Not everything that is difficult about Iditarod actually takes place during the race. For me one of the most challenging parts of running Iditarod happens a few weeks before: preparing for, packing and delivering of drop bags. At least two weeks before the race, but for us when we are running the Quest as well as Iditarod at least a month before the race, we have to work out not only exactly what food, snacks and equipment we will need during the race but also exactly where we will need to preposition all of that gear in order to maximise the possibility of getting to the finish line with a happy, healthy and good looking team. I am sure it is not just me but once I have signed up for a race I start to begin thinking about what sort of strategy we will run, how long each run should be, the run/rest ratio, which checkpoints we will stop in, where we will take the longer, mandatory rests. With sign-ups for Iditarod beginning around 8 months before the actual race this leaves a lot of time to think and plan …. and rethink and replan … and rerethink and rereplan …. you get the idea. Whatever race strategy(s) you come up with, being able to execute those strategies is dependent on having the right amounts of food and equipment in the right places and so when we make up our drop bags we need to have a pretty clear idea of how we plan to run that race and have a few contingency plans for when plans change or when things inevitably go wrong. With only 9 checkpoints the drop bags for the Yukon Quest are actually pretty easy to plan for, although if you were to see me panic packing drop bags the night before we are due to deliver them to the Quest organisation in Whitehorse two weeks ahead of the race, you would be forgiven for doubting that statement. For example, no matter if you plan to run through a checkpoint, or stay for six hours, if the leg before the next checkpoint resupply is 200 miles as with Pelly to Dawson, the amount of food you are going to need to send to the checkpoint is pretty much the same regardless of your strategy – you need more or less the same amount of food and snacks regardless of where you camp or how many times you camp. With Iditarod you may not plan to stop in a checkpoint at all and if it is only 20 miles to the next checkpoint your strategy may dictate that there is no need whatsoever to send any food to that first checkpoint. You then need to look at all 20+ checkpoints and decide which are the most important checkpoints, in terms of strategy, where you will concentrate food and equipment. 20+ checkpoints versus 9 checkpoints requires a lot more thought … and stress. Iditarod rules also require that mushers ship a minimum of 60lbs to every checkpoint along the route regardless of whether you plan to stop there or not but with high performance dog food being expensive, and there being no possibility of shipping food back (Iditarod donate all unused dog food to the local community – on the Quest barring the remote checkpoint of Eagle, any unused food in a checkpoint can be collected up by the handlers for return to the kennel) if you know you are not going to use food in a checkpoint it makes economic sense to send out cheaper, and probably lower quality, food. It is also frowned upon, and in contravention of the rules, to fill drop bags with weight fillers such as containers full of water/ice in order to make up the required 60lbs per checkpoint. Sending out lower quality food and/or weight fillers (if you can get away with it) also has a considerable degree of risk: it is quite possible for the weather to change and you get stuck in a checkpoint long enough that you may need to feed a second, or even third, unplanned meal. I learnt from personal experience in 2015 that you need to send out quite a bit of extra food to the checkpoints all along the Bering Sea coast just in case you get held up by a storm. Strategies can also change maybe as a result of trail conditions, illness (dogs or musher) or perception of how the race is going or how the dogs are looking and performing. It is also not uncommon for mushers to plan to take their 24 hour mandatory layover in 2 or 3 different checkpoints and then decide which one as the race is progressing. This either means prepositioning enough food in multiple checkpoints (we typically feed four full meals during a 24 hour layover) or picking up food in one checkpoint and carrying it to the checkpoint where you ultimately 24. Another big bonus of the Quest is that you always take your 36 layover in Dawson and so you know where to send your additional layover food and equipment. Dawson is also accessible by truck and it is the one checkpoint where you can get food straight off the truck rather than from drop bags and again, any food you don’t use you get back. Finally, and probably of least consideration when planning how to run the race, when sending out food for Iditarod you only receive a certain weight allowance for Iditarod drop bags, over that weight allowance and you have to contribute to the costs of shipping the food out. On the Quest you have to limit the weight per drop bag but you can, within reason, send as many drop bags to individual checkpoints as you wish and the Quest covers the costs so you can send out far more food than you will require without any financial penalty thus making it easy to change run/rest and camping strategies during the race.
