Mushing Magazine - May/June 2010 #134

Mushing Magazine • � • May/June 20�0May/June 2010#134, $4.95 US

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Mushing Magazine • 2 • May/June 20�0

Mushing (ISSN 0895-9668) is published bimonthly by Smellydog Media, Inc., PO BOX 1195, Willow, Alaska; tel: 907-495-2468 Internet: www.mushing.com. Contents copyrighted ©2008 by Smellydog Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Nothing may be reprinted or broadcast in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher. MAGAZINE PRICES: The newsstand price per copy is $4.99 in the United States. A one-year subscription (6 issues) is $26.00 (USA), $35.00 (Canada) and $47.00 (international). A two-year subscription is $48.00 (USA), $63.00 (Canada) and $84.00 (international). Payment must be made in U.S. funds, and can be sent to Mushing, PO BOX 1195, Willow, Alaska 99688. USA ADVERTISING: Advertising rates are provided on request. Mushing is not responsible to the public for advertisements or the views expressed in them, which may not necessarily be those of Mushing. We reserve the right to decline or discontinue any advertisement without explanation. To advertise, please call 907-495-2468, or write to Mushing, PO BOX 1195, Willow, Alaska 99688 USA. Discounts available. CONTRIBUTIONS: Freelance contributions from writers, photographers and artists are welcomed. Please write or call to query and for guidelines. We are not responsible for loss of, or damage to, unsolicited material. Please enclose an S.A.S.E. if the material is to be returned. MAILING LISTS: We will not make our list available to any company or organization unless a careful screening indicates products, services or fund-raising activities may interest the majority of our readers. Please write to us and include a copy of your address label. CORRESPONDENCE: Mushing, PO BOX 1195, Willow, Alaska 99688, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. Mushing and associated design logos: Registered Trademarks ®. Periodical postage paid Jersey City, New Jersey and other offfices. Canada Agreement number: PM40063731 Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to: Station A , PO Box 54 Windsor, ON N9A 6J5 Email: [email protected] POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Mushing, PO BOX 1195, Willow, Alaska 99688.

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www.mushing.comPuBLisHer & editor-in-cHieF: greg Sellentin 907-495-2468 [email protected]

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contriButors: eric anderson, greg Barker, Thibaut Branquart, Dawn Brown DvM, amanda Byrd, James Callaway, Scott Chesney, Miki & Julie Collins, Britt Coon, forrest Dobson, Karen gadke PhD, John gomes, Joe henderson, Kimberly henneman, ried holien, Kevin Klott, Dave Klumb, ron Koczaja, Miriam Körner, Jon Little, Donna Marlor, Shannon Miller, Dave Partee, Michael Previs, arleigh reynolds PhD, DvM, Colleen robertia, Joseph robertia, Jillian rogers, Melissa rouge, Joe runyan, John Schandelmeier, Jeff Schultz, Kevin Slater, Sara vanderwood and rudy wittshirk

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MushingThe Magazine of Dog-PowereD aDvenTure

Long time official Iditarod photographer Jeff Schultz captured this image of Quinn Iten’s lead dogs running on Long Lake dur-ing the re-start of the Iditarod in Willow. Jeff consistently finds a way to get in the right place at the right time during the 1000+ miles between Anchorage and Nome. His iconic images have visually described the race for fans for 2 decades. Images are available for purchase on Iditarodphotos.net.

Wecome to the 134th issue of Mushing magazine. Another winter season is a wrap, and boy, was it a good one. As usual it really flew by fast, and now it’s time to turn our attention to raising pups, and having fun with the dogs over the summer time. The off season can be a great time for really bonding with your dogs and keeping them in shape to fully take

advantage of fall training. Almost every night I look forward to rushing home, running inside, chang-

ing into the Carhartt overalls, grabbing a frosty beverage on the way back out the door and letting 30 dogs run around and cavort in the yard. Call me nuts, but I can watch dogs run around, stretch out and interact for hours on end. I’d rather do that than do most anything else.

This past racing season was also one of the most entertaining in recent memory. In addition to the major races we all know, countless smaller club and regional races played out wherever there was snow. We have coverage of a few of the big ones here in this issue; Iditarod, Rondy, ONAC, Wyoming, and Kotzebue.

We are also featuring the SuperDogs of the Streeper family. These amaz-ingly versatile dogs claimed 1st and 2nd place in the International PedigreeTM Stage Stop Sled Dog Race, and 1st and 4th place in the Rondy. I caught up to the Streepers while they were in Fairbanks training before departing Alaska to win the YellowKnife 150. Is there anything these dogs can’t do?

One of the observations I had this year was the comraderie of mushers at the races I covered. Even though the stakes are pretty high, and most racers very competitive, I observed a respect among mushers that was in-spiring to see.

Remember to visit mushing.com, as we have video interviews with mush-ers, podcasts, and daily news items and photos to give you your sled dog fix all year round.

In the next issue, we will welcome back some of our regular columns that we just couldn’t fit in this issue; Collins Twins, Sled Rx, Dryland Basics, Vet Check are all waiting in the wings. We also have a few great mushing adventure stories from Ron Kozcaja and Erik Simula that we can’t wait to show you, as well as an interview with Hans Gatt. Future SuperDog features already in the can are Arleigh Reynolds, Hans Gatt, and Emil Inauen.

As always, we hope you enjoy this issue as much as we did putting it together. Assembling the stories, photos and businesses that make up this publication, and thus represent this great pastime of ours, is an honor for us and something we feel very fortunate to be able to do.

Happy Trails,

Greg Sellentin, Publisher

Checkpoint

Mushing Magazine • � • May/June 20�0

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Iditarod 2010Mushing by the seat of your pantsBy Jon Little, Images by Jeff Schultz - ©Iditarodphotos.net

There’s book smarts and horse sense. There’s head knowledge and heart knowledge. There’s left brain and right brain. There’s analytical, calculated race planning and per-fect execution on the trail, and then there’s Lance Mackey.

Planning is critical to success, it lays a foundation for a good race, but the best mushers, such as Mackey, have a way of tapping into something bigger, rising above the man-made barrier of schedules and rou-tines. Mackey personifies a special kind of inspiration that seemingly comes out of no-where—those who hear it still must have the guts to act on it—and which separates win-ners from the rest of the field in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

Mackey, whose background is as check-ered as a finish-line flag, the son of 1978 champ Dick Mackey, has notched a race

first: He is the only musher to win four Iditar-ods in a row. He got back into dogs about a decade ago while broke, used his intuition to build a kennel out of the best dogs with-in his reach, overcame cancer, and since has come into nirvana-like contact with the source of… uh, dog sense.

Take this winter, for example.As the racing season took shape this

year, Mackey ran into setbacks, which is nothing new for him. This year, the troubles included a public debate over marijuana use among mushers, pressures from his own notoriety after winning three Iditarods, the retirement of trusted lead dog Larry and oth-ers, and the additional burden of fielding a second team for Jamaican musher Newton Marshall. By the time Mackey entered the Yukon Quest, his tone was decidedly hum-ble and realistic. He had more banged up dogs than usual and untested dogs. But he

piloted that younger dog team like a mas-ter, running and resting the early part of the Quest without breaking out any wild moves until just before the halfway point. After the 36-hour layover, he asked the world out of his dogs as the final 450 miles from Dawson to Whitehorse opened up into a fast, fast trail. Hans Gatt had the faster team, made great moves, and won, but Mackey saw something important in his own dogs. He vocalized that observation halfway through the Iditarod, as all the evidence indicated that Jeff King was about to put away the competition along the Yukon River.

“This team has plenty of fight,” Mackey said in Ruby. “I have 12 dogs here who would walk to the end of the earth for me, nonstop.” He knew it. And they did it.

It took a day or two to put it into action, however. Bitterly cold weather forced mush-ers to go checkpoint to checkpoint along the


breezy, 50-below Yukon, as he, Hugh Neff and Mitch Seavey chased King by shaving their rest here and there, and Gatt kept pace by running faster but religiously keeping his rests no shorter than four hours. Then Mackey found a keyhole of hope.

There’s always a physical turning point in the Iditarod, a spot on the trail where you could paint an X, where it becomes obvious that a gutsy move has taken place that could be the game winner. This year, that place was Kaltag. All of the front-runners rolled out of Nulato, taking a shade under five hours to make it to Kaltag. King pulled over for anoth-er short, follow-if-you-dare catnap, but when Mackey pulled in, he later told reporters he had a plan brewing to blow through, and the sight of the leading team camped there lit a fuse under him.

At the time, Mackey’s team didn’t look like it was the one to pull off a victory, the cham-pion said. The race appeared to be King’s or Gatt’s at that point, he said. “I wanted to spoil Jeff’s fun a little bit and take one of the awards,” Mackey said. “It worked.”

Mackey kept going, past Tripod Flats cabin, past Old Woman cabin, and, some 19 hours after departing Nulato, he finally pulled the dogs over for a nap. When dogs are trained right, and conditioned to run at a slower pace, pretty much all they need at this point is a little

time off their feet, according to Ken Anderson, who pulled off a similar move to surge into fourth place in the final standings.

“Dogs get to this point where metaboli-cally, they’re eating everything and holding their weight,” Anderson said. “All they really need is a little bit of shuteye, just mentally, just because they need sleep; they don’t need it for their bodies.” They get to that point by being ultra-conditioned; for example, by first running the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest. A Quest team that enters the Iditarod is always a little slower, but they tend to eat like pigs and have the capacity to trot along seemingly forever.

Mackey not only seized the award for be-ing first to the coast, he suddenly had a little leverage: A team willing to walk to the ends of the earth driven by a musher willing to do just what it takes to widen his lead. Mackey did it by resting a half hour or so less than King between Unalakleet and Koyuk, and took no rest at Elim. By that point, their run times were about the same. But Mackey kept padding his lead with the shorter rests.

“ I capitalized on an hour and a half lead (at Unalakleet),” Mackey told reporters at the finish. “I just had to maintain it. At the time, I had the same speed as Jeff but was losing ground to Hans. I just had to stay focused and not be discouraged by my team running a little slower.” Then, he added that his team

was eating well. And as long as they do that, they can keep moving.

If Mackey once again found away to rise above the routine, so did Anderson, with suc-cess.

Anderson relied on pure inspiration as he made his way off the Yukon. It resulted in a first-ever move that observers raved about as a stroke of genius but that Anderson has downplayed as making the best of a situation, playing his cards right and getting lucky. It is something he said he probably would not at-tempt again.

Like Mackey, Anderson pulled out of Nu-lato realizing he had to pull something rash to move up in the standings. His pre-race plan had been shot down in flames. He had intended to run from Ruby to Kaltag in two legs, camping at Bishop’s Rock, but the cold had pinned him into a checkpoint-to-check-point routine. Anderson was driving another team of Quest-hardened veterans that ate like there was no tomorrow and jogged along at a steady pace. That left one option: Go long. He reached Kaltag at 7 p.m., which is the best time to get moving, not pull over. So, on they went.

But what next? Stopping at Tripod Flats would only be like a delayed version of Kal-tag, strategy-wise. He’d still have a longish run to Unalakleet, where he’d have to take

The amazing Lance Mackey found a way to win another Iditarod - his 4th in a row! Pictured here, he is on Golovin Bay on his way toward White Mountain during this year’s race.Image by Jeff Schultz, Iditarodphotos.net


a break. Too tired to think past the next cam-pout, he kept the team going to Old Woman, arriving about 2 a.m. – perfect time to shut down. “I’d wing it after that,” he said.

