Pelly-Dawson Run

Darren (aka dh) & Lara (NO relations to Gerry here people, and none of us are married to him either!!!) - are sending out some AMAZING info to the group in the Quest pool (I'm in 4th btw$$$!!!). I've *convinced* them to let me post their stuff here, since they have some cool *inside* info on checkpoints and the trail, and some info that is the result of obsessive (and accurate!) number crunching. I'm sure the 3 faithful Quest-obsessed readers here will appreciate it like the rest of us do.

Here's Darren's take on the run from Pelly-Dawson:

We are not likely to get a lot of info in the next 48 hrs on the teams – hopefully the radio phone at Stepping Stone and the sat phone at Scroggie are working…

In the meantime….

Teams at Pelly preparing for their trip to Dawson will have to pack their sleds well. Only the very experienced musher will only pack food for each planned run + one spare. Past times have shown that you should have some extra food incase things go wrong. In 2003 I handled for a musher who’s dogs got sick at Scroggie and his elapsed time to Dawson was just short of 4 days – necessitating a flight into Scroggie with extra dog food.

In 2001 Lara and I were in Stepping Stone and saw Silvia Furtwaengler and Dieter Zirngibl leave for Dawson. They were in good spirits, with large teams and healthy dogs. Once they left we packed up and headed to Dawson. They didn’t show up in Dawson for 92 and 106 hours respectively – way overdue. Turns out there dogs got sick after Scroggie creek and they holed up somewhere between there and Dawson City.

Obviously loading 4 days of dog-food for a team of 12 dogs (+fuel for the cooker) adds up to a lot for the sleds and a lot of weight for those dogs to pull. An answer to this is that some teams will fork out for some very expensive freeze dried meats. Freeze dried tripe is a popular choice. This way a musher can have several feedings extra that don’t add too much weight. It’s likely the dogs don’t prefer this food over some fresh frozen meat – but in a pinch it could work.
Experienced teams that know how their dogs will eat under race conditions may opt to use freeze dried for regular feedings and thus reducing the weight on the sled for this long section of trail and the climbs that challenge the teams. Mushers send out a variety of foods to checkpoints and pick from their bags the type of food the dogs are currently liking at the time. Also depending on the weather – fish are better in the heat, chicken fat or pork fat in the cold…, perhaps beaver meat for the picky eaters.

I’m guessing leaving Pelly could be an anxious time for inexperienced mushers, maybe second behind leaving Central when teams have to ascend up the steep Eagle Summit. For Little and Mackey, experienced Iditarod mushers, this is going to be the longest run they have done. The Iditarod has something like 22 checkpoints vs. the Quests 8 for a similar total distance.