All of this to say I find preparing and packing drop bags is way, way, way more difficult and stressful for Iditarod than it is for the Yukon Quest and no matter how many eventualities you plan for, something you hadn’t considered can always occur and really throw a spanner in the works.
On the 2016 Iditarod, for reasons mentioned in a previous article, I had decided to run through the first three checkpoints – Yentna, Skwentna and Finger Lake. Although everything had gone to plan, barring blowing myself up of course (that definitely hadn’t been in the 2016 plan), I decided for the 2018 Iditarod we would modify the plan somewhat and I would skip the first two checkpoints but stop in Finger Lake; if I was approximately on schedule we would be in Finger Lake late on Monday morning and therefore able to allow the dogs to sleep in the warm afternoon sun as opposed to slogging our way down through the Steps and on to Rainy Pass during the hottest part of the day. Part of pre-race preparation is to send out our own food as well as the food for the dogs. Whilst the Quest provides free and plentiful meals in every checkpoint, dog drop and hospitality stop along the way, availability of human food at Iditarod checkpoints can be somewhat sketchy. Unalakleet for example always has a huge array of food and cooks on hand to prepare food for mushers, in others there is very little allowance for food for mushers and in some, especially when travelling towards the back of the pack, any food there may have been could well have been consumed by all the mushers ahead. It is therefore particularly essential for Iditarod to send out more than enough human food. That being said if the opportunity arises to get the odd free meal or ten, I am just the person to exploit such a gastronomic situation. In Finger Lake I ate all the human meals I had packed (it is only 30 something miles to Rainy Pass so I would not be camping en-route) and feeling that my body condition score may be slipping dangerously from ‘obese’ to ‘not quite so obese but you are still up there fatty’ I wandered up to the Lodge to see what scraps may be on offer. Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, the offerings in the kitchen were good and I was fully sated when we pulled out of the checkpoint later in the afternoon (no doubt to the disgust of the dogs who have to take responsibility for hauling any unnecessary additional weight). The pickings in Rainy Pass, my least favourite checkpoint from any race I have ever run, are always non-existent and as a fairly remote, albeit beautifully located, checkpoint Rohn likewise has little to offer in the way of food for mushers (although the coffee in Rohn is always excellent, plentiful and much appreciated). As such after Finger Lake I was reliant on my very well tried and tested boil-in-the-bag meals prepared and donated by Krys March. The run from Rohn to Nikolai is in the region of 80+ miles and takes in the often snowless and challenging Buffalo Tunnels and Farewell Burn. This early in the race I am not going to be asking the team to pull off an 80 mile run and so we always plan to camp at around the halfway point, and to date at a location called the Buffalo Camp – an easily identifiable and wide open break in an otherwise narrow trail that can accommodate many teams. We pulled off the trail early into a camping spot in mid-afternoon and I set about feeding the dogs, and myself, before we all settled down to sleep. I awoke a few hours later on schedule but feeling decidedly odd although I attributed this to sleep deprivation, sleeping too deeply when I had the opportunity and probably a touch of dehydration. I had another meal left for myself so quickly cooked it, although after opening it I felt decidedly queasy and, very rarely for me, found I was suffering a loss of appetite. As I got the dogs ready to leave I found I was starting to feel very off colour.