After a five hour rest at that cabin, Ander-son then faced the next decision: Stop at Un-alkleet? Not if he wanted to leap-frog into the top five. He denied the temptation to rest at Unalkleet when he got there at about 9 a.m. He loaded his sled with food (but not straw) and kept going, figuring they would go on to Shaktoolik after a five-hour run to Unalak-leet. But by 1 p.m., his dogs were slowing to a walk in the heat of the day, even with the winds that were whipping up .

That’s where inspiration slapped him up-side the head. “I got to the top of this hill, and found this nice quiet spot on a hillside that had a really good slope to it. It was pro-tected there, and it looked really inviting. I stopped, pulled off to the side, and (the dogs) dug down into the tundra, and they just went right to sleep,” Anderson said. Two Bureau of Land Management officers on snowmobiles pulled up from Shaktoolik. “They said, ‘You’ve camped in the only calm spot between here and Shaktoolik. You got lucky.’ The dogs just roasted in the sun.” If he had kept going to Shaktoolik, it would been a 12 hour run, through the heat of the day no less. And what then? He would have faced a short rest at Shaktoolik before the mental grind of crossing the sea ice to Koyuk, if he wanted to keep up. As it worked out, the unplanned, sunny nap in the Nulato Hills did wonders for his crew, allowing them to blow through Shaktoolik and

post a relatively fast run time into Koyuk, cata-pulting Anderson into fourth place.

“I didn’t premeditate that,” he said. “That’s the big secret. I didn’t know I was going to pull over on the hillside until two seconds be-fore I did it. I was vegging on the runners, crawling along, and it dawned on me how stupid it was what I was doing: pushing dogs through the heat of the day when they really wanted to be resting.”

“It just made sense at the time. I was read-ing my dogs, and reading the situation,” An-derson said.

“It was an epiphany.”

Notes:This was one of the “fastest” races in Idi-

tarod history, but individual run times were ordinary to agonizingly slow. The difference, obviously, is the willingness these days to run longer and rest shorter, and to do it in a way that wins. Martin Buser still claims the fastest ever race, at 8 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes and 2 seconds, set in 2002—back when equal-run, equal-rest was the mantra, and teams moved at a faster clip because of it. Mackey’s pace this year was close, though: 8 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 9 seconds. Make of it what you will.

Takotna seems to be the checkpoint to take your 24-hour layover, until somebody figures out a way to do it elsewhere and win. Maybe it is the right place to rest after running a team fairly hard for about 300 miles, just when they are tired but not too tired. Maybe it is the sunny, southern-facing slope of the hill, where

dogs can sprawl out and recharge. Maybe it is the 24/7 pies, steaks and burgers for mush-ers. But there was a huge time advantage for the front-runners who stopped at Takotna. King and the others gained several hours on John Baker, chiefly, who was just about lead-ing the race at that point. I’m not talking about Baker’s unplanned five-hour rest just outside Cripple; his run time alone was significantly slower. True, teams reported having faster run times down to Ruby coming off their 24s at Cripple. But, for some reason, the tactic that once created a platform for Buser, Team Nor-way and Doug Swingley to launch to victories hasn’t been working of late.

Kudos to John Baker for recovering from a deficit of several hours and roaring back to a 5th place finish. There were lots of success sto-ries, some that probably went under-reported or unreported. Good job to Ray Redington Jr. for a strong 11th place finish. And to King for running another impeccable race, mixing incredible preparation with a solid team and balancing it all with high standards in dog care. Gatt ran an incredible race, having won the Quest decisively and to be bearing down on Mackey at the finish was impressive. •

Jon Little is a veteran distance musher with multiple Iditarods and Quests. He blogged this year’s race at: drtims.com/blog/ by star-ing at a 13-inch laptop screen at his kitchen table instead of being up the trail in person to catch the nuances, and facts, for that matter.

Martin Buser crests the actual summit of Rainy Pass as it’s snowing and blowing 20 mph during the 2010 Iditarodphoto: Jeff Schultz, © Iditarodphotos.net


DQ: First of all, big congratulations Lance!LM: Thank you!

DQ: You finished 2nd in the Quest and 1st in Iditarod this year, what did your learn from your Quest dogs that you applied in the Iditarod and how many dogs were in both races?LM: I used 7 dogs in both races. I thought my team was flat in the Quest. They didn’t have much speed. So I had to rethink my strategy to benefit the dogs. I didn’t go out aggressively. I learned to be more patient, watch the team and wait for them to be ready to make the push.

DQ: You made your move in Kaltag by passing Jeff King. This strategy was different than previous years. Can you expand on this?LM: I left Nulato and didn’t stop until I got to Unalakleet. The team was ready and I thought it was appropriate to make the monster move then. I never really have a master plan. I read the dogs, race accordingly and adapt at the time of need. I think mushers who come to the race with a laminated schedule is funny. I can always beat those mushers.

DQ: You wear a hat that says “Dogfather” on it. I’ve heard it said you are a sled dog whisperer. What is this bond you have with your dogs?LM: I wouldn’t say I’m a whisperer. I’m not sure what that is. But I do have something natural in reading their abilities. I’m pretty good at what I do. I don’t know if it’s different than what anyone else does, but whatever it is, it’s working for me.

DQ: Hugh Neff is quoted as saying, “Lance Mackey could beat you with your own dogs.” Any comment on that?LM: (laughs) I think he says this with all sincerity. Hugh has a beautiful team and he’s pretty well on track. He wants to win badly and will if he stops chasing teams. And yes, I could beat him with his team.

DQ: Talk about your leaders, Maple and Rev.LM: Maple is a pretty special dog at just four years of age. She lead last year along side Larry in her first season of racing. This year she stepped up as the main leader and I’m very proud of her. Just an amazing dog. She was nominated and won the Golden Harness Award this year at Iditarod and that is wonderful and well deserved. Rev didn’t hold up quite as well as Maple towards the end, but he did his job and I’m not unhappy with him. Rev is five years old.

DQ: Tell us how it felt to allow Newton Marshall to use Larry as his lead dog in the Iditarod.LM: Well, prior to the race I was a bit skeptical Larry would even make it. He had an injury from last season that wasn’t fully healed. He has to run at his own speed and not be pushed, which is why he wasn’t running with me. And just the idea that he would not be running with me was tough. But, Larry deserves all his fame. As difficult as it was for me to turn him loose, I knew he would get Newton to Nome. Newton loves Larry and knows Larry helped him and thinks he is a hero. Newton leased a team I knew would race and get him to Nome.

DQ: Who do you feel is your biggest competitor in these races?LM: Gosh, I don’t think I can pick just one. Certainly Gatt and King, but they are retiring, which is good for me. (laughs) I take everyone seriously as competitors. I don’t think the likes of Cim Smyth or Jessie Royer are to be taken lightly.

DQ: Is there any musher you see as an up and comer, one to watch?LM: There are quite a few. Dallas Seavey for one. My personal opinion of Dallas is that he has the wrong approach. Winning is nice, but you don’t need to be the winner to be a good musher. I would never count out the Smyth Brothers either, or John Baker or Quinn Iten, although I think Quinn was only in it for one race before going off to college.

DQ: I understand quite a few mushers are getting out after this year, big and small kennels. Care to comment?LM: It’s understandable considering the costs and the welfare checks we get for racing. I took a 30K pay cut this year and I finished well. It’s dis-couraging when you have 10-20 years in a sport and are not doing any better. Except for Swenson, he’ll be in it for life. (laughs) But you have to train all year which kind of eliminates a full time job. You still have taxes to pay and daily expenses and you have dogs to feed. And now if you have to run the Quest to do well in Iditarod—3 of the top five in Iditarod were top 5 in the Quest—then it’s a perfect time to get out.

DQ: How is your health Lance and how much longer will you race?LM: My health is bad. I look forward to summer and getting my body re-built. I need both knees replaced and part of my jaw. I will no longer do both races in the same year. I have to live with that. It’s getting harder and harder and not any cheaper.

DQ: How does it feel to be a published author? How are sales going? (Lance has an autobiography out: The Lance Mackey Story: How My Ob-session With Dog Mushing Saved My Life)LM: (laughing) Well, we aren’t selling as well as Sarah Palin, but the book is doing great. We may sell 10,000 copies. And we may write a second book, unless we get booed off the stage. I’d even consider an instruction book.

DQ: How is Zorro?LM: (sighs) Oh, I think Zorro is kind of sad. He sees all the activity around the kennel and knows he’s not part of it. He has aged I think, but he looks content. Tomorrow I’m going to turn he and Larry, Foster, Risban, Boy, and Patel loose in the lot. They all brought me to where I am today so they’ll become house dogs. They deserve to live a life of luxury after all we’ve been through together. The fact that I am running their offspring now is really pretty special to me.

DQ: So, I understand a vacation is in order.LM: Yep, after some trips down south for business, we’re headed to Ja-maica. Everyone is going: Tonya, Cain, Braxton. We’re staying with Danny Melville, we’ll see Newton, and Jimmy Buffett is throwing us a huge party. Should be a lot of fun and a chance to relax and soak up the sun.

DQ: Where do you see yourself in five years?LM: Boy, that’s tough. I’ll have my kennel. I’ll be mentoring all nationali-ties of mushers for 1,000 mile races. I’ll watch Cain and Braxton expand their roles and become who knows what. I certainly can’t imagine being on the runners myself too much longer. But, putting all skepticism aside, I plan on putting more puppies on the ground and training them. As for planning for the future—don’t count me out. •

Lance Mackey won an unprecedented four-in-a-row Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race this year after taking second in the Yukon Quest. I caught up with Lance as he and his wife Tonya were making their way home from another social event

in Fairbanks. When you’re a champion all the world wants to stand by your side. While Lance enjoys people, I thought I heard weariness and a touch of a cold in his voice. The man needs rest, but he was still able to talk on the drive home.

A Post Season Interview with Lance MackeyBy Donna Quante


Underneath the seeming absence of effort, be-lies a hard work, and probably most impor-tantly smart-work , approach to training sled dogs that the Streeper family has employed for many decades.

Before the rae I interviewed Terry, “We went in to that race (Wyoming) with a whole differ-ent training philosophy - it worked 110% and we’ll see what it does for this race.” When asked to divulge some of that philosphy Terry laughed and said, “It took me 35 years to learn, and I want to perfect it first before I can pass it on.” When you really contemplate that depth of experience and knowledge it is amazing that anybody ever finishes in front of them. Further back from the top end of the time sheets, there are hard workers of course. Certainly anyone who can keep an open-class size kennel with all the work involved maintaining it year round and train the dogs up to race 3 days at almost 30 miles per day, isn’t lazy. So what is it that the Streepers are doing so correctly? For one, they don’t rest on their laurels. Always one to push the enve-lope and try new training methods, Terry and Blayne have also stepped out of their comfort zone to compete in many different disciplines in many different places across the continent. The experience of racing through the slush of

a New England sprint race, or the drama and hysteria of head on passing in Quebec, to racing in the wide open tundra of northern Canada or the mountains of Wyo-ming, have given them a perspective and confidence that few, if any other teams can contemplate.

