April, 2009

By Rob Loveman

In his March 9, 2009 article in the Anchorage Daily News, Craig Medred described me as a nuclear physicist bumbling to the starting line.  While I wasn’t quite as slow at bootieing as he said, I was still far slower than pros like Rick Swenson and Jeff King.  The essence of the article was correct. And since then, I’ve taken on the moniker of “The Bumbling Physicist.” Hence the title of this story. . . .

I was on my run from Finger Lake to Rohn and feeling pretty good.  We got through the Happy River Steps with hardly a scratch.  Fifteen miles later, I stopped for a couple of hours at the Rainy Pass checkpoint to give the dogs a “trail feed,” pick up food, drop Jake (he had a bicep injury), and have Lolo examined for a small kink in his gait.  The examination of Lolo came up blank.   Soon, we were off.

The trail from the checkpoint to Rainy Pass itself gains about 1600 feet in eighteen miles.  Mileage rolled by and we climbed.  As we gained altitude, the weather worsened.  It was snowing only lightly but the wind was building up drifts that often hid the trail.  There were a couple of times we veered off following some stray snowmobile track, but we never strayed more that twenty yards or so.  Still, it was slow.

We crossed the pass and then started to descend.  Just at sunset, we took our first trail break of the leg.  I like running the dogs to a hiker’s schedule.  I typically give the dogs a twenty to thirty minute break with food and water every two-three hours.   The break done, bowls and buckets back in the sled, we took off.

Only the Happy River Steps engender more fear in Iditarod Mushers than the Dalzell Gorge, just past Rainy pass.  And like the steps, the gorge didn’t show all of its teeth in 2009.  I took a couple of spills in the upper section, but nothing serious.

We were on a slight downhill between the upper and lower sections of the gorge.  I was thinking about giving the dogs a second break when it happened.  Lolo collapsed. 

A number of things can cause a dog to collapse in harness.  None are good.  This was the first time in my mushing career that this happened to me.  I hooked down and ran to him.  Lolo was breathing lightly.  A relief.  The next step was to take his temperature.  Hyperthermia, heat exhaustion, is deadly and has to be treated on the trail.  It was a little warm, about 30 F, but it was at night and Lolo had never had problems with heat.   His temperature was 103.8 F.  That’s the low end of normal for a dog who’s just been running and well below hyperthermic.  Given this, the next step was to put Lolo in the sled bag and get him to the next checkpoint, Rohn, as quickly as possible. 

Iditarod sleds are full.  Rearranging things to carry a dog is difficult.  Additionally, I didn’t carry enough straps to secure the top of the sled bag so he couldn’t push it open, something he worked diligently at after he regained consciousness.  Eventually, I tied some necklines together and used that to hold the top flap down and Lolo in place.  It is a rule in mushing that you can’t have too many necklines.  A good rule.

Getting Lolo to Rohn as quickly as possible meant skipping a break for the team, but I suspect the dogs knew something was up.   There have been only a few other times in my life when I was as focused on a physical task as I was sledding down the lower part of the Dalzell Gorge with Lolo in my sled bag. 

Making it into Rohn was a huge relief.  By that time, though he was a little lethargic, Lolo was up and around.  Still, between when we arrived and when Lolo was flown out, I kept an eye on him.  I was at least a little concerned that he was being given lots of I-V fluids, his urine was copious and clear, and yet he wasn’t rehydrating.  After talking to the head vet, Stu Nelson, I concluded that Stu’s suggestion that the problem might have been an electrolyte imbalance was probably correct.  

The time I spent looking after Lolo on top of the time I spent doing all my normal checkpoint tasks added up to 11 hours.  Eventually, though, we hit the trail. 

A little more than ten miles down the trail from Rohn, we caught up with Kim Darst.  We were at the “Glacier,” which isn’t a glacier at all but a frozen stream.  The crossing is above one small fall and below a set of frozen rapids.  The warm weather meant the ice was slick.  Kim had tried to cross it but then backed off.   She suggested that we lead each other’s teams across.  That sounded good to me.  I suggested that we “sand” the ice to make this easier and safer.  Kim agreed.  I broke out a couple of food bowls and we started moving dirt onto the ice.   Using the dog bowls as small buckets, it didn’t take long to cover our path.  With this, we crossed and were moving again. 

Finally, we came to the Buffalo Chutes.  These were bare ground with ice, grass, rock, and roots showing.  No snow.  Kim and I again took these together.  Actually, at the most difficult part, Kim let the dogs pull the sled on its side.  I guess I did too.

