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Hardcore Huskies Newsletter 08 Race Edition.pdf [ Archive ] |
| HEATHER & HARDCORE TEAM IN NOME | Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 | |
After 14 days, 1 hour and 49 minutes, Heather and the Hardcore Husky Team have arrived in Nome this afternoon at 4:49 PM AKDT (8:49 PM EDT). The Hardcore Team finished the 2008 Iditarod two full days faster tahn last year. They finished in 74th position.
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| Next stop…NOME! | Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 | |
Twenty-two more miles. There’re almost there. Heather can begin to see a vision of the burled arch at the finish line. Friends are waiting for her. But Heather knows, her real friends are the mighty eight who have carried her a long ways; the mighty eight have slogged through snow and ice, up and down hills, over Norton Sound and now to the burled arch in Nome. It was one week ago today Heather’s Team was reduced to the might eight when she left the checkpoint at Ruby. And yet they continued; more than 500 miles they have trudged. And today they arrive at their goal; today the conquer the 2008 Iditarod!
But before we get ahead of ourselves, the Team has one last hurdle; the 22 mile run from Safety to Nome. The Hardcore Team arrived at the Safety checkpoint at 1:06 PM AKED (5:06 EDT). They stayed only 20 minutes and left the Safety Roadhouse for Nome at 1:26 PM AKDT (5:26 PM EDT). This run should take three to four hours, which means Heather and the Hardcore Team should arrive at the finish line around 5 PM AKDT (9 PM EDT), provided Heather doesn’t get lost like she did last year.
When they leave the Safety Roadhouse, The Hardcore Team will run along the Nome-to-Council road for ten miles. The road is not normally plowed, but vehicles may drive on it. In any case it is a major snowmachine route and will be packed flat and wide. There is some apparently permanent road construction as you round Cape Nome, so Heather will need to watch for ditches, berms, and other obstacles. The wind can blow on this stretch, but it will usually be more or less at her back.
Cape Nome is a 675-foot hill on the shoreline. The road hugs its south side at sea level for a mile and then slowly climbs a couple of hundred feet on the west side. A small herd of wild musk oxen forages on top of the cape all winter; if they wander down toward the road Heather’s dogs will certainly let her know.
Depending on snow conditions, Heather may cut off the road a few miles from Safety, angle northwest across the tidal flats west of Safety Sound, and swing around the north side of Cape Nome. This involves a long, slow climb to a 400-foot saddle between Cape Nome and Reindeer Hill; just to the north Heather will have a better chance to see the musk oxen and maybe some caribou if she goes this way. After the saddle they’ll descend back to the road, cutting it a mile or so past the summit of the cape. Whether she takes the road or the back way, they’ll head for the beach just past Cape Nome. From here on the Team’s progress will be closely monitored by the KNOM radio spotter car. Then the trail will angle inland to cross the road twice briefly before heading back to the shore.
In another mile they’ll dip down to cross the Nome River just south of the road bridge. The Nome River is a little more than three miles from the arch. Past the river they’ll be running underneath a sometimes-steep bank. On Heather’s right she’ll see some tall radio towers as well; you’re just about to Fort Davis. Fort Davis Roadhouse on the far side of the road is the beginning of No Man’s Land if you want to start racing with somebody.
The road will be just above the Team on the embankment the rest of the way to Front Street. Finally Heather will swing sharply up the bank and find herself and the Team at the east end of Front Street. The arch is at the far end of the street, half a mile away. Heather will usually have a police escort; hopefully the flashing red and blue lights won’t spook her dogs.
There is usually enough snow to run down the middle of the street, otherwise she’ll have to pick her way along the sidewalk or else just scrape up the asphalt as best you can (but who cares by now anyway?). Finally Heather will pull into the fenced-in chute for the last couple of hundred feet. She will stop your team when her leaders pass under the arch!
CONGRATUALTIONS HEATHER, YOU AND THE MIGHTY EIGHT MEMBERS OF THE HARDCORE TEAM MADE IT!!
Amid congratulations from everyone, the checker will inventory her sled. Then she’ll sign the official race log and Leo Rasmussen will declare her official time!
After she finishes, Heather gets one last run with her team—one block from the arch to the big dog lot at the west end of Front Street, where her dogs will be bedded down and cared for by the volunteer staff until Heather is ready to take them home, which will be sometime tomorrow.
Heather will have to hustle and shower up because the awards banquet at the Nome Civic Center where all the mushers are honored began at 3 PM. At the banquet, in addition to the prize money, some special awards are presented.
Finally, after the banquet, Heather will get some much earned and desired SLEEP!