Dominance in any sport can lead to frustration further back in the pack, but it can also be a motivator. Arleigh Reynolds seems to be motivated. Not exactly a newcomer to open-class racing, Arleigh moved up from the limited class in the early part of the decade. He’s had some success over the years, but never has he won any of the two major sprint races in Alaska: ONAC and Rondy. He has kept plugging away—steadily making his way closer to worrying the top teams. I remember hearing the same lineover and over from Arleigh as he ac-cepted a 3rd or 4th place trophy at races. At a time when the teams of Ellis and Streeper were seemingly in a class of their own, min-utes ahead each day from the other competi-tors, Arleigh would say something like, “You guys have set the bar pretty high, but we’re

catching up and getting closer, we are right there knocking on the door.” I don’t know if many in the audiences believed those words, it’s not important. What is important is that Arleigh did.

Despite the years of experience, the resourc-es, and the dogs of the Streepers, after 3 days

and almost 90 miles of sprint racing through the streets, over the bridges, under the tunnels, through the trails of Anchorage, Arleigh was just about a minute and a half behind in sec-ond place. On the last day, with a team down to ten dogs, he posted the second fastest time. After years of knocking on the door, it seems to have opened. Can he step through? I con-gratulated Arleigh after the race was over, and although he seemed happy and satisfied with his highest ever finish in the Rondy, I couldn’t help but notice just a hint of disappointment. His response of, “Thanks, next year Greg, next year, just wait until next year…” gave me the impression that he wasn’t just satisfied with second, he wanted and wants to win. Walking away I thought that as he lined up with 10 dogs in second place on the last day

Fur RondyStreeper wins 4 in a row!Story and images by Greg Sellentin

The best sportspeople in the world have a knack of making extraordinary endeavors appear easy. The Streepers, as dog trainers, have that ability.


of the race he really believed there was still a chance to win. He believed in his core crew and their ability despite having to race against the strong team of 16 that was winning. You win by never losing faith in your team. You win by having a positive outlook both inside and outside of your kennel, by looking for op-portunity, a slightly open door, and pushing it open. Mushers take note.

Coming home in 3rd place was Jason Dun-lap. Even newer to the sport than Arleigh, Jason ran a smart race with a team that is comprised of dog of his own and those of Joee Redington Jr. This combination seems to be working well for the pair. Joee is known for being an excellent dog breeder and train-er, and by teaming up with the youthful Ja-son, things seem to be clicking. Joee lives in Manley, Alaska, a place known for its cold temperatures and harsh conditions. The dogs he is breeding and training are the classic Alaskan Husky sprint lines of Drake-Leonard,

Gareth Wright, and the Saundersons. They are noticeably less “houndy” than the dogs of Streeper and Reynolds. In talking with Joee he said, “They need to have a good coat. It is hard for me to keep the pointer crosses in the environment where I live, so I’ve gone back to breeding the old husky lines. That seems to be working better for me.”

Jason said after the first day, sitting in 3rd place, “I just let the dogs run the best that they could run. I didn’t push them, didn’t do any-thing special. It was like a long training run. The trail was a little softer than expected but maybe that worked in our favor. We weren’t setting any land speed records, but it took a good tough dog team to do well.” Sitting in third position in the Rondy was a new experi-ence for him, but the vibe of his calm and cool demeanor undoubtedly transmits to his dogs. When asked what his plan was to hang on to his position and run the next two days, he stated, “I don’t know, just take it as it comes. We’re in unchartered territory.”

Although there were the usual dramas, personal victories, and let downs during this year’s Rondy, one result that was most per-plexing was the scratch of 4-time champion Egil Ellis. After dominating this race from 1999 to 2005, he hasn’t been able to claim victory since, but this was an especially disap-pointing year. Prior to the start of Day 1, Egil was very optimistic. “I think this is probably the best team I’ve brought to this race within the last 5 years. They are all really happy and healthy and working as a team.”

Sitting in an unusual 6th place after day 1, Egil’s 2nd day race was one he would likely want to forget. His team started out on track, running within the top few teams to about the 1-hour mark. Then during the all important last third of the heat, where it is won or lost, his team started an unusual slide backward. This happened to some degree during the first heat, but in a way never seen before from the champion, it happened again on Saturday. Citing concern for his dogs, and his being

Opposite page: Blayne Streeper crosses the line on Day 3 to make it 4 wins in a row. Opposite page inset: Blayne and fiancee Lina Gladh with lead dogs Heidi and Oats before the start of Day 3. This page clockwise from top left: Arleigh Reynolds has a quiet thought with leaders Guts and Finn before the start of the third day. • On Day 2 Reynolds made up big time on Kornmuller to almost pass him at the finish, despite a much smaller team. • Heather Hardy • Courtney Moore - female competitors are small in numbers in the Rondy in recent years. • Jason Dunlap nailed a 3rd place overall finish, pictured here descending Cordova Hill on Day 2.Image by Britt Coon

Continued on page 19

Mushing Magazine • �0 • May/June 20�0

It was a bad year for snow in Fairbanks, Alaska this year.

So bad that there were no preliminary races held all year, and the only races held at the ADMA track before the Open North American Championships this year were the juniors and the LNAC. But when push came to “shove,” or more likely “shovel” ADMA volunteers and officers got out and made a trail. Curtis Erhart racked up over 30 hours of trail work in a rent-ed excavator, and basically built sections of the trail from nothing. The warm weather and lack of snow did eventually take its toll. The week prior to the ONAC, it was announced that the race could no longer start from 2nd Avenue in downtown Fairbanks, and instead, would start from the Mushers Hall. There were areas of the Noyes Slough and the Chena River that just couldn’t be safely used due to open running water.

Disappointed, yet just happy to have a race, ADMA made a great show of it none-the-less starting from this historic log cabin club house off of Farmer’s Loop Road. Sun-shine and temperatures reaching 40F brought out spectators in droves, and made for just as fun as a time as would have been starting downtown.

“In some regards it is more difficult to start from the club house here. We have to struggle to keep our teams’ speed in check as we go down the hill here. There are also some tough sections when we start from the street too, like dealing with distractions on the slough, and the street and spectators and everything. I would rather race from the street, but I’m just glad we are having a race at all. Everyone worked really hard to make this happen.” Explained eventual 2nd place finisher Arleigh Reynolds.

There is a great history of sprint mushing here in Fairbanks with knowledgeable fans and spectators all around, keeping a keen eye on the competition. I saw Harvey Drake, a past champion here walking around study-ing the teams, clipboard in hand, so I decided to pick his brain a bit about who he thought were the favorites this weekend.

“Well everyone knows it is between Ar-leigh and Egil. Even though Egil had a rough Rondy, he wouldn’t be here if he and his team

weren’t prepared,” he bluntly explained. Turns out Harvey was pretty much right on the mark. Again.

The first day of the 65th running of the ONAC started off with a bang, and we had ourselves a dog race. As suspected the course was fast despite temperatures into the 40’s.

Arleigh came out of the start chute like a shot from a circus cannon and led at every checkpoint. At one point he had a 38 sec-ond lead at about ¾ of the way through. El-lis started to claw his way back around the halfway mark, but couldn’t match the pace of Reynolds’ team coming home. “I had a good run overall, the dogs slowed down consider-ably towards the end, but I guess the heat af-fected the other teams too.” Egil ended the day about 19 seconds behind Reynolds, and about 35 seconds ahead of Ken Chezik.

Day 2 saw a change of the lead, as Reyn-olds’ team didn’t have as strong a run as they had the day before. He finished the run hold-ing on to 2nd place overall, but had the 3rd fastest run of the day. “We had a good run and a good finish. Egil was pretty close for a while there, but we pulled away a bit to-wards the end. I asked them for some speed towards the end. I didn’t want to get passed.” Ellis’ team put in a stellar performance on Day 2. Egil switched out leader Casper for Email, who has a lot of speed, but as Egil said, “Email doesn’t like to pass, so I couldn’t get by Arleigh. I followed him for a while, then one of my wheel dogs started to hold back and I had to slow the team down, so Arleigh pulled away again.” Ken Chezik, of Michigan put in a strong 2nd place day run. “It felt hot out there. The dog team rolled right along pretty good. They maintained 20mph for quite a long time, then they drifted back down to the upper 18’s and held at a steady pace. A few dogs looked like the heat was getting to them a bit. I didn’t really ask them for anything and hopefully there is something there for tomorrow.” Kenny explained.

On Day 3, Ellis and Chezik started with 9 dogs each, and Reynolds went with his core group of 10. Arleigh took the day time, but didn’t win back enough from Day 2 to take the win. Egil Ellis claimed his astounding 10th ONAC championship. I’m sure this one was especially rewarding for the Swede, now re-siding in Willow, Alaska. His season started off with an incomprehensible scratch in the Rondy, but he kept his nose to the grindstone and nursed his team back for this win in tough, warm conditions in Fairbanks. Congratula-tions to all the competitors this year, and hope to see you all again here in 2011. •

GCIOpen North American

C h a m p i o n s h i pBy Greg Sellentin

Image: Dave Partee

Image: G. Sellentin

Image: Mike King

Mushing Magazine • �� • May/June 20�0

10Ellis Victory!

th

Opposite Page: Left: (L to R) Arleigh Reynolds, Egil Ellis, and Ken Chezik take home the top prizes at this year’s ONAC. Center: Ken Chezik drove his team to a third place finish.Right: Reynolds started with only 10 on Sunday and took home the fastest day time. Finn and Guts were his leaders for the day.

On day 2 Egil Ellis moved lead dog Casper back to swing position, and promoted Email to run with veteran lead dog Ruby. The move proved pivotal winning Ellis the stage and the overall race with the time he gained on this leg. Image: Drew Welsh


The course, following Klondike Gold Rush era mail and transportation routes between Fair-banks, Alaska and Whitehorse, Yukon, would utilize the Yukon River for more than 400 of its 1,000-mile distance and travel over four mountain passes that rise above 3,400 feet in elevation.

Now, this idea was hatched in a bar south of Fairbanks, but what great northern schemes have not been germinated in a bar?

Like Williams, Shank, Rosser and Libb, my 2010 Yukon Quest adventure started in a bar as well. I was not racing the Quest though—I was going to be a handler for my brother Zack. The night before race start, Zack, his wife Anjanette and I stopped by Ivory Jack’s, a notorious drinking establishment in the Goldstream Valley just north of Fairbanks, to watch Hobo Jim, Alaska’s balladeer, per-form. Zack wanted to see if any other mushers were trying to avoid the night-before-race jit-ters by downing a few beers. I just wanted to hear Hobo Jim—famous for his Iditarod Trail song—sing some of his bawdy tunes about dogs, fishing and drinking.

I am not a big drinker, but it didn’t take me long to understand if I was going to be a han-dler in this race, I better get used to spending a lot of time in bars. Unlike the Iditarod,where the trail covers roadless sections of western Alaska, a majority of the Quest route can be followed by car and many of the checkpoints are roadhouses along the way.

Mushing fans appreciate the bond between driver and dog, knowing it is as strong as any championship-winning Stanley Cup or World Series team. Yukon Quest teams include one other unique addition: the handler. Typically relegated to the home kennel, in the back-ground of distance racing’s glory events, han-dlers take an active role in the Yukon Quest, driving from checkpoint to checkpoint picking up dropped dogs, raking straw and cleaning up after their mushers have left. At the halfway point in Dawson City, where mushers have a 36-hour layover, handlers are allowed to be even more involved—feeding, walking and massaging dog teams while mushers rest and recover for the second half of the race.