After a time, the running smoothed out and Kim sped up ahead of me.   A couple of hours later and shortly before sunset, I caught up with Kim and Blake Matray.   They had stopped for a rest and meal.  I stopped as well and gave my team a drink and food.  It was about five miles short of the Buffalo Camp.

We all started out at about the same time.  Blake had said he heard from some pilots that it was only about 30 miles to Nikolai.  Given the terrain, I figured that to be less than six hours including a break. 

About two and a half hours later, I stopped the team for another hiker’s break.  It was the usual 25 minutes or so with food and water.  And again we were off.  For the first time, the running was actually good.  The trail was fast and the temperature was dropping.  There were no moguls from the Iron Dog to slow us down and beat us up.  I figured it would be a pleasant couple of hours to the checkpoint.   I ignored what some other mushers in Rohn had said namely that the leg to Nikolai was 90 miles.

The sun had set a couple of hours earlier.  The moon was mostly hidden by clouds.  The trail continued in front of me.  Every mile or so there was another stand of trees.  Every stand of trees had a set of reflectors.  I kept looking for some small difference that would tell me we were at a checkpoint, but each set of reflectors was like the last.  And we’d emerge from each stand of trees into a flat clearing.  And up ahead there’d be another stand of trees and its set of reflectors.  We were in The Burn.

What I had expected to be a couple of hours dragged on to six.   I can’t even begin to guess how many stands of trees we passed through.  Finally, I stopped to rest the dogs and myself.  We had food and water and rested for about an hour.  Then we moved on.  I still hoped to make it to Nikolai that night. 

It was about twenty minutes after I had started moving again that I came up on Kim.  Her sled, team, and camp blocked the trail.  I woke her and we talked.  Neither of us was quite sure where we were.  Given this and that she and her team were bedded down, I decided to bed my team down as well.  I figured we’d nap a bit then move on in daylight.  I pulled out my foam pad, my sleeping bag, my backpacker’s pillow (I hate using a lumpy stuff sack) and I slept. 

I should have set my alarm.  I planned on a couple of hours, but it was three and a half before we got up.   We got underway pretty quickly though we lost time trying to get the frozen liners out of Kim’s boots.  By the time we were actually moving, a snowmobiler had talked to us and told us that we were only five miles or so outside of Nikolai. 

It ends up we were only about two miles from Nikolai.  Fifteen minutes or so and we were there.  I stopped there for about five and a half hours, enough time to feed the team a full meal and let it digest.  It also let my dogs rest for about four hours. 

I figured that for the dogs, the combined rest on the trail and in Nikolai would be the same as if we had taken a normal eight or nine hour break at the checkpoint.  That’s not how they saw it.  Between my running through what should have been a couple of breaks while we were in The Burn and “short changing” them on the rest we took once we had actually stopped a checkpoint, I had ruined my team’s confidence in me.  The team was fine physically and I don’t even think that tired.  They just didn’t trust me.   On top of this, I was much more sleep deprived than I otherwise would have been.  The couple of hours sleep on the trail wasn’t as good as a couple hours at a checkpoint and I didn’t sleep at all at Nikolai.

The 54 mile run from Nikolai to McGrath took forever.  The trail was slow with fresh snow.  The dogs would sometimes stop pulling.  I was fighting to stay awake and stopped a couple of times to sleep

I took nine hours in McGrath and even with that amount of time failed to get much sleep.  Dealing with a number of issues not the least of which was where to 24 kept me awake.

The dogs moved well as we left McGrath.  My big problem was going to be me and my need for sleep.  In McGrath, I had decided to sled to Ophir and take my 24 hour break there.  I knew I’d lose a little time on the way, but it seemed worth it.  I was hoping that by running the dogs without missing any breaks between Nikolai and Ophir and resting 24 hours in Ophir, I could regain the dogs trust and we could get back in rhythm.   If I could, we’d do well.  We could catch and pass teams just like we had done at Eagle Cap a couple of months earlier.

In the Eagle Cap Extreme, we had left the half way point at least two and a quarter hours behind every other team.  During the next 100 miles, we passed three teams, drew within twenty minutes of a fourth, and took third place.  We gained between four and six hours on each of these teams.   Along with this, only the fourth place team had a faster time on the last leg than ours.  That team only beat us by a minute and that was after they had had a seven hour rest.

