Yesterday, at 11:00am, the Head Musher and the Powers Pack (plus Moley and Mannie) set out to run thirty miles for the first time. As you will recall, that is the Can-Am race-distance on the 5th of March.
The weather was sketchy. The Canadian Weather Channel was predicting flocons (flurries) for most of the day. I believe that the word “flocons” is derived from an old Latin word meaning “to a height midway up the columns of the Pantheon”.
This proved to be accurate. It snowed steadily for most of the day with an accumulation of six or seven inches.
The first text message came in from the Head Musher at 1:27pm indicating that the team had reached the 15-mile turn-around point. That’s about a 5-hour pace but the team would have to break trail in the fresh snow on way back and that would slow things down.
The next text came in around 3:57pm and simply said “Four miles to go”. It was snowing harder than ever and street plows had come by and piled snow in front of the trail head.
At about 4:30pm, five and a half hours after leaving the trail head, six dogs, a sled, and a snow-covered figure appeared through the white-out. The first words out of the Head Musher were: “I guess I’ve gone from being a recreational musher to being a real musher”.
Indeed.
It was a terrible day to do anything outdoors, let alone run a sled dog team over a hilly, wooded course for thirty miles. Mushing is an activity that severely punishes even a moment of inattention. To manage a six-dog team for five and a half hours in a snow storm is a significant physical and mental feat.
All dogs and humans are smiling.
We may make a run to Dolly’s Restaurant on the U.S. side of the border for lobster rolls to celebrate.
Later,
The One-Man Pit Crew