The Buffalo Camp is in a sort of hollow in the trail: you come round a bend, drop down a short incline and the camping area opens up on both sides of the trail around you. Conversely to leave the camp you have a short but relatively steep climb up. Dogs leaving checkpoints or camping spots are never at their most attentive. Firstly they will have been lying in straw and sleeping for the last 3 to 4 hours so need to ease muscles and minds back in to running. That, coupled with full stomachs, means that over the first ¼ mile after a stop every dog is going to urinate and defecate – and stop to investigate the smells from where every team in front has done the same; leaving a rest stop can be slow and frustrating. Add in the incline to get out of the Buffalo Camp and progress can seem very slow; as the dogs leveled out at the top of the short climb I felt the nausea I had been feeling since waking up overwhelm me and suddenly I was projectile vomiting longer, harder, further and in greater quantities than I had ever vomited before; I wasn’t sure if it was ever going to stop. The relief from, seemingly, emptying my stomach was short lived, we went on about 10 meters and I repeated this incredible feat. My initial thoughts were that I felt sorry for all the teams coming behind because their own dogs, cresting the incline, could be presented with a relatively fresh trail snack to occupy their minds; this thought was quickly surpassed by the knowledge that I was now exceptionally dehydrated. Packing the sled, and especially carrying enough supplies for the musher, is always a tricky task for longer runs. I still had half a flask full of water in the sled and two containers of orange juice in my inside pockets that were using the body heat inside my parka to thaw out. Under normal conditions this would have been sufficient for the remainder of the run to Nikolai but now I cracked open the flask and in desperation drank half of what was left. By the time we had gone another mile I had vomited again and had to take on more fluids so the flask was now close to empty. I had begun to feel incredibly weak and could barely get up off the seat on the sled – I knew that with still around about 35 miles to go to Nikolai we were in a very perilous situation. As we slowly moved down the trail I saw two lights appear in the distance behind me and a few minutes later I found myself flagging down a couple of snowmachines. I was now desperate for a drink and asked if they had any water to spare. After a brief discussion where I explained I should not drink from anything they would use, one of the drivers handed me a flask and said I could finish it. I drained the flask, felt a mild improvement in my condition, and then parted company with the last of my stomach contents and all of the water I had just taken in. They partially filled my flask and said that they would be stopping at the shelter cabin just up ahead but would keep an eye out for me on the trail when they headed to Nikolai the following morning. For the rest of the night I seemed to slip in and out of reality as I got weaker and weaker. At one point we hit a significant patch of deep overflow that was right across the trail. With memories and nightmares of the overflow we had dealt with coming into Braeburn on the Quest a few weeks previously, somehow I managed to lift myself off the sled seat, trudge through shin to knee deep water to the front of the team and haul everyone forward onto dry trail. For some reason the run into Nikolai always seems endless, maybe because the two times we have done it, it has been in that late night, early morning period why my body dtruggles most to stay awake. Whenever I think we must be getting close to the checkpoint the trail just seems to wind on into the future. Eventually however we crawled up the bank and into the dog yard. By now I couldn’t stand at all; as we were being checked in I asked for the race judge and, fortunately, was confronted by Justin Savidis, a musher/judge who I have a great deal of respect for. I explained to Justin that I just could not go on: I could barely stand up and I didn’t think I was capable of looking after the dogs properly. Justin suggested I not make any rash decisions around scratching when coming in to the checkpoint and even that I should consider taking my 24 hour layover in Nikolai so I could have time to recover. When I explained that that had never been in my strategy so I hadn’t sent enough food to Nikolai he told me not to worry, we would find enough food, and probably even the right brand, by going through all the drop bags of the teams that had already passed through the checkpoint. With the long rest on the Quest always taken in Dawson, either 460 or 540 miles into the race depending on direction, I always find that the 24 hour rest on Iditarod is, for good reason, taken earlier in the race, typically between 300 and 400 miles. Even with that consideration however I always think that Nikolai is just too early in the race for the dogs to stop for a long break hence it had never been in my thinking to pre-position enough food there for a 24 hour rest. Having been provided with a couple of bottles of water, and pretty much without getting off my hands and knees, I bedded down and fed the dogs; any last bit of strength was draining out of me. As I made it into the checkpoint to find some more fluids to take on and somewhere to lie down, the second phase of food poisoning began to take hold and I just made it to the washrooms in time – relieved physically, mentally and emotionally that this particular ‘relief’ had not come on the trail. After a few hours rest I went back down to the dog yard and under guidance from Justin went through the dog food that previous mushers had left behind and pulled out enough meat and kibble for another feeding. After I got back inside after feeding the dogs a second meal I was able to eat some dry food, the first food I had kept down in almost 24 hours and sat at the side of the gym/checkpoint feeling very sorry for myself. Up until the Buffalo camp we had been running well, now all the teams we had got away from were closing in again. With this in mind, and feeling somewhat better, and with a dog team likely wondering what the hell was going on with this long rest, I decided that we would try to revert to the original plan and get to Takotna, about 50 miles up the trail, and