked great. Cole was in good spirits and the 16 dogs she had in harness continusouly pulled her hooks while she tried to check in and park. They had plenty of energy to keep on trucking, but Cole was sticking to her plan to rest for 24 hours in this very friendly village.

The temperatures was hovering at around minus 27 when she came in with a frosty face, and she quickly got the dogs bedded down on straw and fed. Stu Nelson, the head veterinarian for the race, was working this checkpoint and he personally and thoroughly examined every one of Cole’s dogs (See below of Waylon getting the once over). He said they looked great, which really made her proud.

With the clean bill of health, she will be leaving with all 16 dogs after her rest (see em all below), and she is currently one of only 10 people in the race who still have 16, butt will be interesting to see who leaves their 24-hour rest destination with 16. Hopefully, she can get all dogs to Nome beucase that would be a dream come true for her better even than winning I think.

After Cole’s chores, she finally filled me in on the last few days while she comsumed a gigantic free meal provided to the mushers by the residents of this village. She’s been using different dogs in lead, for different terrain and elements, based on the dog’s individual strengths. Out of Rainy Pass she said she got stuck in a huge blizzard that the front runners just missed. Traveling alone, since the next closest musher was 15 miles ahead, she said the team had to break trail in deep, deep snow for hours and Cyder was her go to dog for pulling through the powder.

Goliath (above- still looking perky and alert) has been leading the cold stretches, since he has such a thick coat and really seems to do his best work in the deep minuses. Penny of course has been a rock, but she said she has been trying to preserve her leadership skills for later in the race. Zoom, Arctic and Keno have also been making tremendous contributions. Kawlijah and Crumb have been consistently her two strongest dogs, but she said neither has wanted to lead in this race, which it a bit unsual for Crumb for sure. Several others dogs are also in heat, which is complicating their ability to lead, including Seeker, who seemed content to sleep under her “lucky cat” blanket this morning (see below).

As to the terrain, Cole said she was very surpised the the Happy River Steps and Dalzell Gorge weren’t any worse than some of the obstacles we routinely see in training, but she said the Farewell Burn was every bit as bad as it’s reputation. She said she pinballed off stumps and trees for hours, even snapping her bridle at one point, but thankfully she runs a back-up bridle. She also frostbit the tips of several fingers during the cold night on the river last night, but several mushers coming in seemed to also have this ailment. It was tough exposing hands to change the dogs booties without getting a little burned I guess.

Well, I gave up on trying to get home. After this morning’s early avalanche, there was another midday, so the road home was closed until 5 p.m. With everything still being iffy on if there could be more slides, I made the decision to stay in Anchorage another night because at this point I wouldn’t want to risk getting home and not begin able to get back tomorrow for the 8 a.m. flight to McGrath. (see photos above and below of my day starring at the dog truck from my hotel window. Can you spot it?).
I know Cole is really counting on seeing some familiar faces for her 24 hour layover at McGrath, and I don’t want to let her down. To get the dogs home, Cole’s brother Will is flying up tonight on a puddle hopper to drive the dogs home early tomorrow. Thanks for saving the day Will, it is becoming far too often that you save our butts, but we always appreciate it.
Speaking of Cole and the dogs, as I type this, her GPS tracker is currently reading a temperature of minus 431 degrees, so I hope she cracked a few handwarmers before she left the last checkpoint! Her thermometer must be malfunctioning, its read way too cold for the whole race, but thankfully it is still giving off her location. From following her on the internet, obsessively, it seems she has gotten through three of the major challenges of the race: the Happy River Steps, Dalzell Gorge and the snowless tussucks of the Farewell Burn. She now has cleared the Alaskan Range, and should be heading into the heart of Alaska where the terrain will mellow and open up and the bulk of the mountains will now be behind her.
As stated, tomorrow we fly out to McGrath where she will take her mandatory 24 rest. Hopefully when I get back I’ll have more stories and photos of the trail up to this point. I am very happy to see she is still in the race, and with all 16 dogs, just getting this far is a real accomplishment. Five other mushers were not so lucky today. I feel for these folks, some of which got sick, broke sleds or injured themselves.
Committing to Iditarod means SO many sacrifices. There were too many nights that we ran teams after work when it would have been so nice to sit down to a meal rather than wolfing down fastfood like a wild animal, or to sit down to a movie with a glass of wine, to relax rather than trucking dogs to the hills. It would have been nice to use vacation time and money saved to travel or go see family. However, none of these things are options to anyone who signs up for a 1,000 mile race. Committing to a race like Iditarod is a year-long commitment and a year-round life-style, so simply, it would suck to see all your hopes, dreams, goals and money go down the drain.
There’s still 750 miles of race left and I don’t know how this race will play out or if Cole and the dogs will make it all the way, but I sure hope she does. I would hate for us to have given up so much for her to not succeed at this long, long-term goal.

