Six days ago, I got a picture sent from Ryne followed by the message: “What do you think? Those 12 for your team?” The picture was a list with the 12 dogs that'll join me on this adventure that’s called the Yukon Quest 200. My answering text follows suite: “Sounds like a dope team!!!”

Most of the dogs I expected to be on my team. Dracula and Elmer are my main leaders, no surprise since they have led on training runs basically all season for me. It’s important to know your dogs and have a relationship with them. Even more important is this trust base in between lead dogs and their musher. So YEY! I am really excited to have those two on my team. Other than them, I have 5 rookies that have never been in a race: Ernie, Bert, Sherlock, Tobin and Scarpa! To round up the pack, there are some veterans on there too: Otis, Bowser, Mario, Louis and Dolly. All together an amazing team of twelve superstars ready to tackle The Quest 200 with me!

The race starts in Fairbanks and runs over two summits to Central. Out of Central, we'll do a 70-mile loop to then finish the race in Central.

Fairbanks to Two Rivers - 40 miles

Starting the race in Fairbanks is amazing since sled dog enthusiasts could easily come see the official start…and they did. Hundreds of people made it to the starting line in Fairbanks and many more were spread out over the first 20 miles alongside the chena river, cheering on and high fiving every musher and team passing by. Side note: Only experienced mushers should do the double high five off a sled! (picture)

Running those initial 40 miles to the first checkpoint in Two Rivers must have felt like running home for the dogs. We have run the river before, and the last 25 miles are basically on home trails. Only short before coming into the checkpoint I started thinking on how I want my routine at the checkpoint to look like. There are many things to do coming into a checkpoint and you want to be efficient so your dogs can recover as much as possible in as little time as possible. My goal is to give the dogs a rest of 4-hours at this checkpoint. In this time, I must get straw to bed down the dogs, take off dog booties and dog leggings, check every dog for soreness and overall health, get water cooking for feeding and many more things…and it definitely showed that I did not elaborate my routine very well – good there's 2 more checkpoints to improve that! I notice a little tightness in Tobin’s triceps so I give him a massage and put him in a dog jacket with a couple handwarmers to keep the muscle nice and warm. After taking care of the dogs, I have 1 hour to eat something and close my eyes for a little; sleep does not come to me before the alarm goes off to get dogs ready to run again.

Two Rivers to Mile 101 – 70 miles

After putting booties and leggings on all the dogs, I walk Tobin on a leash up and down the line. A trick I learned from Ryne. I basically give Tobin a little warm up run before hooking him to the line, and the massaging, warmers and pre-run walk seem to work perfectly; his shoulder isn’t tight anymore! So I hook him back to the line and all the 12 dogs head out with me on this next 70 mile stretch of the race.

Already before the race, we decided on taking a rest on this 70-mile run since it includes the almost 3000 ft climb up to Rosebud Summit. The first stretch of this run is on home trails again. It’s a little boring and Ernie agrees with me. Ernie who loves challenging trails but easily gets annoyed when we run the same trails over and over again did let me know that this is bull**** by just trotting along without pulling. I assure him we’ll have some fun trails ahead of us but for the moment he doesn't seem convinced. After 30 miles we set up our camp. I set my snow hook just a little off the trail, give them a quick meat snack, put down the straw for them to sleep on and myself lay down next to them. I strategically lay down next to Sherlock who likes to bark at passing teams. Sherlock seems to have some magical sense of hearing approaching dog teams way before anybody else and starts barking 5 minutes before the team actually passes. Well, at least the other dogs seem to rest and it’s only me and Sherlock staying awake. Putting leggings back on the dogs takes longer than expected since they are frozen and our originally planned 2 hours turn into almost 2.5h hours of rest. Little extra rest is fine since we must climb Rosebud Summit next.

As I expected, Ernie found his excitement again running on the new trail. Going up Rosebud, he really dug in and was one of the hardest working dogs on my team. The climb was hard, but we had some well-rested doggies and so it was easier than I had expected. Only for a little I had to get off the sled runners and help push the sled up the summit. To prove my point, Sherlock started jumping in his harness on top of Rosebud and popping the hook. I guess that was not enough for him.

Slowly going down the summit, it begins to turn daylight and I can see the beautiful trails leading to Mile 101. In those early morning hours, I start to get a little sleepy. Constantly watching all the dogs’ gaits, making sure everybody is happy, fixing lost booties every now and then, saying "good boy" and "good girl" to dogs that poop during the run... all that keeps me awake and we truck along. Coming into the checkpoint, my team still has a lot of energy and excitement. As soon as we stop, we have a lot of tail wags and barks. Mandy and Ryne, my amazing handlers who are always ready to park me when I come into a checkpoint tell me that we have the best-looking team coming in so far. I don’t know if they just said it to keep me upbeat or if it's actually true, but I really feel good with what we've accomplished so far and how the dogs look. So, I decide to believe them and it does keep me upbeat.

I did some changes in my checkpoint routine and it feels much more efficient now. Dogs rest on full bellies as I head to the truck, eating my meal and hoping to finally sleep a little. I get in a little nap and Mandy joins me on that. Anybody who knows Mandy, knows she would never let an opportunity slide to nap. I enjoy the company though.

