Another Day in Anchor Town
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.