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| GET READY NOME! WE`RE ON THE WAY! | Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 | |
The mighty eight with their leader Heather have left White Mountain and are headed on their last leg to Nome via the Safety Roadhouse. They checked out of the checkpoint at 5:18 AM AKDT (9:18 AM EDT) to begin their final 77 mile journey to Nome.
The 55 mile run to Safety should take the Hardcore Tem a little 7 to 8 hours with another 3+ from Safety to Nome. The weather is not positing a problem at this point, showing partly cloudy sky and wind the NNE at 7 mph. However, later today the wind is expected to increase to 10 to 20 mph.
As they head out of White Mountain to the northwest, the Hardcore Team will go up the Fish River. If the wind is blowing from the north, they’ll hit it as soon as they round the bend and leave the shelter of the hill behind the town. Heather will need to watch the markers carefully so she doesn’t miss the turn off the river to the left (southwest). If she keeps going straight, she’ll be on a trail to Council, 20 miles upstream.
Once on the overland trail and away from river, the Hardcore Team will be running mainly in the open, with just an occasional clump of willow bushes. The trail may be drifted if the wind is blowing, but it should be well marked. One problem Heather will probably encounter is that the trail is often marked on the downhill or downwind side; this means many trail markers are inadvertently knocked over by teams in front of hers that slide or are blown into them. The markers are not put back up for following teams. It is entirely possible to go for a mile or more without seeing a marker on some stretches of trail because the markers have been knocked down.
About five miles after leaving the river they’ll cross Cumberland Creek, which has a substantial treeline; this is locally called Timber and offers some shelter from the wind if things get too bad. More importantly, Heather must ensure they are on the trail at this point because there is only one place to cross the creek for several miles in either direction. There may be some light overflow crossing the creek itself.
A few miles past Timber they’ll enter the valley of the Klokerblok River (one local pronunciation is “kootch-i-block"), which is usually somewhat out of the wind. Depending on overflow and ice conditions on the river, the trail may run up the river or above it on the slope to the right. After a few miles they will cut up the left bank and climb up a short, steep slope run southwest along the sidehill a hundred feet above the river for several miles, dropping down to cross side creeks (any of which may have overflow and glare ice).
Finally the Klokerblok will swing to the west and they will continue southwest, dropping back down into the valley of Topkok River. In the valley they’ll see an abandoned A-frame shelter cabin that has been partly submerged in icy overflow. Heather will need to watch for glare ice and light overflow here. In recent years this cabin has not been usable; she should not count on being able to stop here. If Heather and her Team must have shelter in this area, she’ll need to continue down the Topkok River to the coast (about four miles), where there is an easily located cabin.
There are no trees past the A-frame all the way to Nome (and none at Nome, either). Everything from here on is barren, with only the occasional clump of scrub bushes. At the A-frame, the trail will swing up the hill to the right, off the Topkok River. Heather will quickly begin to pick up the wind if it is blowing. The Hardcore Team will be heading southwest; a north or northwest wind (the usual) will be blowing from their right. The trail will climb a couple of 400-foot ridges and run generally sidehill, roughly paralleling and slowly separating from the Topkok River in the valley to the left.
After each ridge they will drop down to quickly cross a creek with some scrub willows before climbing sharply up again; there is some shelter in the creek bottoms from the wind if Heather and her Team wants to take a break. Finally she will begin to climb the highest ridge—this is Topkok. The summit is about 500 feet above sea level, followed by a moderately steep one-mile descent to the beach; the down-trail can be icy.
From the A-frame to the summit is not quite five miles, almost all of it totally exposed to the wind and subject to ground blizzards. It is very important Heather stay on the trail because she can easily turn south in reduced visibility conditions and come out atop the high cliffs of Topkok Head. (The trail used to run along the cliffs but was considered too dangerous; the current trail is intended to keep dog teams and snowmachiners away from the rocks.) This is another reason to try to do this stretch in daylight—you may not have many trail markers to navigate by and you’ll need all the extra visual cues you can get.
A major factor to consider in this area is that the wind can be extremely localized—and quite violent. The Hardcore Team is moving through a series of natural wind tunnels, called “blow holes", any of which (or all of which, or none of which) may be blowing at any given time. They can easily move through a hurricane-force gale with blowing snow and come suddenly into a calm area—or vice versa. Moreover, the wind can start up within minutes and reach hurricane force within an hour, or quit just as quickly.
At the eastern end of the area, the wind will be in Heather’s face as it comes across the inland mountains and fans out; as she move further west, it will swing to become more of a direct cross wind and then finally to be more at her back. The wind may or may not be accompanied by blowing snow; there is usually more blowing snow later in the day after the sun has had a chance to hit the snowpack and loosen up the surface layer. There is ALWAYS blowing snow if the winds kick up after a fresh snowfall. Since she is leaving early in the morning she will hopefully avoid the snow.