Five days after my Ivory Jack’s initiation,

I found myself in another notorious bar—the Sluice Box Lounge at the Eldorado Hotel in Dawson City. Zack was only halfway through the race and my quest had already been an adventure beyond imagination. In Circle, on day two of the race, our dog truck broke down. Anjanette and I hitched a ride with John Kozak, one of Belgian musher Sam Del-tour’s handlers, down the Steese Highway. In Fairbanks, Anjanette stayed behind to get the truck repaired while I continued on the Rich-ardson Highway with John toward Tok. Jake Berkowitz, Zack’s full-time handler, was going to meet me there with our new, makeshift dog truck—the Steer family Toyota minivan.

In the record-setting two and a half days it took Hans Gatt, Lance Mackey and Hugh Neff to travel 492 trail miles between Circle and Dawson City, we traveled south to Tok, east through Whitehorse and, finally, north to Dawson City—1,054 miles total. The Top of the World Highway, connecting Chicken to Dawson, would have shortened the drive by 500 miles, but it is closed during winter.

We weren’t the only team having transpor-tation problems. Ken Anderson’s dog truck also broke down in Circle and I heard a ru-mor that one of the other handler teams came close to disaster after the US-Canadian bor-der. I started to feel like the handlers, most

Handling the QuestThe Yukon Quest is arguably the toughest sled dog race in the world. Handling for it is no cake-walk either. Rachel Steer takes us through the 2010 Quest through the eyes of a handler. By Rachel Steer, Image by Dave Lokken

When Roger Williams, Leroy Shank, Ron Rosser and Willie Libb came up with the idea of the Yukon Quest in 1983, they hoped to create a race that was challenging and pure in a way that the Iditarod had failed to do in their eyes.


Handling the Quest

traveled in teams of two, were like Olympic figure skating couples. Forget profiles about the athletic stamina and endurance required of dog teams and mushers, reporters traveling along the trail would meet deadline by filing stories saying, “Steer and Berkowitz move to-ward Dawson City while Williamson and Bo-hannon lose a trailer tire at Destruction Bay.”

By Dawson City, the traveling circus of race organizers, media and handlers had bonded, making sure to look out for each other on the road and at the checkpoints. Jake and I quick-ly became fodder for jokes and chiding when we showed up in the minivan.

Jake, a two-time Iditarod finisher, was giddy with excitement at the chance to have a front-row seat to watch Hans, Lance and Hugh’s race routines and strategy for nine days straight. This was the first time Jake had been a spectator at a race and he quickly realized that, as a handler, he had unprecedented ac-cess to watch and interact with mushers he had raced against in the past. In Pelly Cross-ing, we saw Hans Gatt—recovering from a slow run where Lance Mackey and Hugh Neff made up substantial time on his lead—pull an unusual move. After telling media (and any-one else who was around to hear) he had doubts about being able to win the race, Gatt laid down in the noisy media/handler area

and pretended to sleep. As soon as Mackey and Neff left the checkpoint, Gatt was up and moving—ready to chase down the two unsus-pecting leaders.

With a keen eye for dog aptitude and mush-er behavior, Jake was able to pick up on signs of sleep deprivation, indecision and outright craftiness that I never would have noticed.

While waiting for mushers to arrive at checkpoints, we had long discussions with other handlers and race officials about the changing face of distance racing. Quest vet-erans Jon Little and Will Forsberg discussed this revolution on Little’s Check Point blog dur-ing the Quest. In the 90’s Charlie Boulding showed us what loping dogs and alternating short and long rests could do. A few years lat-er, the Robert Sorlie-led Norwegians blew the Iditarod field away by running slightly slower, but longer-distance legs mixed with shorter breaks in between. This year, a hard and fast Quest trail paired with perfect weather condi-tions allowed Gatt, Mackey and Neff to trans-form the Norwegian model (slow and long) into what I’m calling the Double Whammy—fast and long runs of 10 to 12 hours matched with short breaks of three to four hours. It’s a double dose not only because runs are fast and long, but because Mackey and Neff are notorious for doing both the Yukon Quest and Iditarod races in the same year.

In the past, long distances between Quest checkpoints meant mushers had to carry food and gear for campouts and multiple feedings along the trail. This year, with their faster speed and longer run times, Gatt, Mackey and Neff were able to travel light—relying on fewer meals and campouts—much like on the Iditarod trail. On the downside, this race strat-egy led to extreme levels of sleep deprivation which was evident in all of the top mushers.

Nobody seems to know the limit of these remarkable animals, but everyone I talked to agreed that the weak link on today’s elite dog mushing teams is the musher himself.

By Carmacks, 177 miles from the White-horse finish, the Team Steer minivan was getting a bit too cozy for comfort. Zack had dropped three dogs and the task of repacking the van with dogs, dog food, a sled, spare runners, Dawson camp gear and two humans became a spectator sport for the rest of the handler teams. We reached our limit at Brae-burn, the final checkpoint, when Zack dropped his fifth dog. I started to feel like the Muppets, jammed into a bus on their way to New York City, singing “Movin’ Right Along.”

As Zack and Ken Anderson battled it out for fourth and fifth place along the final miles of the Takhini and Yukon rivers, Jake and I checked in to a hotel for some much-needed rest and a shower. Traveling the Quest as a handler is not an easy job, but I felt guilty complaining about the lack of sleep and errat-ic hours whenever I saw a trail-weary musher trudge out of a warm checkpoint to booty up his dogs for the next leg.

To our relief, Anjanette arrived in White-horse with the repaired dog truck just a few hours before Zack finished. With Ken Ander-son’s team bearing down, Zack had to push his dogs and himself all of the way to the line. Zack was still catching his breath when Ken’s team trotted across the finish, just three min-utes behind—it was the closest top-five finish in Quest history.

Yukon Quest organizers distribute a han-dlers packet before the race each year de-scribing the rules, route and protocol for each musher’s support team. The packet includes such helpful gems as “keep your dog truck out of the ditch” and “if you miss the Central checkpoint you are asleep at the wheel.” But my favorite part is this note from long-time handler and volunteer Joe May: “I suspect there’ve been marriages made, divorces an-nounced, 300 mile silences, tons of potato chips consumed and maybe germination of a notion to run the race someday.”

The 2010 Quest delivered on many of the promises made in that packet, but there are a few I would suggest be added: don’t expect to sleep, be ready for the unexpected and, of course, get used to hanging out in bars. •

Rachel Steer is a lifelong Alaskan. She writes the Alaska Traveler column for Alaska maga-zine and loves adventuring in the wilderness with her retired sled dog, Amber.

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The “it” that left the Chugiak artist “ecstatic” is a silver loving cup presented to A. A. “Scotty” Allan, winner of the All-Alaska Sweepstakes when he crossed the finish line in Nome 101 years earlier. The 408-mile race from Nome to Candle and return in 1909 was the second in the series that continued from 1908 to 1918.

The cup stands 18 inches tall and weighs about five pounds. It is ornate-ly engraved with the name of the win-ner, the date and the winning time of 82 hours, 2 minutes and 41 seconds. Inscribed under thick overlaid lines de-scending from the rim is the phrase “Mid-night Sun” over a representation of half a sun still visible over the horizon. On the reverse is a gold pan backed by a pick and shovel. Gracing the base are four finely fashioned snowshoes, each individually crafted, the delicate silver thread webbing wrapped tightly around perfectly shaped frames. Two handles cast from solid silver are topped by ac-curately sculpted heads of huskies.

“The workmanship is gorgeous,” Van Zyle said as he fingered the surface of the cup and admired the delicate work in the snowshoes as it rested atop a counter in his Birchwood studio. Surrounded by photos and paintings of sled dog rac-ing that filled the walls, it looked right at home.

Sponsored by the Nome Kennel Club, the early 20th century races each year of-fered cash prizes ranging from $3,000 to $10,000, the amount depending on the gen-erosity of contributors. Organized in 1907 and still active, it is the oldest kennel club in the United States.

Also awarded each year was a silver lov-ing cup, prominently marked around its base as the Suter Trophy. It is generally believed that the cups were donated by E. A. Suter, a Nome jeweler of the Gold Rush era.

Stored Trophy LanguishesThe trophy won by Allan languished for more than 40 years in a box stored and forgot-

ten until it was found by a man rummaging through items in a storage room. Unaware of its history, the new owner of a California newspaper plant for a while used the cup as an umbrella stand. He later took it home and

placed it next to his easy chair to hold his pipe and smoking tobacco.

James Harrah of Cupertino, Calif. was one of three partners who in 1962 bought the Daly City Record from the estate of one John Marchant. The newspaper, established by Marchant in 1913, was located in a three-story building, the top floor used primarily for storage. Asked about the boxes cluttering the area, the sellers said the buyers could keep what they wanted.

Only the trophy and some bottles of whis-key were of any apparent value, Harrah said during a telephone interview.

“We sampled the whiskey, but discovered it

would go better down the drain than down our throats, so we poured it out,” he laughed.

How the trophy made its way from Nome, Alaska to Daly City, California is uncertain, but open to interesting speculation. As far as can be determined, Marchant had no con-nection with the All-Alaska Sweepstakes other than wagering on the outcomes. His resume leads to guesses that perhaps he won the trophy after it was put up to cover a losing

bet and when he left Alaska took it for bragging purposes.

Marchant, Harrah said he learned, was a gambler who made and lost two fortunes in Nome before returning to the San Francisco area. He reportedly purchased a race track and wanted to publish a daily racing form. Records show, however, that many citizens did not look favorably upon the enterprise, even voting at one time to close down a greyhound track. After acquiring the building and printing plant, Marchant decided to publish a newspaper with the racing information included as an adjunct to its civic and social reports.

Fortuitous Coincidences OccurThe trophy’s future improved earlier this year when Harrah’s wife Betty attend-ed a reunion of her Caldwell, Idaho, high school graduating class. Of eight girls in the class, five survive.

Among those survivors is Marjorie Cochrane, a former Alaska newspaper reporter and the author of the newly published book, “Three Dogs, Two Mules, and a Reindeer,” real-life ani-mal stories from expeditions in early-day Alaska.

Cochrane spotted the once-proud trophy in its current lowly function and was intrigued by its historical significance.

Her book had been illustrated by Van Zyle, whose studio was located in the community served by the Alaska weekly newspaper where she was chief writer. She had reported on Van Zyle’s involvement with the Iditarod and immediately suggested him as an inter-mediary in finding a place for the 101-year-old loving cup.

“We wanted it to go back to Alaska,” Harrah said. “We contacted a museum but they said they already had a trophy, so we just hung on to it.”

1909 Race Trophy Comes HomeFrom California umbrella stand to Nome museum treasure

Story and photo by Lee Jordan

“I was as happy as a clam, just ecstatic,” beamed Jon Van Zyle when he described opening a package that arrived from Califor-nia one day after Celeste Davis collected the 2010 Iditarod Red Lantern. “It has so much meaning,” he said of what was inside.

Jon Van Zyle and the original 1909 race trophy in his Alaska studio.


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Getting up in age, the couple was con-cerned over what would happen to the piece should they not find a taker in Alaska. They felt it should be preserved. The silver-plated cup tarnishes readily. One handle had been broken off by grandchildren playing in the easy chair, which swivels.

“Somebody could have melted it down, or just thrown it away,” he said of their concerns about the trophy’s future.

At Cochrane’s suggestion, Van Zyle was contacted.

“I had a pretty good idea what it was based on his description,” the Alaska musher said of Harrah’s initial call, “but I wanted to see it to know for sure.” He was far from dis-appointed when the package arrived a few days later.