We took a long time to make it from McGrath to Ophir, as I had expected.  I stopped twice to feed and rest the dogs, once about two thirds of the way between McGrath and Takotna and once about two miles past Takotna.  I also stopped again a couple of times to sleep.  It was about a twenty-five past one in the morning when we arrived in Ophir and I declared that I was taking my 24. 

The long break had been going well in spite of sub-zero temperatures.  The dogs were resting quite well, eating quite well, and drinking quite well.  Their bowel movements were spectacular.  That always warms the cockles of a musher’s heart.  Between mine and my dogs sleep and rest, I really figured we had a good chance to move ahead and make time like we had at Eagle Cap.   Even if we didn’t, I was looking toward making it to Nome. 

I was just turning in for another couple of hours sleep when the vet at the checkpoint told me that the race marshal wanted to speak to me.   I had an inkling that this might happen and expected to be warned that I was falling too far behind and to speed it up or else I’d be withdrawn.  What became clear to me was that the race marshal had decided to pull me from the race before he had spoken to me.   He didn’t ask a single question that would tell him whether or not I might be capable of dealing with the weather he knew would be moving in.  I asked to be able to make the run between Ophir and Iditarod and the race marshal simply said I had a choice between scratching at Ophir and being withdrawn for not being competitive.  I certainly wasn’t scratching.  I chose to be withdrawn. 

I felt strange wandering around Ophir as an “ex-musher.”  Being withdrawn particularly without any warning was not what I planned for.  The dogs were doing well.   I felt good about that and good about not scratching.  If I can safely put one foot in front of another, I’ll move forward.   Prior to the race, I believed that as long as I could do that, I could get to Nome and get my belt buckle.  Having that opportunity taken from me stung.

The two books that influenced my Iditarod dreams as much as anything else were Brian O’Donaghue’s “My Lead Dog was a Lesbian” and Gary Paulsen’s “Winterdance.”  Neither of these men entered the race with any other goal but finishing.  If I recall correctly, O’Donaghue even gave a talk to a class in one of the villages.  O’Donoghue was the eventual Red Lantern.  While Paulsen did better than this, he was still clearly a “Back of the Packer”.  

There was a time when a competent musher who could continue to safely move forward could make it to Nome.   The Iditarod is changing.   It is getting rid of the “back of the pack.”  If Iditarod does this, I believe it loses.   It loses the bumbling physicist, it loses, "My Lead Dog Was a Lesbian," it loses "Winterdance," and Iditarod becomes just another race.  

It was toward the end of my time as an undergraduate, maybe when I started graduate school, that I started talking about finishing my graduate degree and then telling the rest of the world good-bye and moving to a cabin in the middle of Alaska. I didn’t use those exact words though. I think the way I phrased telling the world good-bye referred to placing “it” and a lack of sunshine.

A lot of time has passed since I finished my degree. I’m telecommuting to a real job and Montana isn’t quite the same as Alaska, but here I am in Missoula. I am here to be in the mountains and to hike and to climb and to ski and to mush. Occasionally, I’ll probably do some science as well.

Missoula is near both Seeley Lake and Lincoln. These two towns comprise one of the biggest mushing centers in the contiguous United States. This center includes the likes of Doug Swingley, Doug Willet, Melanie Sherilla, and John Barron just to drop a few names that you might know. The big emphasis here is on distance mushing, and that too is my goal.

I’ve believed for some time that if you want to really learn something, you go somewhere where there are a lot of people who do it well. I have been in my new house one month as I write this. Already there has been one mushing clinic, and there will be two more before the end of summer.

I haven’t met or seen many mushers yet, but I did visit with Doug Willet for an afternoon and met his dogs. At least I met all those that weren’t shy, which were most. That includes a three-month old litter of pups and they certainly weren’t shy. They weren’t shy about biting my shorts, biting my shoelaces, and biting my shoes. Actually, I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have long hair. It was also fun wandering around Doug’s house seeing all the racing trophies he has. None were before I was born, but Doug has been doing this for a very long time.

As for other niceties of the area, my two dogs and I have gone hiking a few times. Each of the hikes has been within an hour of home and has ended either at or above timberline. Seeley Lake itself is near both the Mission Peaks Wilderness and the Bob Marshal Wilderness, and both have spectacular hiking and mountaineering.

And as for anticipation, what I’ve heard since I’ve arrived, particularly from people living in California, is “…wait ‘til winter.” Let the record show, I am looking forward to the winter. As a kid, I was the weirdo that would read the Fairbanks weather report every winter morning just to try and get a taste of the cold. Los Angeles just didn’t hack it. Now, I won’t have to go that far either in my mind or in my car. It was nice to watch it snow while visiting the Sierras, but to me there’s always something special about watching it snow from your home.