stick with our scheduled 24 hour layover. That evening we pulled into McGrath, 18 miles short of Takotna; my intention had been to go straight through, not even stop to get anything from our drop bags; having later seen videos of how great the team looked coming into McGrath I should really have stuck with that plan and just gone straight through the checkpoint. Instead I decided to take a short break and at least take on more fluids and possibly some of the great hospitality (ie food) I had witnessed in McGrath when I had 24’d there in 2016; by now my decision making was starting to become decidedly dodgy. Inside the checkpoint, and still feeling weak, I decided to go downstairs and grab 30 minutes sleep. When I emerged I was told that a storm was coming in and I should get moving. Back outside it had already started snowing and so I decided to stay and wait the storm out. Back lying down I contemplated our position: we had not declared our 24 when we got into McGrath (to start the clock ticking on a mandatory rest you actually have to tell the checkers as soon as you arrive that you are taking your 24 hour break) and, in fact, for some reason despite taking our long break here in 2016 I had not sent out enough food to 24 in McGrath in 2018. Secondly, all the teams that I had pulled away from over the first few hundred miles were not only catching me now, some were getting ahead. Finally I wondered why I was lying there hiding from a bit of snow when 18 sheltered and well defined trail miles further on awaited 24 hours’ worth of dog food and the infamous Takotna pies and hospitality. I pulled on my gear, slipped out of the checkpoint and tried to get my race back on track.
As it turned out I was far from the only person who got sick, even the two good Samaritans on snow machines who had offered me water, were suffering by the time they got to Ophir; we collectively attributed it, rightly or wrongly, to something we had eaten in Finger Lake – that seemed to be the only common denominator. This should teach me a lesson that I should only consume the food I send out in drop bags on a race – gluttony will ensure I don’t learn that lesson!
It would be nice to say that I was done with making poor decisions on this race but unfortunately that was very far from the case and over the next 350 miles a series of very poor decisions and lack of judgement would see our race end ignominiously and prematurely. I just need to make the decision if that is a story I want share.
All of this to say I find preparing and packing drop bags is way, way, way more difficult and stressful for Iditarod than it is for the Yukon Quest and no matter how many eventualities you plan for, something you hadn’t considered can always occur and really throw a spanner in the works.
On the 2016 Iditarod, for reasons mentioned in a previous article, I had decided to run through the first three checkpoints – Yentna, Skwentna and Finger Lake. Although everything had gone to plan, barring blowing myself up of course (that definitely hadn’t been in the 2016 plan), I decided for the 2018 Iditarod we would modify the plan somewhat and I would skip the first two checkpoints but stop in Finger Lake; if I was approximately on schedule we would be in Finger Lake late on Monday morning and therefore able to allow the dogs to sleep in the warm afternoon sun as opposed to slogging our way down through the Steps and on to Rainy Pass during the hottest part of the day. Part of pre-race preparation is to send out our own food as well as the food for the dogs. Whilst the Quest provides free and plentiful meals in every checkpoint, dog drop and hospitality stop along the way, availability of human food at Iditarod checkpoints can be somewhat sketchy. Unalakleet for example always has a huge array of food and cooks on hand to prepare food for mushers, in others there is very little allowance for food for mushers and in some, especially when travelling towards the back of the pack, any food there may have been could well have been consumed by all the mushers ahead. It is therefore particularly essential for Iditarod to send out more than enough human food. That being said if the opportunity arises to get the odd free meal or ten, I am just the person to exploit such a gastronomic situation. In Finger Lake I ate all the human meals I had packed (it is only 30 something miles to Rainy Pass so I would not be camping en-route) and feeling that my body condition score may be slipping dangerously from ‘obese’ to ‘not quite so obese but you are still up there fatty’ I wandered up to the Lodge to see what scraps may be on offer. Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, the offerings in the kitchen were good and I was fully sated when we pulled out of the checkpoint later in the afternoon (no doubt to the disgust of the dogs who have to take responsibility for hauling any unnecessary additional weight). The pickings in Rainy Pass, my least favourite checkpoint from any race I have ever run, are always non-existent and as a fairly remote, albeit beautifully located, checkpoint Rohn likewise has little to offer in the way of food for mushers (although the coffee in Rohn is always excellent, plentiful and much appreciated). As such after Finger Lake I was reliant on my very well tried and tested boil-in-the-bag meals prepared and donated by Krys March. The run from Rohn to Nikolai is in the region of 80+ miles and takes in the often snowless and challenging Buffalo Tunnels and Farewell Burn. This early in the race I am not going to be asking the team to pull off an 80 mile run and so we always plan to camp at around the halfway point, and to date at a location called the Buffalo Camp – an easily identifiable and wide open break in an otherwise narrow trail that can accommodate many teams. We pulled off the trail early into a camping spot in mid-afternoon and I set about feeding the dogs, and myself, before we all settled down to sleep. I awoke a few hours later on schedule but feeling decidedly odd although I attributed this to sleep deprivation, sleeping too deeply when I had the opportunity and probably a touch of dehydration. I had another meal left for myself so quickly cooked it, although after opening it I felt decidedly queasy and, very rarely for me, found I was suffering a loss of appetite. As I got the dogs ready to leave I found I was starting to feel very off colour.
