It's 40 Below What?

Talk about extremes: currently my older brother, Nick, is working for Runa, an entrepreneurship based in the Amazon of Ecuador (where it rarely gets below 60 degrees). After every few blog entries (http://www.guayusagoodtome.blogspot.com/), he ends with a compare and contrast of our two lifestyles. It makes for a very funny read!







Oscar Wilde was quoted to say, “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” Oh, how I beg to differ. Fairbanks weather is most certainly conversation-worthy. We have hit the days of an average 20 below, with lows dipping to a frigid -40 degrees Fahrenheit/Celsius. (Yes it’s so cold out, you know longer have to specify if it’s Fahrenheit or Celsius, it’s just plain cold). Rather than lose interest when the grocer says, “This week, it’s supposed to be a little colder,” I snap to attention. How cold? Will the cars start? Will it burn when you touch metal with your bare hands? Should I cover every inch of skin when I go outside? And before I moved into my own cabin with indoor plumbing, do I really need to use the restroom tonight? That first day of -40, something about me must have screamed amateur because everyone I met kindly smiled and said, “Is it your first winter here in Fairbanks? Don’t worry, soon 20 below will feel warm.” Perhaps it was the huge parka I wore or how slow and stiff I was doing chores. Or maybe my shining red nose. Luckily, I consider myself a quick learner, and I’ve already picked up on a few tricks of the trade.
1. A parka ruff is a necessity. If don’t want your face to peel away, you have to get used to the idea of surrounding your face with wolf and wolverine fur.
2. Hand and toe warmers are no longer for the wimpy and sensitive.
3. Cold metal burns, then sticks. As Li’l Debbie demonstrated, licking metal is a bad idea.
4. Nothing works in the cold. Everything will take longer.

Anyway, I’ve made my point. It’s cold, and we talk about it.

So you may ask, when it’s that cold, how do the dogs handle it? The answer is, they’re made for cold weather. If it’s below -20 during a run, we’ll put dog jackets (complete with pee protectors) on the boys and short-coated girls, but that’s it. Right now, it’s 30 below, and the dogs are spinning around, playing with their neighbor, and causing raucous. The fact is these Alaskan Huskies are just tougher than we are. Right now, our dogs are getting ready for their first race, the Sheep Mountain 150. It consists of three consecutive 50-mile runs. To prepare, we’ve been taking the dogs on 45-60 mile runs in an effort to get them comfortable with cruising at a steady 10-11 mph pace for 50+ miles. I doubt there is a human athlete that could run 50 miles at an 11 mph pace, much less do it comfortably. This weekend, we’re traveling again to the White Mountains for a 50-mile run, campout, 50-mile run. And we’re still at the beginning of the season! As the saying goes, “These athletes eat raw meat, run naked, and sleep in the snow.”

A short clip taken in the White Mountains.

WAR EAGLE!!!!!

Postponed running dogs to watch the game. WAR EAGLE!!!

Treadmill Study Video

In the previous post, I mentioned the treadmill work our SP Kennel dogs have been practicing. To give everyone a better idea of what exactly the dogs are up to, we made this video:

A Recap

I don’t know if you’ve been following the weather up here in Alaska, but we are currently experiencing a record-setting amount of freezing rain. Yes, freezing rain. You may think “Freezing rain? Is that not also called ice?” Let me explain. Freezing rain is even better than ice, hail, sleet, slain, or any other combinations of rain and ice. Freezing rain is exactly as it’s name suggests: rain that falls from the sky as water and upon impact with the cold ground, freezes, resulting in a layer of ice covering any packed surface like dog circles, driveways, and roads. A small amount of freezing rain fell back in February 2003, but other than that, the last recorded occurrence of substantial amounts of freezing rain was in 1936. Over the past couple of days, we’ve received approximately one inch of freezing rain, which (I try not to think about) is the equivalent to about 10 inches of snow. But instead of walking out to a nice layer of snow, we walk out to ice filled puddles in dog circles and an ice skating rink on the roadways. Driving has become treacherous, so the entire Fairbanks is closed down, and the few foolhardy travelers crawl along the roads at 15 mph. Yesterday, Aliy and I took out two dog teams with four wheelers for a 40 mile run before the trails turned into ice chutes. As we paralleled the road, a SUV came puttering up behind us with one set of tires in the snow berm and the other on the glare ice. We were almost going as fast as the car! But enough complaining. Snow and cold weather is in the forecast, so with a little luck, we’ll be back on sleds and complaining of the subzero temperatures in no time.

Before all this freezing rain, we had nice, snow packed trails. Even though we couldn’t really set a snowhook, we were taking out sleds with teams as large as 12 dogs. On Friday, we decided to take the dogs to the White Mountains for a fifty-mile training run. It was my first time to the White Mountains, and I was looking forward to running dogs on new terrain. We loaded up the dogs in the morning and drove the hour and a half to the trailhead. Seeing two snowplows in the parking lot is always a good sign. We harnessed, bootied, and hooked up our teams, then started out on the fresh, unbroken trail. Along the way we passed forest service cabins, two moose, and a few larger birds. The sunset was a rush of vivid red and orange streaked across the sky. I posted a picture of the sunset, but even the photo just can’t capture the intensity of the colors. Combine that with the rolling hills, the scraggly black spruce, the winter stillness, and an enthusiastic dog team, and it was a wonderful experience. I look forward to our other training runs in the White Mountains.

The day after we trained in the White Mountains, Aliy and I drove 20 dogs down to Denali to practice running on a treadmill. The SP athletes are not practicing running on a treadmill for everyday exercise, but rather because they are subjects in various studies conducted by veterinarian, Mike Davis, from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Davis has obtained different grants over the years to study the physiology of sled dogs. Prior studies have explored the circumstances of gastric ulcers. Currently, he is working on studying the effects of high altitude on the dogs and eventually VO2 max of these incredible athletes. I’ll post of video of the study in the near future. But for now, we’re keeping busy doing chores and waiting for the ice to disappear!













A fun video with Sam and Tig testing out the kids sled! Tig isn't quite a sled dog, but she pulls her weight and then some.

Fish Snacks and a Look Ahead

We've been up to all sorts of interesting things from cutting fish (see video), running 50 miles in the White Mountains, studying dogs on a treadmill in Denali, and today...freezing rain. I'll have updates soon, but to start off, here's a short "how to" video on cutting meat:

Skijoring

We’ve finally gotten a little more snow, and while it’s not enough to run a full team of twelve or even ten dogs, it’s enough to get the winter season rolling. Yesterday, we dusted off the sleds and took out a few 4-6 dog teams. In the evening, I went cross-country skiing for the first time this season. Today, I tried out skijoring with a couple of the older dogs, Blue and Pingo. Check it out:

SP Kennel Dog Log

Be sure to check out the SP Kennel Dog Log as well for updates. There's a couple of fun videos in two of the recent SP Kennel posts to check out:

http://spkenneldoglog.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-sp-kennel-team-member.html

http://spkenneldoglog.blogspot.com/2010/11/sp-kennel-junior-mushers.html