Mile 101 to Central - 30 miles

45 minutes into the nap I wake up and decide to start getting ready a little earlier. I want to leave at 4 hours of rest to the minute. I don’t quite make it; that’s ok though. Before taking off, Ryne tells me other teams are having problems getting up Eagle Summit that lays 5 miles into this next run. Eagle summit is another steep climb followed by a steep and long downhill and I heard a lot about it being challenging. But usually, people talk about it being 800 miles into the Yukon Quest 1000 Mile race and coming up from the other side, so I decide that it can’t be to hard with my well rested team. To prove me wrong, I see my musher friend from Two Rivers, Lauro Eklund, short after leaving the checkpoint untangling his team after getting into some overblown trail. We don’t see any trail markers and don’t really know where the trail goes since everything is completely overblown. I pass Lauro and am happy he's right behind me since he has done Eagle Summit before. I ask him: “is this Eagle Summit?” pointing at a random mountain I see. He says no it’s behind you, pointing in exactly the opposite direction I pointed at. So, without trails, we randomly head that direction. My team ends up at a cliff and come to a halt. Wind blowing in our face, I can’t help it but get excited about this chaos we are in. Sure enough Lauro yells: “well, this is some real mushing we're doing here.” Cool, he seems to be excited too.

Lauro spots a trail marker. We turn around our teams and he leads the new direction. The trail starts to get steeper and there's no protection from the wind. The trail is still barely visible and totally overblown by the wind. At some point Lauro let's me lead. We got off trail again. We see the trail markers to our left but we're on a steep hillside. Turning around is hard on flat lands; on a hill it’s even harder and I don’t trust the hook in the ground. Somehow we make it though. After a lot of encouragement, Dracula and Elmer finally find the correct trail and we keep mushing up the hill. I lost Lauro where we turned around teams, but on the steep hillside I couldn't stop and wait. I get to the final stretch and it’s so steep I must get off the sled and run behind the sled and help push it. Unlike my 12 buddies, I need a little breather break every 2 minutes. Sherlock let’s me know he rather run up all at once by jumping and barking every break I take. Dracula and Elmer are amazing leaders and finally lead us up the Summit. I give all my dogs a beef snack on the top telling them how amazing they are. I look on my GPS tracker, over 3 hours into the run, we only did 8 miles. Well, at least the remaining 22 miles of the run are downhill. It's dark before I get into the Central checkpoint. I have a mandatory 6 hour layover here. I'm excited and look forward to sleeping more this time.

Coming into the checkpoint, the race veterinarians do the mandatory check on all the dogs. They check for sore wrists, weight and other important health conditions that factor in at long distance racing. I hear them debating if Mario actually gained weight: that makes me happy! A well fed dog is healthy and can work hard. Vets seem to be happy with my team and tell me to keep up what I’ve been doing. I can’t help but get a little proud of myself. – Enough shoulder tapping though, I need to feed my dogs and then sleep. I get everything done and lay down in the truck, setting a timer for 2h45 min. Finally a little sleep, dogs are healty and happy, we did Eagle Summit, we only have 70 more miles, I am really happy with our performance so far... good doggies!!

Central to Central Loop (70-mile)

Last run of the race!!! Otis decides to be the main cheerleader instead of Sherlock. I guess Sherlock would've liked to sleep a little longer. He still gets up and slowly becomes excited with the others. We check out in 5th position. Lauro made it over Eagle Summit and got into Central about an hour after me, so I know he won’t be far behind.

70 miles ahead of us. I bring some straw and extra food for a camp out if trails are difficult again. But I happily notice that we move at a solid 8 miles per hour. If we keep that speed, we can finish the run under 10 hours. My team moves good. 25 miles into the run I decide not to camp and wish I hadn't brought all the extra weight for the camp. I look at the bale of straw tied to the back of my sled, but it’s gone? I must have lost it somewhere. I feel bad for the musher that has to move it out of the way. On my way back to Central, I plan on grabbing it. Again, we run into the first daylight and I start to get tired again. It seems that’s the time I struggle most with sleep. I talk to the dogs to keep me awake: “What a wonderful poop Bert, Good boy, there is a little stuck to your butt though” “Otis trotting along just fine” “Sherlock you trot so funny, why are you so weird? Still love you though” and so time goes by. I grab my straw on the way back. It was still in the middle of the trail, so it didn't bother anybody. We're getting so close to finishing this race, I'm excited. Söö 12 dogs still working hard; everybody is happy. The doggies seem to feel my excitement and speed up a little. Maybe they also saw some wildlife, but I like to believe they felt my excitement. I look at my GPS and my clock and start calculating. If we keep this speed, we can finish the race just under 48 hours. What! Only 48h since we started? Feels like a week, at least.

I get on the road leading to the finish line and I see Mandy and Ryne waiting with the checkers.

We get there! We made it! Yey! I'm super proud of my team! I give all the doggies fish and beef snacks and many many good boys and good girls. We load them up into the truck and drive home to Two Rivers. What an amazing experience!! Those past 48 hours will definitely be part of the top 100 hours of my life.

Little side note: writing the blogpost also took me just a little under 48h to write. Congrats too whoever made it to the end of it. 😊