It started on saturday lunch time, getting up early and driving to The
centre of Alta. It is quite strange getting a team if huskies ready in
the car park of a health centre in the middle of a town, but what is
even more amazing is that there is around 1500 dogs in the car park,
heavily trained and ready to go! There is a lot of noise. To start you
tie you sled to te car and put your dogs in the team. It is about
300metres to the start line from the car so the helpers hook your sled
onto a quad bike with the handler running with the leaders at the
front of the team to help them go the right way. Once you get to the
start chute a team of 4 volunteers help you get the dogs to the start
line, wait for the count down and the musher goes! TheN as a handler,
my job was to pack the car and head to the first checkpoint, only 4
hours drive! Once you get there, you have to prepare everything the
musher needs for the dogs such as blankets, jackets, medical stuff.
The musher spends about one hour with the dogs when then come in
feeding them, massaging them and giving them straw and blankets for a
few hours sleep, then the musher eats, and sleeps for between 2 and 5
hours ( or sometimes not at all) and goes out again.
So we are now on the way to checkpoint 3, we think pal will come in
about 3am so we will try to sleep a little before he arrives, but I
have dog booties to sort out and defrost, depo bags with everything
pal needs to pack, pal has also had to drop one dog because he was
very stiff in the leg so he is in the trailer with us and needs to be
taken out, checked and massaged. Then maybe an hours sleep before pal
comes in. It is difficult because you don't know exactly when he will
come, you have to see when the other mushers come, how fast they were,
how fast pal had gone before, he now has less dogs so may be
slower.... Hopefully pal will come in and finish on Tuesday morning....
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Check out my blog at http://allybartieandfinnie.blogspot.com