The Buffalo Camp is in a sort of hollow in the trail: you come round a bend, drop down a short incline and the camping area opens up on both sides of the trail around you. Conversely to leave the camp you have a short but relatively steep climb up. Dogs leaving checkpoints or camping spots are never at their most attentive. Firstly they will have been lying in straw and sleeping for the last 3 to 4 hours so need to ease muscles and minds back in to running. That, coupled with full stomachs, means that over the first ¼ mile after a stop every dog is going to urinate and defecate – and stop to investigate the smells from where every team in front has done the same; leaving a rest stop can be slow and frustrating. Add in the incline to get out of the Buffalo Camp and progress can seem very slow; as the dogs leveled out at the top of the short climb I felt the nausea I had been feeling since waking up overwhelm me and suddenly I was projectile vomiting longer, harder, further and in greater quantities than I had ever vomited before; I wasn’t sure if it was ever going to stop. The relief from, seemingly, emptying my stomach was short lived, we went on about 10 meters and I repeated this incredible feat. My initial thoughts were that I felt sorry for all the teams coming behind because their own dogs, cresting the incline, could be presented with a relatively fresh trail snack to occupy their minds; this thought was quickly surpassed by the knowledge that I was now exceptionally dehydrated. Packing the sled, and especially carrying enough supplies for the musher, is always a tricky task for longer runs. I still had half a flask full of water in the sled and two containers of orange juice in my inside pockets that were using the body heat inside my parka to thaw out. Under normal conditions this would have been sufficient for the remainder of the run to Nikolai but now I cracked open the flask and in desperation drank half of what was left. By the time we had gone another mile I had vomited again and had to take on more fluids so the flask was now close to empty. I had begun to feel incredibly weak and could barely get up off the seat on the sled – I knew that with still around about 35 miles to go to Nikolai we were in a very perilous situation. As we slowly moved down the trail I saw two lights appear in the distance behind me and a few minutes later I found myself flagging down a couple of snowmachines. I was now desperate for a drink and asked if they had any water to spare. After a brief discussion where I explained I should not drink from anything they would use, one of the drivers handed me a flask and said I could finish it. I drained the flask, felt a mild improvement in my condition, and then parted company with the last of my stomach contents and all of the water I had just taken in. They partially filled my flask and said that they would be stopping at the shelter cabin just up ahead but would keep an eye out for me on the trail when they headed to Nikolai the following morning. For the rest of the night I seemed to slip in and out of reality as I got weaker and weaker. At one point we hit a significant patch of deep overflow that was right across the trail. With memories and nightmares of the overflow we had dealt with coming into Braeburn on the Quest a few weeks previously, somehow I managed to lift myself off the sled seat, trudge through shin to knee deep water to the front of the team and haul everyone forward onto dry trail. For some reason the run into Nikolai always seems endless, maybe because the two times we have done it, it has been in that late night, early morning period why my body dtruggles most to stay awake. Whenever I think we must be getting close to the checkpoint the trail just seems to wind on into the future. Eventually however we crawled up the bank and into the dog yard. By now I couldn’t stand at all; as we were being checked in I asked for the race judge and, fortunately, was confronted by Justin Savidis, a musher/judge who I have a great deal of respect for. I explained to Justin that I just could not go on: I could barely stand up and I didn’t think I was capable of looking after the dogs properly. Justin suggested I not make any rash decisions around scratching when coming in to the checkpoint and even that I should consider taking my 24 hour layover in Nikolai so I could have time to recover. When I explained that that had never been in my strategy so I