Going Home to NomeWhat happens now with the former pipe hold-er and its amputated handle?

“It belongs in the Carrie M. McLain Memo-rial Museum in Nome,” Van Zyle said without hesitation. The museum is located on Front Street in Nome, the start and finish line for

the All-Alaska Sweepstakes of olden days and now for the famed Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. The museum has all kinds of Sweep-stakes memorabilia, he said.

Van Zyle plans to have the broken handle soldered onto the cup by a silversmith, then have it thoroughly cleaned. He wants the tro-phy to be gleaming and free of tarnish when it goes on display in Nome.

Laura Samuelson, curator of the Nome mu-seum, also used the word “ecstatic” when she recalled her reaction to the news that the tro-phy would return there.

“It will be a great partner to the other tro-phies from those races that we have.”

Samuelson explained that the two other tro-phies won by Allan, in 1911 and 1912, are currently on display at the museum. Also there on loan from the University of Alaska are the three trophies won by Leonhard Seppala in 1915, 1916 and 1917.

With the 1910 historic trophy that was won by John “Iron Man” Johnson in a time that would stand as a record for 98 years, the museum’s All-Alaska Sweepstakes trophy collection will number seven. The 1910 cup

was given to the museum by the Siberian Hus-ky Club of Great Britain, which decided its proper place was Nome. They had received it from the descendants of Fox Maule Ramsey, a Scot who helped establish the Siberians as a racing strain. He owned three of the teams in the 1910 race, including the one driven by Johnson.

“Where are the (trophies) from 1913 and 1914?” Samuelson mused. “Hopefully the rest will come home, too.”

Another treasure that can be viewed by visi-tors to the museum is the stuffed form of Fritz, who was in double lead with his half-brother Togo in the 1925 serum run and joins Togo and Balto as preserved symbols of that gruel-ing trip.

Right Intermediary FoundJon Van Zyle has been involved with dogs

and sled dog racing for decades. An Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race finisher several times since the very beginning of the race, much of his art deals with dogs and scenes from along the trail. He created the Race poster each year and has painted many original scenes, some



Blayne Streeper starts up his snowmobile. He and his fiancee, Lina Gladh, take off to-ward a snow-covered field. Fifty dogs follow.

The dogs lope around the field in a pack. When they return to the truck, Blayne’s father, Terry Streeper greets them there. Hardly a typical dog handler, Terry is a three-decade sprint racing legend. He loads the dogs in the truck while Blayne and Lina prepare their sleds and lines for the race.

This was a daily sight at the 2010 Interna-tional Pedigree Stage Stop Sled Dog Race (IP-SSSDR). Blayne Streeper and Lina Gladh fin-ished in first and second place, respectively. Streeper won the 290-mile event with a time of 22 hours, 35 minutes, and 35 seconds, and Gladh followed in 22 hours, 59 minutes, and 3 seconds.

While the Streeper Kennel established and maintained its dominance from the beginning, Joe Gans, racing a team for Lloyd Gilbertson’s kennel, placed third in 23 hours, 47 minutes, and 49 seconds, and consistently battled for daily top standings. Iditarod veteran Aaron Peck finished fourth with a time of 23 hours, 53 minutes, and 32 seconds.

This article highlights training techniques from these top three kennels, as well as things to consider about the unique stage format of the IPSSSDR, an eight-day race that travels through ten communities in Wyoming and Utah.

RECIPES FOR SUCCESSStreeper Kennels, located in Fort Nelson, Brit-

ish Columbia, is home to 150 dogs. Blayne and his father Terry own and operate the ken-nel as full partners, sharing the responsibilities of caring for the dogs, as well as planning, training and implementing race strategy. Add Blayne’s fiance, Lina, into the mix for the 2010 IPSSSDR, and Blayne says, “We com-peted at 150%.”

The Streeper race dogs are bred for per-formance, and most of the dogs trace back to lines that the kennel developed over the past thirty years. Compared to most of the other teams in the IPSSSDR, the Streeper dogs look “houndy,” with their long legs, flopped ears, speckles, and short coats; however, Blayne and Terry remark that they are hav-ing more success as they breed away from the purebred english and german pointers. The Streeper race dogs at this year’s IPSSSDR were one quarter hound or less.

According to Blayne, gait is more important than breed for an IPSSSDR race dog. He says, “I can count on one hand how many dogs trot in our kennel.” This seems to be an es-sential characteristic for a winning Stage Stop team—no trotting.

Blayne Streeper won the IPSSSDR in 2004 in his first attempt, but he is best known for sprint titles, including five victories at the An-chorage Fur Rendezvous World Champion-ship, five wins in the Yellowknife Dog Derby, and track record and two-time winner of the Fairbanks Open North American Champion-ship, among others. Blayne started racing when he was 2 years old, so it’s safe to say

that sled dog racing is in his blood. How did the Streepers condition their dogs

to compete at the longer mileages of the IPSSS-DR? For the 2009-10 season, Blayne recalls, “We did the same training up to November 1 as we would have done for open class prepa-ration, traveling at speeds of 15mph and lower. After November 1, we increased the mileage and reduced speeds to max 15mph. Our longest training run was 45 miles.”

Forty-five miles sounds short if you consider the longest stages in the IPSSSDR (60+ miles). Some speculated that the best day to make up time on the Streeper teams was on the Day Six stage out of Kemmerer. The route included snow drifts and wind much more like the Idi-tarod’s Blueberry Hills out of Unalakleet than the groomed sprint tracks of open class races. Blayne did not win this stage, but his fiance, Lina, won with the Streeper B team. The lon-ger distances did not hinder their success.

While an article cannot capture the heart and soul of any training program, clearly the Streeper Kennel mastered the art of slowing down their dog teams, and increasing their endurance. Blayne, Lina, and Terry trained with a GPS all winter, keeping track of the mileages covered and speed performed by each dog. Their challenge was to figure out exactly how much the teams needed to be slowed in order to maintain stamina for the necessary mileage of the day.

Contrary to the common sprint racing strat-egy of going out hard and trying to maintain the swift speed, the Streeper Kennel adopted a different philosophy: go out at a speed you can maintain the entire way, and finish fast. This approach worked brilliantly in the IPSSSDR and it is noteworthy that three weeks after claiming the title in Wyoming, Streeper

2010 International Pedigree Stage Stop Sled Dog RaceStory by Hannah Moderow, Images by Chris Havener

It’s race day. Dozens of dogs circle the truck. Ears flop. Tails wag beneath the Rocky Mountain sky. Some dogs play. Oth-ers relieve themselves. The mood is jolly and unconcerned.


won the 2010 Fur Rendezvous World Cham-pionships with the same dog team. Equally impressive, his fastest race split in the Rendez-vous was the final mile of the 3-day race. Yes, Blayne put patience and precision to work for the IPSSSDR, but was also able to speed up his team for the subsequent open class races in 2010. He raced undefeated in the 2009-10 season.

While the Streeper challenge was to slow down the teams to a maintainable speed, many long distance mushers had to figure out how to speed them up. This was Iditarod musher Aaron Peck’s task for the winter. Com-ing off the 2009 Iditarod, Aaron had to figure out a way to convince his dog team to run faster over fewer miles.

Aaron Peck, from Grande Prairie, Alberta, operates a kennel of 55 dogs. This winter, he helped train an Iditarod dog team for Ross Adam, as well as his own IPSSSDR team. Did he use the same dogs for both events? No.

Aaron intermixed the 55 dogs for the first month of training, and evaluated gaits and potential speed. By September, he designated a core group of twelve dogs for his stage race team. In October, Aaron selected eight more dogs so that he had a team of twenty dogs to train solely for the Stage Stop.

How did Aaron convince his dog team that they were stage racing, and not mushing a

thousand miles to Nome? He trained faster and less often, with significantly reduced mile-ages. He selected dogs that he knew could make the transition from a long distance trot to a mid-distance lope. “I started with dogs that are naturally hard driving and smooth gaited,” said Aaron, “I let them run fast, and really stretch out, and eventually they got the message.”

While the Streepers did not train on hills, Aaron did a significant amount of hill train-ing to prepare for the steep Wyoming terrain. During the dryland training season, he ran the dogs up hills fast, not making them pull, but just giving them the idea that running uphill is about speed. He wanted to cultivate excite-ment for hills. Once a week, Aaron slowed the four-wheeler, so that the dogs had to pull hard up the hills, and get the necessary con-ditioning.

In addition to preparing his team for hilly terrain, Aaron did a significant amount of per-sonal fitness training to ensure he could help his team during the race. Aaron believes that his own athleticism was a major ingredient to the success of his 2010 race. He said, “I don’t want to take anything away from my dogs, but my own work behind the sled helped a lot. Unless I was going downhill, I was helping them by either kicking or running. The dogs are used to that with me. We work together.

I supposed if you train a team to run faster, you don’t need to help as much, but this is my way.”

Which is harder--to slow down a fast team, or speed up a slow team? There is no clear answer. Logistically, it is easier to slow down a team, because you can do it by putting your foot on the drag until the dogs literally have to slow down. Speeding up a distance team can be tricky. It is more of a mental shift to convince the dogs that they are not running all the way to Nome, but instead just a few hours to the next finish line.

Picture this. Just two weeks before the 2010 IPSSSDR, several mushers, including the Streepers and Aaron Peck, were training their teams at West Yellowstone to adjust to the high altitude. One afternoon, Aaron ap-proached Terry Streeper and asked, “What was your average speed on this training run.” Terry replied something in the range of 14 mph. Aaron looked down at his own GPS and saw 10.5 mph, a perfect long distance train-ing speed—a horrible thing to see just a few days before the IPSSSDR start.

Somehow, Aaron convinced his team to pick up the pace. He even managed to beat Blayne on the longest stage of the race, Stage Six, by more than ten minutes. However, Streeper’s fiancee, Lina, beat Aaron for the day.

Opposite page: Jerry Bath chasing down Debbie Moderow- Kemmerer Leg • Clockwse from above: Blayne Streeper chasing down Joe Gans-Alpine Leg • Lina Gladh at the Bridger Valley stage half-way point, eleveation 10,000 feet! • Joe Gans chasing down Blayne and Lina- Bridger Valley Leg • J.R. Anderson soaking in the beauty of the Greys River- Alpine leg.



with Joe Hendersonarctic traveler

Just by looking at the photos, one might get the impression that a dog team could cruise effortlessly down the wide valleys and rolling hills. But I know from firsthand experience that those romanticized images were taken in the springtime, probably in March and April when the sun and wind had worked the snow smooth and hard. But during the real winter (November through February) the snow con-ditions in the Brooks Range are incredibly variable. It’s not uncommon for the snow to be waist deep in one valley and ankle high in another.

While I’m on an expedition, experienc-ing the variability in conditions on a daily basis, I’m constantly reminded of something my old Alaskan gold miner friend once said to me after he caught a glimpse of my worn, wooden snowshoes leaning against my dog sled outside his cabin window. “You’re only as good as your tools,” Charley proclaimed. Charley’s sharp eye had noticed a fist-sized piece of rawhide webbing missing from the toe where my malamute pup had chewed it clear through. Those words spoken so long ago echo in my mind even still as I put on my snowshoes.

Charley was absolutely right. Snowshoes are a valuable tool for a dog musher and are an essential component of travel upon which the success of a dog sledding expedition or a winter weekend camping trip in the mountains hinges.

