Knik 200

Take off--In the starting chute
Picture by Barb Redington

Just outside the starting chute
Photo by Donna Quante

This race was limited to 12 dogs, with an 8 dog minimum.  Tough decision on team selection.  I ended up leaving home some of my strongest dogs.  I wanted to put a few of my "weakest links" to the test.  My front end really missed Magic and Ursa.  But this gave me a chance to observe Betty and Yen over the 200 mile race.  I also left Jimmy and Red home, along with Chop and Spot.  They were not too happy about staying home.

We decided to camp the team just before Eagle Quest Lodge.  Figured that the dogs would rest better out on the trail.  A bit more inconvenient for the mushers, as we had to melt snow for our water...and cook our own meals.  At Eagle Quest, they had hot water available to cook a meal for the dogs and Shirley's wonderful meals for the mushers.

We camped 3 hours and took off and just signed in and out of Eagle Quest checkpoint and continued on our way to Yentna.  We took a longer rest at Yetna than was required.  The dogs had to work hard.
We again decided not to stay at Eagle Quest.  Just coming off of Corral Hill, I took a wrong turn and had a moose encounter...in my team.  Ugly, scary and ended up with a tangled team off in a snow machine track in deep snow.  All the while, I was praying that the moose would not come back.  We were very vulnerable.  Finally got the team untangled and  turned around.  We signed in and out of Eagle Quest and continued down the trail.

We traveled about another hour and a half and then camped.  This would be a short rest so I did not feed the dogs...I just snacked them.  My dogs were all eating well and snacking well.  We took off in the dark of morning and looked way of in the distance behind us and we could not see any headlamps.

We had some grueling hills to deal with.  I just ran out of steam after a few of them and when I tried to dig into my energy stores to run up those hills....I was just on empty.

Over all I was very happy with the race.  Considering that I was as sick as I was for the week just before the race, it was amazing that I was well enough to go.  The saving grace was the fact that the temperatures were warm.   Good for me, but not for the dogs.   I also ran the race very conservative as I only have 18 dogs to train for Iditarod.  It was a great training run.  I am happy with my 30th place finish.

Arrived at the finish at 11:22PM.  We got back to the truck to find it locked.  Keys were inside the truck.  A quick call to AAA and they were there within a half hour.  It took all of 5 minutes for the guy to open the truck door.   Thank you AAA !