I was seventeen when I left my childhood home and headed off to college. It was then that I really started learning about being an adult. I think that’s the age when most of us really start to grow up. Anyway, it was for me. I learned everything from my profession to how I deal with people (at least I learned my science well…. <g>). It was also as an undergraduate at Caltech that I found my first husky, Sapura. So I guess I started learning about Siberian Huskies then too.

Since that time, my life has been on a pretty linear path; grad school, a couple of post-docs, a job in industry. The sad thing is that last sentence did include a summary of my romantic life. Sup saw me through all of this and even the beginning of the job I now have. Moving to Montana to changes that nice standard progression.

On the trip from San Jose to Missoula, I visited with a close friend, Albert. Dinner with Albert and his family was great. Sandro, Albert’s oldest son, was getting ready to head off to college. The rest of the kids were great as well, though Margaret no longer seemed to have the crush on me that she did when she was six or so. I resisted the temptation to tease her about this (she’s now about 13). I got a lot of questions about mushing, and I answered them as best as I could. Most were pretty basic and pretty easy to answer.

My friend Albert works at Caltech, and his house is quite close to campus. After I left his house, I headed over to Tech to show Dawn and Tenaya my old stomping grounds. It was a summer night a lot like when I would walk Sapura. I told this to the girls as we walked around campus. They’re huskies; they didn’t listen. I was happy to see that there were still lots of people up and around at midnight, even though the final quarter had long since ended. Just as I was about to head back to the car, I visited my old student house. The painting a former girlfriend had painted, the Page House White Horse, still adorned the living room wall.

If I were to call the part of my life that stretched from college to moving out of San Jose Chapter 1, then I am about to begin Chapter 2. And perhaps for me there was no better place to begin Chapter 2 than where Chapter 1 began. I’m stoked.

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January 21, 2009

My Iditarod run this year is dedicated to Jacques Porter and Rob Tobin.  They were among the most influential teachers I had after I got out of graduate school.  They both passed away way too young. 

I turned into the Ollokott checkpoint at 03:00.  As I pulled in, Steve Madsen’s team, the presumed second place team, took off.   I had passed Daryl Gruet’s team along the trail, and two other teams, Scott Thompson’s and John Greenside’s, were resting. 

I knew I’d beat Scott Thompson’s  team.   Even coming into Halfway, my dogs were moving faster than his.  He could only catch up to me during my rest breaks, and even with that, I beat him to Halfway. 

It was John Greenside’s team that I wasn’t sure about.  He was down to seven dogs and I was going to have eleven, but his were good Alaskans.  My Siberians are wonderful dogs, but they are generally slower than Alaskans.  Still, if I could get out quickly and build enough of a lead, I could take third place.  Good for my ego and my bank account.  Third place paid $500.00 whereas fourth was only good for $200.00. 

During the last twenty miles, Tempest hesitated on downhill sections, a sign of a front end problem.   The Vet identified a sore shoulder, and I dropped Tempest from the team, what I had expected. 

Daisy had also eased up on her tugline, but was still keeping pace with the team.  The Vet’s examination showed no sign of injury.  Daisy was probably just a tired little girl.  She had led a fair amount the day before and I’m sure that that, along with her youth and the long runs, contributed to her fatigue.  I kept her in the team for the training and was happy as long as she kept pace with the team which she did. 

The rest of the team rested easily.   As they rested, I waxed my runners, got a sandwich and a little coffee.  I then turned the team around and left with eleven dogs.   It was 03:55.

The last time pushing my team made a difference in a race had been in Priest Lake five years earlier.  In that race, I had screwed up and backtracked for a mile or so on the first leg.  In spite of this, I finished that leg in second place and only five minutes out of first place.  I ended up finishing in second place, but closed the gap to a minute and a half.  What was even more satisfying, even in the loss, was I was only running three dogs in a four dog class.

This time, everything mattered.  And as the run from Ollokott to Ferguson unfolded, that’s what I kept telling the dogs,”This one counts.”  The key was building a lead before Greenside left and then doing whatever I could to maintain it.  Third Place in a six team field sounded pretty good to me!