Snowshoes have been around for thousands of years. Their design evolved to suit many different kinds of snow conditions, resulting in the styles we have available today: bearpaw (curved heel), teardrop (have a tail), and hybrids. Modern snowshoes are constructed with a variety of materials and selecting the right pair can be confusing. I mean, where do you start? Do you purchase snowshoes made with aluminum or wooden frames? Rawhide or neoprene webbing? Is the traditional long shoe better than the shorter ones? The list of possibilities goes on and on. If you are not

careful and buy a pair that doesn’t cut it for what you need, you may find yourself flinging cuss words at your newly purchased snow-shoes while lying face down in the snow. Needless to say, the snowshoes one selects should be appropriate for the snow condi-tions.

People often ask me why I don’t use skis. Well, I do sometimes, but I prefer snowshoes and have grown comfortable with them. Without a doubt, skiing is an easy and effort-less way to get around, even in really deep snow. However, working with dogs and deal-ing with brush is difficult while wearing skis. Another downfall of using skis is that they re-quire the use of poles, which is a real pain considering I need to keep my hands free to handle the team. Nonetheless, I always have a pair of skis on the sled that I use for scouting around and hunting.

I like to have a versatile pair of snowshoes that will serve me well regardless of snow depth. I prefer to invest in snowshoes that I can use in the arctic either on crusty wind-blown, waist-deep snow in the Brooks Range, and even the deep snow in Interior Alaska.

If you’ve ever tried it, you know how dif-ficult snowshoeing can be. I have found the most challenging snowshoeing conditions are in the mountains, especially if you are break-ing trail in thigh-deep powder, trekking up and over steep mountain passes, or blazing trail through parka-shredding brush with an amped up dog team on your heels. Even with a decent pair of snowshoes, mountain travel can wear a person thin, literally. Somehow, when I travel on the arctic coast I successfully maintain my weight, but when traveling in the mountains…holy smokes, I become skinny as a rail. It doesn’t matter how many calories I consume. I just burn it right off. When I snow-shoe all winter in the mountains, the constant cardiovascular exertion drops my resting heart rate down to about 50 beats per minute. It’s during those times I’m fit as a fiddle.

Snowshoeing in extreme conditions requires

a lightweight yet durable snowshoe that can withstand a good beating. I prefer Iverson Snowshoes (iversons-snowshoes.com); their old Alaskan Trail style, to be specific, with rawhide webbing and a long tail. They are light, durable, and maneuverable. The long tails on the shoes are important since they al-low the snowshoes to track straight forward. For deep snow, I prefer the longest snowshoes I can get my mitts on. I have great success with the 12x60 inch shoe for the deeper, sug-ary snow that lies in the mountain valleys.

I remember complaining to a friend long ago, an old-timer, about the deep powdery snow that hungrily swallows snowshoes at ev-ery step. “Just tie a cord to each snowshoe toe and pull on them while you walk.” He grumbled as if I should’ve already had known this old trick. Basically, he recommended “puppeteering” the tips of the snowshoes to train your body to become familiar with the motion of snowshoeing. As you step forward, say with your left foot, you also lift the cord on the left snowshoe. It trains you to pick up your feet and lift those toes. After a while you’ll find this movement natural, and bucking that deep snow becomes nearly effortless; “effort-less” being a relative term. No matter what type of snowshoe I put on my mukluks or how hard I train, it’s never really easy. Before an expedition, I try to accumulate quite a few miles of running up hills and through snow without snowshoes on. This kind of training helps get my legs warmed up for the season, but after about the first month of snowshoeing in front the team 6 to 8 hours a day, my legs have pretty much adjusted to the brutal physi-cal demands. After 3 or 4 months of busting through deep mountain snow, I can actually say snowshoeing becomes as close to effort-less as it will ever get.

When I am testing a new snowshoe I like to see the tail of the snowshoe drag over the snow at all times. So when I look behind me on my trail there should be narrow drag marks similar to ski tracks where the tails had dragged and never left the snow surface. That way, your toe is always pointed forward and enables you to cruise ahead at a trot or a fast walk without worrying about the snowshoe turning on you and planting you in a snow angel position.

ShowshoesAn Arctic Traveler’s Best FriendEvery once in a while I see dramatic photos of the Brooks Range Mountains layered with a plush carpet of snow in a magazine or book. Heck, even some of my own photos resemble a dog musher’s paradise.


As I mentioned before, there are a lot of different styles of snowshoes out there and the type you select should depend on the type of conditions you’re planning to walk in. I see quite a few bearpaw style snowshoes around and they do have a purpose in deep, heavy snow like you find in the forests of Michigan, but for Alaska’s dry snow they sink awfully deep. The aluminum bearpaw style shoes have their place in recreational snowshoe-ing and mountaineering, but probably not in a scenario where you’re breaking trail with a dog team over long distances. I doubt that they are superior to a pair of traditional wooden snowshoes in regards to floatation, user-friendliness, and weight. And believe me, weight does matter, especially if you’re snowshoeing in front of your team all day.

It seems like there’s a world of emphasis put on snowshoe bindings these days. Again there’s a pile of them out there on the market. I think a simple binding is the way to go. What works best for me is the leather H-style bind-ing. It’s simple and serves the purpose well. Once they’re adjusted to my mukluk they stay on all day and if I need them off, I simply pull the strap down off my heel and kick my foot forward and there it goes. The H-style binding is relatively inexpensive. Iverson Snowshoe Company designs and sells a great line of bindings as well.

I have tried just about every snowshoe de-sign and I always gravitate back to the origi-nal Alaskan Trail style. They are tough, light and easily repairable. Besides I have found they work similar to skis going down hills.

The trick here is to sit down on the snowshoe tails then lean back and enjoy the quick ride down the mountain. I like to wear the obijawa style shoes when maneuvering in thick brush in the boreal forests. The toe, which comes to a point like an arrow head, pierces through the brush and makes it easier getting through it. For wide open cruising on soft snow they seem unbalanced on the toe. Happy snow-shoeing! •

Joe Henderson has been traveling on snow-shoes in the arctic with his team of malamutes for about 30 years. He’s probably a better runner on a pair of Alaskan Trail style snow-shoes than he is in Nikes. www.alaskanarctic-expeditions.com

Snowshoes can keep you float-ing on top of the snow, but the right pair for the right conditions is important. With the proper snowshoes, Joe can move quickly (right). Without them, he sinks into waist deep powder.

2010 Fur Rondy - continued from page 9

baffled by what was wrong, he scratched from the race. A showdown between the two power houses of sprint racing was not to be this year.

Rounding out the top 4 was Iditarod champion Jeff King. Announcing his retire-ment from 1,000 mile long distance races this year, Jeff seems to be really enjoying the sport that he has built a lifestyle and ca-reer around. Earlier in the season, he orga-nized the Denali Doubles race—an unusual event requiring two drivers per team. Being the first “big name” Iditarod musher to en-ter the Rondy in recent years, he wanted to do it right. He only had a few training runs with the Streeper “B” team that he leased for the race, and started out tentatively on the first day. By the last day, he was driving the team like a sprint racing pro, and took the 3rd fastest time on Day 3, moving him up to 4th place overall. I spoke with Jeff on Day 2 and asked him what it were the main differences between the modern Iditarod style team and the modern sprint team. “Well for one thing,

I had a couple of stops out there and I was amazed at how intolerant these dogs were of stopping. They were calmer at the start of the race than they were out there. They know that this is not where we stop. Period. My dogs, they stand there calmly and wait for me to do my thing. I’ve been able to transfer my sled handling and driving ability to this. It is really the same sport, but different cadence.” I also asked him about the exchange of information between top level mushers from different dis-ciplines within the sport, “Well I noticed that they are doing a lot of the same things I’m doing. They are putting their weakest dogs in the same spot in the team that I am. They are telling me things like, go out slow so you can come home hard. Well I’ve been doing that for a long time! One of biggest differences I’ve noticed is, for example, with my team I can tell the difference between 9.5 and 10 mph, with this team I can’t tell the difference between 17 and 20mph and obviously it’s critical.”

It seems like I say this every year, “This was exciting, but wait until next year!” With more and more top teams now potentially able to compete for the top spots the Rondy just keeps getting better and better. In addition to the sled dog race, there are many things to do in town as Anchorage celebrates with its carnival-like atmosphere. If you haven’t been, I’d recommend coming to town and taking it all in. •

For more coverage of the 2010 Open-Class World Championship Sled Dog Race, go to mushing.com. We have hours of video interviews where we talk with almost all the racers and ask them about their training and racing strategies as well as get their impres-sions of running the toughest and most com-petitive sprint sled dog race in the world.

Greg Sellentin is the publisher of Mushing Magazine and an aspiring open-class sprint musher now residing in Willow, Alaska.


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He entered the 75th Anniversary running of the All-Alaska Sweepstakes in 1983. Unfortu-nately, he suffered a knee injury in a mishap along the trail and was forced to scratch. He and his wife Jona returned as race officials for the Sweepstakes’ 100th Anniversary race observance in 2008.

The 100th Anniversary race’s first-place purse was $100,000, many times greater than the prizes taken home by mushers 10 decades earlier. It was won by Mitch Seavey with a new record time of 61 hours, 29 min-utes and 45 seconds. Interestingly, Van Zyle said the large prize was significantly aided by entry fees from the 75th Anniversary race. In 1983, mushers were required to put up gold dust worth in the range of $1,000 to $1,200. The gold was kept by the Kennel Club, which saw the value increase signifi-cantly as the yellow metal became more valu-able.

“We are very grateful to Jon and Jona for their never-ending support to the (Carrie Mc-Clain) museum and to racing,” Samuelson said.

Sled Dogs HonoredJona Van Zyle is also an artist and musher and has a tie-in with the dogs made famous

by their exploits of long ago. She raced sled dogs in Ohio and was invited to bring her team to the Cleveland Museum of Natural His-tory for a demonstration in connection with one of their exhibits.

Included in that exhibit is Balto, the stuffed lead dog that gained worldwide fame as the one who on Feb. 2, 1925, led Gunnar Kaasen’s team into Nome with the serum that stopped a deadly diphtheria epidemic. Kaasen and Balto were hailed as heroes and a statue of Balto was erected in New York City’s Central Park, on an approach to the Tisch Children’s Zoo.

Balto and members of his team toured the country for two years in a vaudeville act. A Cleveland businessman, George Kimble, saw them in Los Angeles and was disheartened to find them in poor health and malnourished. He contacted the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspa-per, which launched a drive to purchase the teams and bring them to Ohio. School chil-dren contributed dimes so that the half-dozen dogs could be obtained and live out the rest of their lives in the Cleveland Zoo.

People familiar with the outcome of the serum run felt that another team deserved at least as much of the acclaim as Kaasen’s re-ceived. Missing the limelight associated with news of the heroic feat was the team driven by Leonhard Seppala, one of the early All-Alaska Sweepstakes mushers, whose lead dog was Togo. Seppala had driven his team out from Nome to take the serum over the worst stretch of the route, handing it off to another musher who in turn passed it to Kaasen for the final run into Nome.

Partly as a result of her own mushing ex-perience in Ohio, Jona became an assistant curator at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. She often invited mushers to come there and talk or demonstrate with their dogs. In 1998, one of those visiting speakers was Jon Van Zyle.

“He was down to two dogs and I had a young team,” Jona joked. “Also, I had a new dog truck, which he envied.” Both they and their teams were soon merged and she joined him in Alaska.