I have an idea for a movie. It could be called “Escape From Anchorage” and instead of Kurt Russell it could star me (Joseph) trying in vein to get out of the city. O.K. So I’m not handling the waiting game well!!! Yesterday we (my dad and Lynn and I)tried to get home to Kasilof, but after not snowing all winter, another huge snow storm came in dumping FEET of snow on the only road to home. We got about 1/3 of the way, but the white out conditions seemed too dangerous for two Floridan drivers (following me in their car) so we turned around and came back for the day/night.
We got up early this morning to hit the road again, and as I was warming up the truck a friend called to say their way an avalanche on the highway, so the orad is closed for another 5-6 hours. So now I’m stuck here, with four of our own dogs that are tired of sitting in their tiny dog boxes. I also have five other dogs from two mushers friends, since we are “dog pooling” to save everyone from having to drive to Anchorage daily to get dropped dogs.
Oh, and did I mention that during the night a plow truck hit our dog truck, destroying the spreader bar on one side and breaking the drop chain. So now I only have one chain to drop all these dogs on. And of course, this being the city, whoever hit my truck didn’t leave a note or anything. See photo above of the bent bar. (What really irks me is the spreader bar only was out as far as my bumper, so whoever hit it had to be about 6-inches from my truck. WTF?!?)
I really want to get these dogs home, but also I want to get home to relive the person who is watching the dogs left behind at the kennel. I would also love to run those guys, since they are just sitting day after day at this point. I’m sure our Dunkel puppy also is far overdue for some play time and running around the yard.
As to Cole, I’d love to say how her race is going, but yur guess is as good as mine. She is working her way through one of the tougher sections of the trail. She had climbed Rainy Pass (at 3,160 feet it is the highest point along the trail) and is now dropping into the notorious Dalzell Gorge off the backside of the mountain. It’s tough to tell what is going on from watching a blip, but she is doing a LOT of stopping, which would leave me to believe she is having some kind of problem, but who knows of what kind or how bad. She’s hours behind the next closest musher and trail reports are of FEET of snow, so she may be breaking trail. Or she could be having dog trouble from the incident I wrote about in the last post. Or possible she fell off an ice bridge and has somehow damaged her sled. I wish I knew, because the wondeirng and worrying from the hotel room that has become my prison cell for the last 48 hours is starting to consume me.
I’d love to say I’m just being paranoid, but for anyone who is unfamiliar with this section, allow me to post the Iditarod’s own offical trail description of this section. Enjoy:
“You’ll see a “Watch Your Ass” sign; immediately beyond is a steep 200-foot hill down into Dalzell Gorge. It can be your worst nightmare come true. The worst-case scenario is minimal snow and lots of glare ice and open water. Hopefully you’ll have some warning if it’s really bad.
Once you’re down into the canyon, the trail will start jumping from side to side, crossing the creek (which always has open, running water) on sometimes-narrow ice and snow bridges, some of which may be collapsed. Even under good conditions, keep up enough speed to cross these bridges cleanly—if your dogs cut you across them or slow down at the wrong time you can find yourself in big trouble quickly, sliding down ice ledges into the water. (The water isn’t much more than a foot or two deep in most places, but it’s usually at the bottom of a nightmare of sloping ice.) At some points the canyon is barely wide enough for the trail and the creek. There are also lots of very big trees down in the gorge; the trail wraps tightly around a few of them. “

Cole has made it to Rainy Pass, which means she has already overcome one of the first major obstacles of the race: the Happy River Steps. She used one of her phone cards to make a brief (less than two minute) call. She said she and the dogs were starting to hit their first mental wall.
This is fairly common around 100-150 miles into a race. The fatigue of all the hard work and lack of sleep is starting to set in, and as Cole begins to feel blue, the dogs pick up on it. I was a little surprised though, beucase electronically COle is making great time, still has 16 dogs which a lot of people already do not, and she has made it through one of the first major technical obstacles of the course: the Happy River Steps (a series of steep switch backs that drops her down a valley to the Happy River).
However, Cole said — as is sadly all too often in races — she had a few dogs that could have been injured due to another musher making a bad decision. Cole said she came upon another musher snacking in the middle of the trail at the bottom of a steep spot (you’re supposed to pull off the trail or wait till a safe section). Not able to safely stop, she he had no choice but to try and pass, but the snow was very deep off the trail. As she attempted to get by, the other musher’s dogs began attacking her team (another sign that the musher hadn’t been properly training his dogs — dangerous dogs have no place in a race, let alone one this prestigious). Cole said Penny was one of the dogs bitten. She is very worried and monitoring her closely. She said she doesn’t look much worse for the wear, and she’ll be leaving Rainy Pass with all 16 dogs. But with so many hundreds of miles left, she is worried some slight injury could grow worse over the next few days. She said she would be staying a little longer at Rainy Pass than she first planned to give the dogs extra rest, and will likely leave early tomorrow morning. That’s all the news I got from her and I tried to tell her to keep her spirits up despite the situation. Hopefully, she can return to the smiling face she had in the photo above from the ceremonial start. She said she’d try to call again from another checkpoint tomorrow.