From the summit of Topkok Heather should carefully look ahead along the beach line to the west. If she can see the beach clearly all the way to the old buildings of Solomon (about 15 miles on), she should be able to cross. If Heather is seeing blowing snow, or if she can see Cape Nome and the hills clearly but there seems to be a haze obscuring the beach area, she will have problems—her visibility at ground level might be zero once they’re on the beach. At night there are no lights on this section, so she will have no indication of what lies ahead. It is entirely possible for the wind to be blowing on Topkok and not down below, or the other way around—or both.
At the west foot of Topkok, the Hardcore Team will be about 25 miles from Safety. The Nome Kennel Club maintains a snug shelter cabin here that has saved many a musher and snowmachiners. In most years the trail from the Kennel Club cabin heads west across Taylor Lagoon, a two-mile-long lake just behind the dune line. This is often blown clear of snow and is usually a skating rink. If the wind is blowing, Heather will probably not be able to control her team on the ice and will be forced to work over to the dune line, making her way along it through the scrub bushes and driftwood until she picks up the trail again past the lake.
Once past the lagoon, the trail will run along or just behind the beach and dune line. It will have bare spots and the Team will often be crossing exposed grass clumps and beach sand and skirting driftwood snags. The trail will be marked with 8-foot-high posts every few hundred yards, interspersed with wooden tripods and hundreds of Iditarod trail stakes. Everything is hung with reflectors. This is probably the best marked stretch of trail in the world, and it’s sometimes still not marked well enough
In strong winds, veteran mushers say your leaders will tend to turn downwind if visibility is bad or they don’t have a distinct trail to follow. You can very easily get turned out onto the beach and onto the shore ice.
The winds along this stretch are not an empty threat to make the race look more dangerous for publicity purposes. In 1994 back-of-the-packer Beth Baker got separated from her trail-sweep snowmachine escort and inadvertently headed out onto the ice. She finally got her team stopped only a few hundred yards from open water. The winds and blowing snow were so bad searchers could not find her until the next morning, and by then she had badly frostbitten her hands in the minus-130-degree wind chill; she had to scratch.
In 1992 Bob Ernisse and the group he was with became stalled in a whiteout in the middle of the blowhole, couldn’t get back to the shelter cabin, and tried to camp out. Ernisse’s sled bag and sleeping bag were partly open and he became hypothermic as the wind packed snow into every open space; his friend Bob Hickel found him in the morning and saved his life. He got to Nome in a medivac helicopter. (Ernisse came back and finished the race in 1994.)
After you pass Tommy Johnson`s, Heather will be running along a narrow spit between the ocean on her left and a narrow lagoon on her right. Five miles past Tommy Johnson’s she’ll cross the main breach in the dune- and driftwood line where the Solomon River flows from the lagoon to the sea.
As Heather approaches the Nome-to-Council road she’ll see the Bonanza Ferry Bridge, where the road crosses from the mainland to the spit. Just north of the bridge you’ll also see the Last Train to Nowhere, the skeletons of three old steam locomotives next to an old water tank. These were the pride and joy of the railroad from Solomon to Council, which was never finished and operated only for a few years in the early 1900s.
Once past the bridge the Team will climb immediately up onto the road. The road isn’t plowed during the winter, but more than likely the gravel roadway will be blown clear of snow so Heather will have to run on the shoulders or even in the ditch. She will have mile markers from here to Nome. Safety Roadhouse is at Mile 22, about 12 miles ahead along a narrow spit between the Bering Sea on the left and Safety Sound on the right. Once you’re on the road, it’s hard to get lost, and in any case the wind is usually less intense and more at your back.
You’ll see some old cabins and ruins along the road all the way into Nome. Some are still used as recreational cabins by Nomeites. In 1898 and 1899 the beach the Hardcore Team is running along was almost shoulder-to-shoulder with thousands of people trying to make their fortunes from the gold-rich beach sand. There have never been any permanent claims allowed on the beach, which is public property. As long as you’re actively working a spot, it’s yours.
At the end of the spit Heather will see the Safety Bridge ahead; the trail will bypass the bridge to the left. The lone warehouse-looking building ahead on the far side of the bridge is Safety Roadhouse, the last checkpoint on the trail before Nome.
Most drivers don’t stop very long at Safety, just long enough to pick up their bibs for the last 22 miles to Front Street. Mushers were able to ship something here if they wanted; the dogs would probably appreciate a snack. Since she’s probably not in a major hurry, she may step inside the roadhouse for a bowl of soup or a beverage (and to use the facilities).
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| Nome Is Finally Within Sight! | Sat, Mar. 15th, 2008 | |
Heather and the might eight members of the Hardcore Team are now only 77 miles from Nome, having just completed the 46 mile run from Elim in just 7 hours 37 minutes. They officially arrived at the White Mountain checkpoint at 7:02 PM AKDT (11:02 EDT).