Breeders Sought ImprovementBy 1907 Nome was changing from a cha-otic frontier boom town into an established city. Incorporated in April of 1901, there was a school and a functioning school board. While the number of saloons was still high, there also were churches, theaters and shops and an active Chamber of Commerce. At the height of the Gold Rush, the Nome population had swelled to about 20,000, but the 1910 Census counted only 2,600 people.

The organizers and mushers who took part in the All-Alaska Sweepstakes were pioneers in developing sled dogs for racing, Van Zyle said. In the first couple of races, the teams were ones that were used to haul mail and freight between the villages. The dog team owners and their drivers became interested in improving the breed.

Van Zyle credited mushers from those early races with traveling across the Bering Strait to Siberia to acquire several of the dogs we now refer to as Siberian huskies. They proved to be faster than the mixed-breed dogs that had been assembled by the team owners—and held up better over long distances.

In 1907 the Nome Kennel Club was formed and sponsored races that were popular among the citizenry. The All-Alaska Sweepstakes was organized in 1908. The route chosen by the club was a well-traveled one along the tele-graph line built and operated by soldiers of the Washington Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System (later the Alaska Commu-nication System) to link the gold camps and settlements between the larger cities.

Candle was one of those gold camps. By coincidence, the mileage from Nome was the same number as the population: 204. The race from Nome to Candle and back covered a total of 408 miles. The Sweepstakes contin-ued for a decade and was an attraction for both spectators and mushers.

Scotty Allan, winner of the 1909 trophy, came in “in the money” all of the eight times he entered, also winning in 1911 and 1912. Seppala won in 1915, 1916 and 1917. John “Iron Man” Johnson, whose time in 1910 of 74 hours, 14 minutes and 37 seconds was the record until Seavey bettered it 98 years

Continued from page 15

Mushing Magazine • 2� • May/June 20�0

later. Johnson also won in 1914.Most of the teams were owned by the

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KOBUK 440When I started thinking

about running the Kobuk 440 people told

me a lot about it.

By Jodi Bailey

Jodi Bailey’s team heads into a saturated sunset as she crosses the arctic tundra in Kotzebue during the Kobuk 440 this year.


The amazing hospitality and food were mentioned at great length. Of course people were quick to point out that to run it means you’re pretty much doing five 90-mile runs above the Arctic Circle with 20 hours minimum man-datory rest. “It is like running half an Iditarod,” quipped Kelley Griffen before the start. You have to love a race that has an arctic parka as part of the mandatory gear and yet everyone tells you to bring rain gear and gar-bage bags. On its Facebook page it says it’s “The biggest and baddest race in the Arctic Circle.” And then there is that mass start.

Well it’s all true and it’s all good. If you are thinking about running it, the answer is DO IT.

To be fair there is a certain amount of logistics involved in getting a team to the village of Kotzebue, Alaska for the start. Do your home-work. A few phone calls to airline cargo and shipping folks are well worth the effort. Airlines fly dogs to Kotzebue from Anchorage, so add some extra travel time there your race plans. The Kobuk 440 race organization is an all-volunteer group who, with great community sup-port, not only plan and run a world class dog race, but also provide visiting mushers with host homes and help getting their dogs and gear around. Staying with local hosts is just one of the ways the mushers get to interact with the community, and part of what makes this race such a valuable experience.

The community came out in full support at the mushers’ drawing where the Kotzebue Northern Lights Dancers preformed. There was a great meal and mushers drew their starting numbers. Numbers are only a formality: the race begins with a mass start out on the ice in front of the village post office. The afternoon start makes for a nice night’s sleep and a relatively relaxing race day. Teams were either pulled or run to the mass start area for the gear check and then we all waited for the hat to drop.

Now put aside your thoughts of total chaos and clips worthy of “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” By the time teams are at the Kobuk start, most have thousands of miles on them, and are pretty race ready. I am not saying it didn’t have a crazy frontier gold rush kind of excite-ment, dogs taking off, crowds cheering. But with well seasoned teams it was just not the comedy of errors one might envision. Mass starts are exciting and fun. Add that to the list of things learned.

The excitement of the start and the fun of getting to race with such quality teams pretty much carries you through the first run—which is good because it includes a very long flat boring stretch of ice, Kotze-bue Sound. You hardly even notice it on the way out. But trust me, on the way back, this section of trail will become burnt into your memory as the longest, flattest, most never-ending run of your life. This section, like so much of the Kobuk trail, is marked with willow branches that sport tags of reflective tape. In open areas there are long rows of them lining the trail so you can run from marker to marker in bad visibility. With the regularity of streetlights or guardrails they guide you through windswept and wide open. On the way out I thought, how beautiful to look down along this never ending procession of willow markers and be heading out on this great adventure. On the way home I remember thinking, Oh Dear Lord, will this never end? If it were not for those stupid sticks I would not even be able to tell we were moving. The big wide open with very little sleep can really affect your perceptions. That goes on the list of what I learned.

Along the way you stop at many of the rural villages surrounding Kotzebue, and the checkpoints they provide are another reason this race is worth running. When you arrive you can bet there will be people around wanting to know who you are, especially the kids. The kids swarm around making you feel like a teen idol. But I will not de-lude myself. They come to see you and the dogs, yes. But mostly they come for the Easter Baskets. At every checkpoint each musher draws a name from a can with all the local kids’ names in it. The lucky kid

gets an Easter Basket, donated to and passed out by the Kobuk 400 race organization.

Prizes are not just for kids. Villages also donate prizes for mushers, usually hand crafted items. And not just for 1st place either, fun cat-egories like first rookie in, traveled the farthest to get here, youngest musher. A marten hat for being the first woman into Ambler is a special prize, made even more so because while there I got to meet the trap-per who trapped the marten for the hat. Wonderful hospitality in the bush. Learned that.

The checkpoints are volunteer-run, and many people have been in-volved in helping the race for years. This year's race was actually ded-icated to long-time volunteer Stanley Custer, Sr. from Shungnak. Vil-lages also go all out in the food they provide. Caribou stew and ribs, whitefish and salmon, homemade donuts and breads—everywhere we went there was more good food. And in the village of Kobuk where many mushers pass through, the kids from the school had made lunch bags out of recycled clothes and packed the mushers each a to-go meal that they gave us at the checkpoint. I learned that you can gain weight on the Kobuk 400.

This year’s race was kind where it came to water on the trail. More than once I went through frozen sections, but could tell that in the right conditions that it would be a big watery mess. But never fear, I do not think you could run that far in that part of the state and not get some kind of good strong weather to deal with. This year a blowing snow storm delivered vertigo-causing white-out conditions. River banks disappeared.

Lest you think I am exaggerating about the show-stopping condi-tions, let me cut to an e-mail conversation I had with Chuck Shaffer, Kotzebue dog musher, Kobuk 440 Race organizer and official, who was out on the trail that day with a group of race volunteers on snow-machines. “Would be neat (to share the story) from a snow machiner’s perspective about running into teams on the river that had absolutely no trail and probably thought we were god sent to have provided one. There were some sections of the river where I hadn't seen so much snow drop in so little time. We had passed a team that all you could see were the handlebars of the sled and as we passed, a little black head of a dog appeared and a musher jumping out of the sled. It was Kelly and she had actually nowhere to go until our trail provided her a means. Took us an hour to break out a little portage trail just a few miles down river.” Mother Nature changes everything. I already knew that, but it was a good reminder.

The willow markers are in fact placed close enough that you can see them to get from one to the other even in horrible conditions. And yes, the snowmachines were a godsend. Like Kelly, Jim Borquinn and I had also stopped in the worst of the storm, and had been slowly finding and breaking trail as the machines came through.

Another storm note: Cathy Jones, who did the race web updates, was so dedicated that when planes did not fly due to weather condi-tions she hopped on a bale of straw and hung on in the back of the dog box being towed by snowmachine between checkpoints. Kobuk 440 race volunteers will do whatever it takes. I learned that.

I had gone to the Kobuk looking for a good challenge, and as I said on finally getting to Kiana after that long run through the storm, “It was a be careful what you wish for moment.” The fun of a dog race is that everyone dealt with the same conditions, and I am glad to report that all made it through safely. As a matter of fact there was not one single scratch on this year’s Kobuk 400, which speaks pretty highly of the mushers and teams entered in this year’s race. Sometimes you just have to go out and get experience in order to learn, and the Kobuk 440 is a great teacher.

At the finish banquet, champion John Baker said how much he en-joyed this year’s race and the mushers who ran it. I must agree, adding to it that it is also the wonderful community involvement and breathtak-ing country that make this race an event worth running, if only once in your race career. To see and experience something that words on a page just cannot do justice to. I can try to tell you, but some things ya gotta learn for yourself. •


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Third place finisher, Joe Gans, raced a team for Cari-bou Creek Kennel, owned by Lloyd Gilbertson. This kennel won the IPSSSDR in 2005 with musher Hernan Maquieira, and in 2007 with Wendy Davis. Kennel owner Lloyd Gilbertson raced him-self in 2003, but at 6 feet 5 inches tall, he said, “I had some good stages, but there was too much of me on the sled. I saw more potential for my team with a smaller musher.” While Gilbertson did not compete in the 2010 IPSSSDR, he traveled with his teams, acting as the handler and coach. Joe Gans raced Gilberton’s A team, and Mike Barnet raced the B team. Un-like long distance events where mushers are on their own, handlers on the IPSSSDR play a major role in the care and strategy of the race team. Each night of the race, Gilbertson worked with Gans and Barnet to select the best dog teams for the next day. It was a group effort. Gilbertson explained: “We put our heads together to figure out which dogs to race each day. Joe and Mike gave feedback, and together we moved forward.”

Gilbertson believes that an ideal stage rac-ing team is not a matter of sprint or distance, but “I think of it as a versatile dog team.” He contends that an ideal IPSSSDR dog has the capability of running up to 20mph, and needs to be able to hold 14mph for long runs that include climbs.

Unlike the Streeper kennel, whose longest training run was 45 miles, and Aaron Peck at 50 miles, Gilbertson’s mushers Joe Gans and Mike Barnet drove their dog teams on several 8-9 hour runs at 8mph before the race. Gilb-ertson described this as LSD training, known to human runners as long slow distance. They also completed 50-mile training runs at race pace.

Hill training is not a major training element for Gilbertson, in part because there are not a lot of hills near his kennel in Chatham, Michi-gan. Also, Gilbertson believes that the LSD training acts as an alternative to hills.

IPSSSDR- More Than a Dog Race: Mushers travel from far away to compete in the IPSSSDR. The purse is high, the competi-tion is stiff, but there’s something else too. The race is a community-based endeavor, where mushers, dogs, handlers, sponsors, veterinar-ians, volunteers, townspeople, and officials share a common experience.

“One of the highlights of the race is the traveling aspect,” said Blayne Streeper, “We see new towns, new trails, and new people every day. There are tons of schoolchildren at the race starts. It’s a community effort.”

A stellar group of IPSSSDR veterinarians, officials, and race organizers lead the sport in professionalism. According to race marshal, Mark Nordman, “The IPSSSDR is as orga-nized a race as I’ve been involved with.”