hadn’t sent enough food to Nikolai he told me not to worry, we would find enough food, and probably even the right brand, by going through all the drop bags of the teams that had already passed through the checkpoint. With the long rest on the Quest always taken in Dawson, either 460 or 540 miles into the race depending on direction, I always find that the 24 hour rest on Iditarod is, for good reason, taken earlier in the race, typically between 300 and 400 miles. Even with that consideration however I always think that Nikolai is just too early in the race for the dogs to stop for a long break hence it had never been in my thinking to pre-position enough food there for a 24 hour rest. Having been provided with a couple of bottles of water, and pretty much without getting off my hands and knees, I bedded down and fed the dogs; any last bit of strength was draining out of me. As I made it into the checkpoint to find some more fluids to take on and somewhere to lie down, the second phase of food poisoning began to take hold and I just made it to the washrooms in time – relieved physically, mentally and emotionally that this particular ‘relief’ had not come on the trail. After a few hours rest I went back down to the dog yard and under guidance from Justin went through the dog food that previous mushers had left behind and pulled out enough meat and kibble for another feeding. After I got back inside after feeding the dogs a second meal I was able to eat some dry food, the first food I had kept down in almost 24 hours and sat at the side of the gym/checkpoint feeling very sorry for myself. Up until the Buffalo camp we had been running well, now all the teams we had got away from were closing in again. With this in mind, and feeling somewhat better, and with a dog team likely wondering what the hell was going on with this long rest, I decided that we would try to revert to the original plan and get to Takotna, about 50 miles up the trail, and stick with our scheduled 24 hour layover. That evening we pulled into McGrath, 18 miles short of Takotna; my intention had been to go straight through, not even stop to get anything from our drop bags; having later seen videos of how great the team looked coming into McGrath I should really have stuck with that plan and just gone straight through the checkpoint. Instead I decided to take a short break and at least take on more fluids and possibly some of the great hospitality (ie food) I had witnessed in McGrath when I had 24’d there in 2016; by now my decision making was starting to become decidedly dodgy. Inside the checkpoint, and still feeling weak, I decided to go downstairs and grab 30 minutes sleep. When I emerged I was told that a storm was coming in and I should get moving. Back outside it had already started snowing and so I decided to stay and wait the storm out. Back lying down I contemplated our position: we had not declared our 24 when we got into McGrath (to start the clock ticking on a mandatory rest you actually have to tell the checkers as soon as you arrive that you are taking your 24 hour break) and, in fact, for some reason despite taking our long break here in 2016 I had not sent out enough food to 24 in McGrath in 2018. Secondly, all the teams that I had pulled away from over the first few hundred miles were not only catching me now, some were getting ahead. Finally I wondered why I was lying there hiding from a bit of snow when 18 sheltered and well defined trail miles further on awaited 24 hours’ worth of dog food and the infamous Takotna pies and hospitality. I pulled on my gear, slipped out of the checkpoint and tried to get my race back on track.
As it turned out I was far from the only person who got sick, even the two good Samaritans on snow machines who had offered me water, were suffering by the time they got to Ophir; we collectively attributed it, rightly or wrongly, to something we had eaten in Finger Lake – that seemed to be the only common denominator. This should teach me a lesson that I should only consume the food I send out in drop bags on a race – gluttony will ensure I don’t learn that lesson!
It would be nice to say that I was done with making poor decisions on this race but unfortunately that was very far from the case and over the next 350 miles a series of very poor decisions and lack of judgement would see our race end ignominiously and prematurely. I just need to make the decision if that is a story I want share.