After more than a year of planning, saving, training and everything else, Cole officially started her first Iditarod yesterday and is now on her way to Nome. Penny and Oaky led her out of the chute and the start went great. There is also a FANTASTIC story about Penny on the front page of the Anchorage Daily News today. Here is the link hopefully: http://www.adn.com/2010/03/07/1172821/29-pound-lead-dog-has-right-stuff.html
If the link didn’t work just search the Anchorage Daily News site, the title is “29-pound lead dog has right stuff.” It’s a very well written story that mentions several of the people who helped get us to the starting line, including Kassik’s Kenai Brew Stop and the Nikiski Extened-Life Animal Sanctuary.
Also, for anyone following the race, the Iditarod’s “race updates” page appears to be very behind in actual updates. Cole is NOT in 70th place. IN a race this large with so much emphasis on keeping track of everyone, sometimes it take time for the checker with the clip board to go inside, tell the radio operaters the standings, then get the standing back to the computer people who then put it on the site. It is FAR BETTER to track Cole using the LIve GPS tracking under the Iditarod Insider tab of the website. It’s free and has been very accurate. Last time I check, Cole was in around 50th place and almost two checkpoints ahead of where she was listed on the “curent standings” site. So so far, she is perfectly executing her race plan and she’s exactely where she wanted to be at this time.
O.K. all for now, have to make the drive back to Kasilof to check on all the dogs that didn’t go who have been staying with our friend Laurie. Look for more infromation as soon as I know more, and enjoy these photos from the Restart.

Here is the GPS tracker getting attached to Cole’s sled. This thing was way larger and heavier than we hoped, but it is nice to know where she is at all times.

Cyder with his “pee bag” attached. All the dogs got their mandatory drug test before leaving the chute. Cyder hated it the most, as evident by his face.

The motley crew that helped us the last few days. From left to right: Uncle Jeff Morrow, Ross Morrow (Cole’s Bro), Joseph, Russet Morrow-Breslau (Cole’s sis kneeling), Cole, Kevin Hayes, Deb Hayes, Lynn Robertia, Joe Robertia Sr and Will Morrow( Cole’s bro kneeling).

Cole headed to NOme.

Its late and everyone is tired so to be brief, the dog did awesome today. Weleft at noon in the heat of the day, 60 teams had gone in front of us turning the trail into 12 inches of mashed potatoes, and still the dog ran fantasticlly, and they did it with more people than they had seen in their whole life shouting and cheering. The went through tunnels and over bridges, all things we had never trained for, and they did it flawlessly. We woulnd’t have asked for more. Here are a fw more photos of the day from several friends and family members.

The dogs bolting into the first tunnel they’ve ever seen.

The dogs wearing they’re “Until-There-Are-None-Adopt-One” coats made by our friend Kate in the hope of getting the message out for more people to adopt dogs from animal shelters.

Cole high fives someone while her Iditirider and Joseph have fun.

The ceremonial start is done. We need to get with friends and family to get all the photos of us, since we were doing so much and not really taking many photos, but with this post we thought it would be nice to focus on our Iditarider: Susan McCrae of Nevada.
The Iditarod has a unique program in that it offers for bid a rider with the professional mushers. It would be great if the money from the auction went to the mushers or into the race purse at the very least, but that is not the case. Still, the program offered us the opportunity to share our dogs and a once in a lifetime experience with Susan.

She was really great, always smiling and completely into the dogs. She even made Cole a great bag with the kennel name on it so she can look a little more professional when carrying her notes and gear to pre-race meetings.

Thanks a bunch Susan. It was great to meet you and we hope you had as much fun as we did. O.K. check back later and look for more photos and a recap of how the dogs did from the Ceremonial start.

Wow! There are crazy days and then there is whatever the heck yesterday was. To be brief, we decided to leave the dogs home in Kasilof (roughly 3 hours south) until the last minute, so they owuldn’t be stresed in the big city or cramped in their tiny travel boxes of the dog truck. We left at 8:30 a.m., thinking we could make a quick trip down and back, but the weather had other ideas.
Withing about 20 miles of leaving Anchorage we started to hit one heck of a snow and wind storm, and it only got worse as we went south (see photo above and notice you can’t see the orad or the guard rail in this frame to the right). We were in our two-wheel drive pick-up so we were very concerned as the snow was falling at about a foot an hour, and we were only able to travel 20-30mph in the white out conditions. At time we could barely see past the hood and if we lost our momentum for any reason, we feared never getting out of the deep drifts.Amazing, we somehow made it through the storm, but it took nearly 5 hours to do it.