At night, a musher’s moving headlamp stands out distinctly against the dark forest.  Teams are easy to spot.  That said, it was clear and while the moon was only half full, it was certainly enough to run by if a musher wanted to sneak up on anybody.  Of course, this was the last leg of the race and sneaking up on me didn’t make sense.  It was a given that I’d push my team over the last leg regardless of whether or not I saw another  team coming.    In the clear night with half a moon showing, I saw no other team coming up behind me.   Still I kept looking over my shoulder. 

The cold of the night combined with fatigue and started to hit me hard just before sunrise.  Fortunately, we came to some hills, and I got off and ran.  Perhaps the greatest joy in my having a good hip has been my ability to step up and help my team.  With the running, I warmed up in minutes. 

And so we moved on.  Normally, I rest the team every two to two and a half hours and give them water and food.  It’s what I call the hiker’s schedule.  This last leg, I decided to give them a little food, but without water and only stop once about half way back.  This would be much faster, but I’d still be getting calories into the dogs.  As well, they were dipping and eating snow and the snow was wet, so they were maintaining their hydration. 

The sunrise saw my team looking like picture with nice taut tuglines and moving smoothly.   It was a great image.  And we were in third place!  What played out in my mind was Jacques and Rob looking down at me and Rob saying to Jacques, “Hey Jacques, look at our boy now.”   Still, I kept looking over my shoulder.

The early morning sun set the mountains aglow.  I tried to find my camera, but couldn’t.  Good news was that even though I really was racing, we were moving slow and smoothly enough that I could enjoy the alpenglow on the Wallowa Mountains.

I did enjoy the sunrise.  I didn’t enjoy it long.  I certainly spent more time looking over my shoulder for an oncoming team than viewing the mountains.  I stopped for my feeding just after the half way point.  Feeding, waxing runners, and kicking any spilled kibble off to the side of the trail took less than ten minutes.    Still, I kept looking over my shoulder.

As the sun rose, so did the temperature and the snow softened as well.  Any team that followed would have to work harder to cover the terrain I had passed through.  A few hundred yards lead an hour after sunrise was worth a lot more than a few hundred yards lead before sunrise.  Finally, waxing the runners would probably be huge.  I was using a universal ski wax, and it makes a big difference in how hard the dogs have to pull.  In spite of what other mushers may think, it goes on quickly and should last an easy twenty to thirty miles. 

The dogs continued to do great though, by this point in the race, the front four were just stopping to relieve themselves rather than doing that on the run.  For these four, I had to brake the team.  The good news was they had figured out how to do this and untangle themselves even if I didn’t hit the brake right away.  I don’t know how many times this happened, but my front end of Jake, Shoshone, Otter, and Tok were very facile at coming clear.  And any other dog that stopped, these front four could drag on.  So we moved well with a pretty clean run.  It’s tangles that really cost time not stopping for quick relief. 

Perhaps the most impressive dog during that last stretch was Thor.  While his gait clearly showed a sign of some injury or soreness, his tugline was taut.  Another hero.  When I got into Ferguson, the Vet did find that he had a sore bicep.  Nothing real serious, but I’m sure he was running through pain.

The travel clock I carried had reset itself, so I didn’t know what time it was when I turned the corner to drop down into the Feguson Ski area, the finish.   I had seen no sign of any other team.  I set a hook and quickly took tuglines off of all dogs except my two leaders, Daisy, and the two wheel dogs.   And down the ski slope we went.  Jake and Shoshone crossed the finish line at 10:21 A.M, third place.

As I hooked down and took handshakes from Terry Hinesly, the Race Marshal, and Dona Miller, the race judge, I was told that I didn’t have to move my team at all.  The next team had left Ollokott about two hours after I had left, and that was the slow team.  Greenside’s team, the team that did eventually take fourth place, had left three hours after I did.  I guess I could have stopped at sunrise and found my camera.  Still, pushing the team showed me what we were capable of.  Of the four other teams that finished the race only John Greenside had a faster time from Ollokott to Ferguson and that was by only one minute and of course after a 7.5 hour rest there.  With that fast leg, we had closed the gap with Madsen’s second place team to only twenty-six minutes. 

Terry said go up and hug your dogs, which I did.  They did great.  They were fast to lay down and enjoy a good rest in the sun.  We had time and they earned it.  Spectators came up and gave my dogs some scratches.  That too made all of us happy.  Even Shoshone who is normally a bit shy was okay with it.  And for me, my team had finished third.  Doing this in the Eagle Cap 200 meant that I had finished my qualifying requirements for the Iditarod.  And maybe somewhere Jacques and Rob were smiling.

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