The pre-race conditions for the Iron Dog was pretty strange this year, heck our whole winters been strange this year, I’ve heard it called the winter that wasn’t and the winter of OCD, take your pick, it’s simply been a very different one. It started out pretty good with some decent snow fall, then it warmed up and rained, rain and winter months do not mix well in the Interior.
So the weeks before the Iron Dog start of Feb 14th there were lots of discussions on moving the race start to Fairbanks, maybe go north of Big Lake (historical starting place), maybe skip Nome and have the racers turn south once they reached the Yukon River. But the board decided that this is the Iron Dog, be tough or go home, so we kept the race track intact and everyone was geared to run. We did (or I should say the racers) got lucky and mother nature provided some snow fall, not much mind you but enough to help.
Locally, in the Fairbanks area that is, the weather held and the rivers all had snow on them to help keep the racers sleds cool. As I noted in my post about the Sweetheart run, it was great riding on the river between Fairbanks and Nenana and so it was for the Iron Dog finish on the 22nd of Feb. All in all a good race week for most of us.
Two weeks after the Iron Dog finished the Snow Travelers had a run scheduled down the Denali Hwy to Alpine Creek Lodge and I was looking forward to it. I hadn’t ridden the Denali for a few years now, at least not the 70 miles from Cantwell to the Susitna River and from past experience it’s a beautiful ride. The folks at Alpine Creek Lodge gave the club members a great rate for the weekend and the weather was predicted to be nice, so yeah I was excited to go.
Then the Thursday before Trish got sick, not a take some asprin and call me in the morning sick, but emergency surgery sick. So I had to cancel my spot at the lodge and spent the next 4 days between home and the hospital. Have to say she was lucky, had a number of internal issues that the doctor was able to fix, but it could have been worst, a lot worst.
Tomorrow, Friday, I’m taking half a day off of work and heading to the cabin to haul materials and try and finish up on the foundation repair work. So far the weather is looking good. Temps should be above zero most of the time and the trail should be in great shape.
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