ONce home COle and her sibling began packing the dog truck, while JOseph took COle’s UNcle Jeff Morrow for a quick dog sled ride with some of our pups that weren’t runing in the Iditarod. The run went great, mostly, as there was about 6 inches of fresh powder down at the house. On the way home, about 1/2 mile from the dog yard, Joseph stopped the team to switch places with Jeff and let him drive the final the dogs the final stretch - a fairly typical tactic on our tours. JOseph got in the sled bag with Jeff’s camera while Jeff got on the runners and pulled the hook, but for some reason, the dogs all pulled at just the right time and in just the right way and the handle bar CAME OFF! Jeff fell off and the sled tipped on its side, draggin Joseph at high velocity since no one was driving or using the brake. He managed to get one hand on the handle bar, but had Jeff’s camera in the other hand, he got dragged ofr awhile, until he finally hit a tree and was knocked off the sled too. The dogs made the final dash home wit no drivers, and luckily no one was injured, COle was there in the yard and got everyone straightened out, while an out of breath Joseph showed up mintues later, after running home to make sure everything was O.K. and no one got tangled (see photo above).

After the adventure we got back on the road and the trip back to the big city with the dogs was fairly unaventful as the storm we had driven through onthe way down had now moved further north (hopefully dumping some much needed snow on the Iditarod trail). We got back to the hotel and Jeff went to his room, but when he got there two teenagers were trying to get by him to get into the room at the same time. He asked if they had the right room and they said yeah and showed him a room key, then one said “I’m Jeff Morrow. This is my room.” The real Jeff quickly called hotel security and they came and got the hoodlums. Once in the room we found they had set up shop in there all day long. They had, oddly enough, put on some of Jeff’s clothes, including his dirty socks, and they had stollen his sell phone. IN the room the kids had quite a bit of other stolen things from what looked like an all day crime spree. They also has set up a collage of their photos (see above), put their clothes around the room, left numerous energy drink bottles around and brought in their bicycle. It was all really bizarre, and really not very bright. We don’t know how they initially got into the room, but their decision to try and stay the night in a hotel room (with someone stuff in it that the owner is obviously coming back for) didn’t seem too bright, and in the end they got to spend the night someone else: jail.
The whole day was very surreal, but we have to say, it got out minds of the stress of worrying about the race for a few hours. ALso, hopefully now all the insanity is out of the way and this means Cole will have a smooth race. Let’s all hope anyway.

Well, the starting orders are now known and Cole will be going out lucky number 61 (see photo above of her drawing). That’s lucky right? To go out 61 out of 71 mushers. It’s not ideal, especially given the trail report the mushers heard today, little to no snow across most of the route. HOwever, if there is one key to success we have learned in dog racing it is that challenges will ALWAYS be numerous, and it’s how you face them that determines your chances of finishing. Cole feels ready to face whatever challenges await. She only has two goals: one is to have no dogs injured or killed, and the second is to finish. Nothing is for sure, but she and the team are as trained up and ready as they can be, and they’ll do the best they can. Here are a few pictures from tonight’s banquet. We’ll try to keep the updates coming as often as we can.

A part of the banquet was auctioning off bottles of wine with labels in the mushers honor. Here is Cole’s bottle.

Cole got to sign numerous programs, posters and other paraphanalia.

An always fun part of racing is seeing old friends. Here Cole gets silly with her Jamacian friend Newton. They ran the yukon Quest together last year.

Not much time for text, so just a few photos of the family that’s up visiting us. Here are a few pics of Cole’s sister Russet (above and below - driving), and Joseph’s Dad and mom from Florida, getting their first sled dog rides and introduction to some of the chores.
After last minute packing today, Cole heads for Anchorage to take part in her mandatory pre-race meetings tomorrow. Joseph will stay home with the dogs to keep them in their natural element as long as possible. On Friday, he’ll load them up and head north for the Ceremonial Start of the race on Saturday morning.
We’ll continue to update the blog as often as we can, but be patient as things are extremely hectic right now around the kennel.

Russet gets some time on the runners, while Cole nervously rides in the basket.

Joseph’s dad getting his first sled ride. There was barely enough snow to make it happen, but he still had a blast.

You have to look closely, but bundled up in Cole’s sled bag is Joseph’s step-mom Lynn having the time of her life.

Joseph’s dad cutting salmon. He got to see many aspects of keeping sled dogs.