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The weather has behaved itself for the past several days, much to our relief. It even decided not to prolong the deep freeze and let us run dogs without worrying about using survival techniques. We're going to get some more snow in the next day or two, but it looks like it will be dry, light stuff that will help rather than hinder our trails.

Speaking of trails, I'm about ready to load my shotgun and do a bit of moose-chasing with some birdshot. Our burgeoning local horde of ungulates has done more damage to our trails than anyone can remember. Yesterday the Montana Creek Club trail, which we have desperately been attempting to put in and maintain ever since the Big Dump over Christmas, looked like a country lane in Kosovo after an ordnance disposal squad had detonated all the buried land mines.

As a result, we decided to mount a major reconstruction effort to try to get ahead of the moose. The president (and trailmaster) of the Montana Creek Club showed up this morning with his big dual-track Alpine and a sprint musher from Talkeetna came with his new Arctic Cat long-track widetrack machine. I even got the Yellow Peril (my 27-year-old dual-track Alpine) cranked up and puttered down to join in. First we drove in a loose formation all the way around the 10-mile track, with the two Alpines in front widening and packing the trail down, and the Arctic Cat following behind to get anything we missed. Then we hooked up the big steel adjustable club drag to the big Alpine and groomed the whole thing, with the other two machines following to try to pack everything down even more.

For at least a few hours, the club trail, which is used for training by many mushers in our area, looks as good as new. Of course, the moose will figure out we've leveled it out for them and will certainly do their best to return it to its previous sorry state. I hope we can be on the track often enough to scare them away and keep the inevitable damage to a minimum. We're not really worried about actually meeting the moose with the teams--their tracks are the real problem this year. A fast-moving dog stepping into a foot-and-a-half deep moose hole can throw out a shoulder or worse, and a shoulder means a minimum of five weeks out of the lineup, which means the dog will be parked for the remainder of the season. When you don't have many dogs to spare, moose holes become your worst nightmare and all you can do is stand on the brake and let the dogs creep through them.

I'm going to try to take advantage of the temporarily good trail and run some dogs on it in the next few days. I hope to have my mainline dogs back up to 20-mile runs by the end of the weekend, and up to 30 by the end of next week. Then we'll be back where we were before the weather ruined everything over the holidays. By the end of the month we should be doing 40s and 50s, and 60s and 70s by mid-February. Whether I go on the Iditarod or the Serum Run, the dogs will have to be able to do 60 miles on a standup.

John Barron, with whom I've worked a lot over the past few years, is going over to the Copper Basin 300 tomorrow. He has an excellent chance of winning it. I know his team this year is rapidly approaching legendary status. My friend Doug, who has helped me over the past several years, bought enough dogs from John over the past couple of years to build his own team, and he's been training with John step for step all season. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they both finished in the top 5. Their training program has been incredibly intense. The dogs have turned into lean, mean machines but John and Doug and their handlers are frazzled and have more than their share of bumps and lost sleep.

What they've done is an excellent example of what you have to do if you want to put a competitive team on the trail. Next year I plan to do just that, but I've had no way to do it this year. I've just had too many other things that had to be done, such as going to classes and getting recertified to teach, plus working, and not having a handler has certainly been a major handicap. I've picked up some extremely good dogs from John over the past couple of years and my 2001 team will have all the talent I need for a top-20 run and then some, but it will have to be trained right. I'm even thinking about having a couple of handlers next year to make sure everything stays on track.

In the meantime, I've got some very good dogs that are definitely in the underachieving category, although not through any fault of their own. My dilemma now is whether to start 16 of them in the Iditarod (if I can find the money) and expect to finish in 70^th or 80^th place with 10 or 12 of them, or go on the Serum Run with a friend to help and take all 20 of my best dogs and probably get them all to Nome with loads of experience on the Yukon and the coast. If my main goal is to do well in 2001, then logic says I should opt for the Serum Run and begin my 2001 Iditarod training this year.

A pair of Russian climbers attempting a first-ever winter climb of Denali from the north side made a decision yesterday--to turn around. We (meaning Hudson Air Service) dropped them off at Kantishna, about 35 miles north of the summit, back in December and they've been plodding toward the mountain ever since. They got caught in the same wind and snow and rain that hit everyone else in this part of the world, as well as some seriously cold weather, down to 60 below on a few nights. Despite everything, they made it onto the Muldrow Glacier and up to the 10,000-foot level at the foot of Karstens Ridge, which is farther than anyone else has ever made it in the winter from that side. They finally did the math and figured out they couldn't get to the top and back to Kantishna before they ran out of food, plus the weather is forecast to turn bad again.

We work with Russian climbers up here now and again, and they generally seem to have their heads screwed on straight when it comes to making sensible decisions. A few years ago another Russian, Artur Testov, tried a dead-of-winter climb from the south side. He and his team ran into trouble at 15,000 feet and he decided to turn around. He came back the next year with another partner and did a careful, methodical, and extremely skillful climb of the mountain in January--a major first for which he received worldwide acclaim. The current pair knew they were likely not going to get rescued if they got into trouble, and they planned accordingly. They also made a wise decision not to push on when doing so would have put them beyond the edge, so to speak. They'll be back next year or the year after--Russians are that way, it seems--very patient and willing to try again and again until they reach their goal.

By the way, there are a couple of Russians in the Iditarod this year. One of them, Anna Bondarenko, is the wife of Dr. Jim Lanier, with whom I ran more than a few miles on the 1999 race. Anna met Jim and me and Jim Gallea in Nome after we'd had some interesting experiences together on the trail. I hope she does well. Her husband certainly knows how to keep a level head on his shoulders when the chips are down, and I suspect she can do the same.

I'm going to a Serum Run meeting tomorrow in Talkeetna. As I've mentioned, I'm signed up for it in case I can't make the Iditarod. If I do go with Colonel Vaughan (and it's looking more and more likely) there will certainly be chances for lots of pictures and interesting discussions with people along the way. All of the runs are during the day, which would let me get pictures of some stretches I've missed on the Iditarod, with its emphasis on night running. I'll make a decision next week, I guess. Either way, I'll still keep up the diary and the trail notes. For now, though it's time to get to sleep and dream of laughing moose tap-dancing my trails into oblivion again….

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