At this checkpoint all teams must take a mandatory eight hour rest which means the earliest Heather and the Hardcore can leave for Nome is 3:02 AM AKDT (7:02 AM EDT). The run between here and Nome can take from 10 to 12 hours. Mushers must stop at the Safety Roadhouse checkpoint, 22 miles from Nome, but most only stop there to sign the race log and immediately continue onto Nome. This means, if the Team leaves as soon as they are eligible, Heather and the Hardcore Team could finish the 2008 Iditarod between 1 and 3 PM AKDT (5-7 PM EDT) tomorrow afternoon.
The village of White Mountain, population of just over 200, is located on the banks of the Fish River. It takes its name from that of a picturesque nearby mountain. Heather will find the checkpoint located in the community hall building up the hill from the store. There is usually plenty to eat in the kitchen and a place to toss your sleeping bag to crash for awhile. Since Heather and her Team will be taking a mandatory eight-hour layover here, so we expect she may get some sleep before she makes the final push on to Nome. We know the dogs will.
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| The March of the Mighty Eight Continues! | Sat, Mar. 15th, 2008 | |
Heather and the might eight members of the Hardcore Team are on the way to White Mountain where, upon their arrival, they will take a mandatory rest for eight hours, their last extended rest stop before they arrive in Nome. They left the Elim checkpoint at 11:25 AM AKDT (3:25 PM EDT).
The trip to White Mountain is broken up into two short legs; first is a 28 mile run to Golovin and then an 18 mile dash onto White Mountain.
The leg to Golovin is one of the more interesting legs on the race, with quite a variety of trail and terrain in a very short distance. Moreover, there is always a possibility of two extremely different routes for the first ten miles. The race follows the main snowmachine “highway” from Elim to Golovin and it is usually well marked and packed.
The trail usually heads back out on the sea ice from Elim and runs a mile or two offshore to a cabin at Walla Walla, on the coast eight miles south of Elim. In some years, when there is open water just off shore, the trail will stay overland on the Old Elim Mail Trail.
At Walla Walla, the trail runs inland and climbs over the Kwiktalik Mountains with a series of long, moderately hard grades. The final summit is 1,000 feet at Little McKinley, about eight miles past Walla Walla and ten miles from Golovin. This is considered the hardest climb on the last half of the race.
The trail then makes a fast descent to Golovin Bay, running northwest along the bay ice for the last five miles to Golovnin. (The bay was first explored by Captain Gloving of the Imperial Russian Navy in the early 1800`s. The bay and lagoon behind the town retain the original spelling; the town’s name ha been changed over the years.)
Heather and the Hardcore Team should plan on three to four hours for this leg. The weather forecast is for temps in the mid-teens with snow and a northeast wind of 15 to 25 mph. This may slow them down a bit because the trip over the mountain is almost all above timberline and exposed to the wind. The trail over Little McKinley can range from icy and windswept to soft and punchy.
Heather and the Hardcore Tem will probably not stay at Golovin too long, most teams don’t. She may snack the dogs and then head directly to White Mountain.
Historical Note
The original Iditarod never went to White Mountain. It headed due west from Golovin to cross the bay, and traversed the peninsula directly to the coast. It then ran up the shoreline to the old settlement of Bluff, and then continued to the mouth of the Topkok River and along the cliffs of Topkok Head before dropping to the beaches for the run to Nome.
The second leg, the run to White Mountain, is normally a yawner, unless the wind is blowing or it’s snowing which the forecast shows it could. Forecasts are for snow showers and a northeast wind of 10 to 20 mph. The trail follows the main snowmachine route, running straight as an arrow for ten miles across Golovin Lagoon, then winding gently around (with some gentle ups and downs) to cross the delta of the Fish River. The last few miles are on the river. There is sometimes overflow on the lagoon or river. Heather and the Team should plan on two to three hours for this leg, perhaps three if the wind is blowing.
When the hardcore Team arrives at White Mountain, Heather will find water may be available, but she might be melting snow. The dogs will be parked on the riverbank below the town, and should be sheltered from a north wind. The checkpoint is in the city hall/library/armory building a couple of blocks away. There is usually plenty to eat in the kitchen and a place to toss your sleeping bag to crash for awhile. Heather and the Hardcore Team will be taking a mandatory eight-hour layover here, so they both may as well get some sleep before they push the final 77 miles to Nome.
From White Mountain it should take the Hardcore Team about 9 hours to reach the finish line in Nome. This means if our calculations are correct, Heather should be arriving in Nome sometime around 6-9 AM AKDT (10 AM to 1 PM EDT) tomorrow.
GO HEATHER, GO!
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