Even the dog handlers have a central role. While dog handlers often end up sleeping in cold parking lots waiting for their dog teams at long distance races, the handling experi-ence at the IPSSSDR is entirely different. Be-cause the race stages end in the afternoon each day, handlers care for the dog teams in the evenings, and can play an essential role to the competitiveness of the team. Take the 2010 race for example. High profile mushers Terry Streeper, Terry Adkins, Doug Swingley, Melanie Shirilla, and Lloyd Gilbertson were some of the handlers, not competitors at the IPSSSSDR. Yes, wisdom speaks from the side-lines at the Stage Stop.

Looking Ahead-IPSSSDR 2011:

The Stage Stop is getting faster and faster. This may be in part because the race has shortened its mileages. Whereas in the past, the race included campouts and stages as long as 110 miles, the present-day IPSSSDR features runs between 30 and 60 miles. Also, the level of competition is increasing. Blayne Streeper averaged 12.9mph over nearly 300 miles in this year’s race. This average included steep hill climbs at altitude, and trail conditions that were not always hard and fast.

Race director, Frank Teasley, who founded the IPSSSDR fifteen years ago, commented on the current state of the race: “Like the Iditarod, the IPSSSDR is evolving. More mushers are focusing on it so the teams are getting more competitive and thus pushing the pace.” Pedi-gree Food for Dogs, the title sponsor of the race, has enabled the race to have a large purse, which in turn lures mushers from far off places.

While Blayne Streeper and Lina Gladh dominated the event in 2010, don’t count out challengers for the 2011 race. Lloyd Gil-

bertson will return with a team, as will Aaron Peck, and many of the other top 2010 IPSSSDR competitors. Additionally, the winningest musher of the IPSSSDR, Hans Gatt, signed up for the 2011 race after winning the 2010 Yukon Quest and placing 2nd in the 2010 Iditarod. Ryan Redington, grandson to Joe Reding-ton Sr., known for excel-ling at mid-distance races, also signed up.

The International Pedi-gree Stage Stop Sled Dog Race has become a

melting pot for sprint, mid, and long distance mushers in the sport. The training methods may be varied, but all dog teams and mush-ers come together under the Rocky Mountain sunshine.

According to Teasley, the race is designed to showcase the most versatile mushers and sled dogs in the sport. Blayne Streeper clearly demonstrated versatility with his IPSSSDR win, and subsequent undefeated 2010 race sea-son. Streeper is the team to beat in 2011, but the many dimensions of the IPSSSDR leave room for surprises. •

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STREEPERSuPER DogS:

Oats (f) 46lbs - 2006 (Mimi X Bingo) Main leader 2010. Raced lead for my winning team in Wyoming, An-chorage and Yellowknife. Hard driving, very focused and trail smart, never wants to stop, super fast, can loose run at 30 mph. Loves mass starts and chas-ing. When she sees a team ahead, she needs to get by it. She overtook every team in the 2010 Stage Stop.

Heidi (f) 50lbs - 2005 (Mimi X Sunny) AKA Heidi Klum—long legs and beautiful. Main leader the last 2 seasons. Raced lead on my winning Stage, Rondy and Yellowknife team. Hard driving and very fast. Has more “human friends” at more races than any other dog. She is a sweetheart. Bred to Lyle in 2008, pro-ducing a litter of 10 dynamite pups. Bred to Walter in spring 2010

Troya (f) 48lbs - 2007 (Myia X Pride) Main Leader. Winning leader of the “Big 3.” Although she only raced Day 1 in Anchorage, as she had a sore wrist after heat 1, she rebounded to set the winning pace in the 150 mile Canadian Championship, Yellowknife. Member of the “Terrific T” litter. Fast and super friendly, she has 1 blue and 1 brown eye. Troya will be the pace setting leader for the team in the fu-ture.

Streeper Kennels went undefeated in 2010. Our second team finished second place (Stage Stop Wyoming), a third place (Cana-

dian Championship 150, Yellowknife) and a fourth place (Fur Rondy).In the 2010 Fur Rondy, our kennel produced 78 dogs, racing on 6 seperate teams. Our

2 teams started with 20 dogs(Bud) and 18 dogs (Jeff King), finsishing with 16 and 14.In Yellowknife our kennel received the humanitarian award for best cared for dog team, awarded from the veternarians. It’s a 12 dog pool, 10 dog max, and both our teams had 12 solid dogs to pick from for the last day. Our plan in 2011 will be similar, and we will also race the Fairbanks Open North American with 2-3 teams. For more info on our kennel: streeperkennels.com

Balto (m) 60lbs - 2007 (Birch x Lance) Big, fast, hard driving, natural leader. He is so fast he could blow up the atv chasing him down. Loose runs so smoothly and effortlessly, it apperas he is not mov-ing, but the speed is in excess of 30mph. Raced lead for Lina at 2010 Stage Stop, and was on my winning team at Fur Rondy. Will mature into an even better dog.

Descriptions by Blayne StreeperPhotos by Greg Sellentin


Blaze(m) 45lbs - 2007 (Birch x Lance) Leader. Raced lead for Lina in Wyoming and was a life saver during a tough stage in Big Piney. Blaze was put up front and changed the ending script for Lina’s race. She will forever be grateful for his eagerness and work ethic in tough situ-ations. Ran point on my winning Fur Rondy team. Lots of speed and loves to go fast. Blaze is the cheerleader of the team with his pre-race atti-tude and excitement.

Danny (m) 48lbs - 2004 (Little Dee x Pride) Leader. Raced on my winning Stage and Rondy team. Led Lina in Yellowknife. Easy runner, lots of speed and long lasting en-durance. One of our main studs, producing winning team members. Loves loose running and free time. Danny will let you know 1 month before any female shows signs of a heat cycle as he crowds them and makes sure he is their “boyfriend.”

Echo (m) 45lbs - 2006 (Erin x Pride) lead-er- raced for Lina in Wyoming and Yellowknife, and used as a coming home leader for the longer stages. Raced point on my winning rondy team 2010. Loves to play fetch and wont let any other dogs get the ball, and once he has it he makes all the other dogs chase after him.

Eddy (m) 58lbs - 2006 (Erin x Pride) Leader. Win-ning team member of the “Big 3.” Eddy was used as a coming home leader in Wyoming and Yellowknife as he always saves lots of speed and power for the fin-ishing miles. Can run anywhere in the team, but is best fitted in the back for his power. Loves loose running and the females in the “bitch pen” as he was bred in 2009 and has become a real “hound.”

Flicka (f) 48lbs - 2006 (Mimi x Duke) Winning team member 2010 Rondy. Raced with Lina in Wyo-ming and Yellowknife. Hard driving point dog, very fast. Loves loose runs and playing near the ponds and creeks - likes the water and birds around them. Fun dog to work with as she is a real sweetheart.

Izaq (m) 48lbs - 2006 (Iris x Casper) Hard working point, lots of speed and drive. Raced on winning team at Stage Stop and Rondy. Raced on main team the last 2 seasons. One of my best front end dogs. Never on the wrong side, avoids tangles and negotiates problems.


Lance (m) 58lbs - 2004 (Venus x Pride) One of our best all around dogs. Raced on winning 2010 teams in Wyoming, Anchorage and Yellowknife. Lance is very hard driving. He would be the best dog in any limited class team. He pulls so hard I think he will break the harness, and will do so for 60 miles. He is a top producing stud, having some awesome 2 year olds contributing to our race winning teams.

Larry (m) 60lbs - 2006 (Mimi x Duke) Hard driving powerhouse. Raced with Lina in Wyoming and Yellowknife. Raced on my winning 2010 Rondy team. Big and strong. Loves to walk the line as he stands on the main line in the starting chute. He is always eager and willing to run. Tons of attitude.

Leif (m) 55lbs - 2007 (Nome x Lance) Leader. Lina’s main man in Wyoming and Yellowknife. Raced with Jeff King in Rondy 2010. Our youngest race dog this winter, as he turned 2 years old on December 20th, 2009. Awesome dog for the future. Starting to mature into a champion.

Little Dee (f) 40lbs - 2000 (Dee x Cody) GREATEST SLED DOG LEADER OF ALL TIME! Winning leader of sprint sled dog racing biggest races. Fairbanks (2003,2007 track record), Anchorage (2004, 2007 track record, 2008), Yellowknife (2003, 2005), The PAS (2005) & Laconia (2003). Raced lead for Jeff King in 2010 Rondy and could have led my team to victory this year.

Lyle (m) 60lbs - 2003 (Helen X Tuffy) Main team member 2006-2009. Raced with Jeff King in 2010 Rondy. Extremely hard driving and fast. Loves at-tention and affection. Lyle is a great big teddy bear. Bred to Heidi in 2008, creating a gorgeous litter of 10. He will be bred many more times in this kennel.

Morgan (m) 55lbs - 2005 (Ty x Pride) Main wheel dog the last 3 seasons. Won the “Big 3” racing more heats then any other dog. Hard drving and focused, loves to go fast. Endless endurance, tough head and solid body. Loves loose running and being 1st, runs so fast and so far in front of other dogs, you rarely get to see how fast he really is. Bred to Birch spring 2010.


Myia (f) 55lbs - 2003 (Mimi x Tritt) Leader. Led Jeff King to 4th place at Rondy 2010. Was my main leader 2006-2009. Extremely fast and hard driving. Myia pulls so hard she could lead any team to the top. Really playful around the truck and acts like a puppy with other dogs. Mother of the “Terrific T” litter including Troja, Toka, T-Bone, Thelma, Thor. Bred to Lance spring 2010.

T-BONE (m) 50lbs - 2007 (Myia x Pride) Member of the “Terrific T” litter. Raced on the winning teams at the “Big 3.” Ran point most heats with his sister, Toka. They are equilly matched in size and speed and very fast. Can avoid lines and tangles in front of big teams at high speeds. Fun and very playful, T-Bone will often see birds flying over-head, and let out a high pitched bark, informing his team mates of the in-flight observer.

Thelma (f) 48lbs - 2007 (Myia X Pride) Leader. Raced lead for Lina in Wyoming and Yellowknife. Raced back up lead on my Fur Rondy team. Hard driv-ing pace setter. Member of the “Terrific T” litter. Loves attention and will do anything to get it. Likes to loose run around the truck playing tag with her brothers. Bred to Dale spring 2010.

Toka (f) 45lbs - 2007 (Myia x Pride) Main point dog 2010. Raced on the winning team at StageStop, Rondy and Yellowknife. Smart and fast. Can negotiate lines and avoid tangles in front of 20 dogs at 20 mph. A member of the “Terrific T” litter, Myia x Pride, that created 5 race winning members. Will be bred summer 2010.

Walter(m) 60lbs - 2007 (Mimi X Danny) AKA “The Man.” Hard to pick your best dog when you have 20 that win every race you enter, but Walter would be on the short list, as he was a winning team member of the “Big 3” (Wy-oming Stage Stop, Anchorage Rondy, Yellowknife 150) Ex-tremely fast, loose runs at speeds my ATV won’t go. Hard driving and very strong. He’s broken more than 1 snap in the start chute and is crazy to go every run. I consider him one of my best, as I’ve bred him to the best all time leader, D.D. and my current best leader Heidi. Really looking forward to having an entire team of this guy!

Willy (m) 55lbs - 2007 (Mimi x Danny) Litter-mate to Walter. Raced on my winning team at Stage Stop and Rondy. Very fast and fun to work with. Loves loose running, and scanning open fields for birds or butterflies. Can run anywhere in the team, from wheel to lead, but best in point or a 2nd swing.

Mushing Magazine - May/June 2010 #134

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Transcript of Mushing Magazine - May/June 2010 #134