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I realize the weather has been somewhat unsettled down south, but what's been happening up here over the past couple of weeks almost beggars description. We've had snowstorm after snowstorm, some tossing a casual few inches, others dumping half a foot or more. It's all added up to phenomenal amounts of snow for southcentral Alaska, much more than normal (although not so different from winters back in the 1960s, I understand).

A couple of the storms were in the blizzard category. Last Wednesday night I fed my dogs in howling wind and snow so thick I couldn't even see across the dog yard. This is highly unusual, since we very rarely get much wind in my part of the valley. All of the commercial power was out for many hours, and I was one of the few places up here with electricity, thanks to my diesel generator.

All told, we got at least another two feet new snow around my place, and twice that not far away in the hills. I've got about five feet on the level, but other people nearer the mountains have seven or more. In any case, I got enough new stuff at my place to finally collapse my puppy pen. I couldn't get the snow off the roof and it just couldn't support the load any longer. Of course, I had long since moved the dogs out into the big lot.

And then last night the strongest storm of the year roared in from the Bering Sea. The Kenai Peninsula has been cut off from Anchorage for several days due to massive avalanches along the Seward Highway, the only route south from Anchorage to the peninsula. Some communities have been without power for the whole period because the avalanches have wiped out power lines. An Alaska Railroad worker helping clear the highway south of Anchorage received fatal injuries when his huge bulldozer was swept hundreds of feet into Turnagain Arm by an avalanche. The highway may remain closed for several more days. The Glenn Highway north from Anchorage to Glennallen has also been closed most of the past few days by avalanches.

Last night and this morning the wind in Anchorage reached record levels. Gusts in a subdivision above Eagle River, just north of Anchorage, reached 136 miles an hour, and hundred-mile-an-hour gusts were common in the eastern parts of Anchorage. Damage was widespread, with roofs ripped off and anything loose blown away. The high winds and snow have been followed by rain and temperatures into the 50s in places. This is creating an incredible mess of slush and overflow and top-heavy, sodden snow that will take awhile to stabilize. This storm is easily the equivalent of our Christmas debacle.

In the middle of all of this, we put on our first annual Willow-Su Valley 200/300 sled dog race last weekend. As the race manager-director-coordinator and general go-fer, I worked for two weeks ahead of time rounding up volunteers to be checkers, handlers, trailbreakers, road guards, and communicators. I kept up a nonstop coordination with the lodge owners to make sure we had checkpoint facilities like water and a place to warm up and dry out.

Most of all, I worked to get the trail put in and marked, because you can't have a race without a trail. Ron Aldrich and his family and Barrie and I made 1,300 four-foot wooden lath markers with reflective tape. I juggled half a dozen teams of volunteer snowmachiners putting in 170 miles of trail. As soon as we'd get a section put in, another snowstorm would bury it, or the wind would drift it over, or a thoughtless weekend snowmachiner would trash it, and I'd have to persuade a weary volunteer to go out again. The last nine miles of trail up to Joe May's farm near Trapper Creek took four days with three expert trail builders on snowmachines. The snow was so deep and soft (seven feet of powder with no base) that the snowmachines kept getting stuck and had to be dug out or pulled out dozens and dozens of times. Joe May said he hasn't worked so hard since he won the Iditarod in 1980.

After a blizzard wiped out everything two nights before the race, we mounted one last huge effort to get everything passable. Then we went about the business of running the race. At the musher meeting Thursday night we had 17 mushers, 14 in the 200-mile event and 3 for the 30-miler. (There would have been at least ten more drivers, but the weather scared them off and they sent their apologies.) Of the entrants, Neen Brown of Australia needed a 200-mile qualifier for the Iditarod, and David Straub and Chuck King needed the 300 for this year's race. Ray Redington, Jr., (Raymie Redington's son, and Joe's grandson) was accompanying Chuck King on Chuck's first-ever dog race. Ray also wanted to use the 300 as a qualifier for the 2001 Iditarod. Along with his brother Ryan, Ray Jr. will be the third generation of Redingtons to hit the road to Nome.

The race began at the Willow Community Center on Friday morning. The trail was reasonably good, although a bit punchy, all the way up to Joe May's. One musher, Pips de la Billiere, had to turn around and return to the Sheep Creek Lodge checkpoint when her dogs wouldn't go for her. The other mushers headed back to Sheep Creek and then on to the Pioneer Lodge at Willow, with Rick Wilson of Copper Center arriving in first place for the 200-mile race on Saturday night, followed by Juan Alcina of Willow half an hour later.

Mike Nosko of Wasilla took third, followed by Adam Grant of England and Willow, and Wayne Curtis of Knik took fifth with his Siberians. The other finishers were John Lane, Russ Bybee, Deven Currier, and Neen Brown of Australia. Five teams scratched, including Roy Monk (who will run the 2000 Iditarod), Tom Shepski (Roy's handler, running Roy's second team), Dave Tresino (already Iditarod-qualified), Pips de la Billiere (whose husband Edward is already qualified for the 2000 Iditarod), and Rich Bosela (also in the 2000 Iditarod). Most of the drivers who scratched just didn't want to take any chances with their teams on soft trails so soon before the Iditarod.

Neen Brown got lost between Joe May's and Sheep Creek coming back on Saturday night. The race trail goes through through an area off the road system that is laced with seismic survey lines and snowmachine trails to cabins. When she hadn't made it in to Sheep Creek by noon on Sunday, we launched several snowmachines plus two volunteer mushers and their teams, and I went up to Hudson Air Service for an airplane. Owner Jay Hudson and I flew for an hour and covered most of the likely trails Neen might have gone down. Then we decided to head on down the trail to Sheep Creek and immediately found Neen on the correct trail, moving well and waving at us.

She had inadvertently turned onto a side trail the night before, realized she was not on the race route, camped overnight, and then backtracked after daylight to find the trail and continue the race. This is precisely what we'd hoped she would do. It was a wise decision and shows she can keep a cool head in the Iditarod. She is now qualified for the 2000 Iditarod and no one has any doubts about her ability to make it to Nome--although she's not going to cause any of the leaders to keep looking over their shoulders.

Before dawn Sunday the first 300-mile racer, David Straub, arrived back in Willow and left six hours later headed south for Knik Bar. However, a blizzard moved in that afternoon with 50-mph winds and two feet of snow out on the Susitna River. David got off the trail after dark and decided to shut down his team and camp overnight. We had no idea of his whereabouts until Monday morning when we received a cell-phone call from some snowmachiners saying he and his dogs were just fine and he was heading back to Willow because there was no more trail south down the river.

By that time, we had sent two snowmachiners down the trail to break it out for Chuck King and Ray Redington, who were then on their way to Knik. Everyone met about 30 miles south of Willow out on the river and one of the snowmachiners called on a cell phone. The snowmachiners couldn't put in a usable trail and to make things worse, overflow from the river was starting to come up through the dense new snow. Given the lack of a trail, the overflow, a forecast for more heavy snow, and the fact that a musher had already been lost for 36 hours on the Tustumena 300 under similar conditions, race marshal Ron Aldrich and I and race judges Mel Adkins and Joe May decided to turn the 300-milers around to come back to Willow. We then decided to re-route the race onto safe trails back up to Sheep Creek in order to give the mushers the 300 miles they needed to qualify for the Iditarod.

David, Chuck, and Ray all bedded down at the Pioneer Lodge overnight and left Tuesday morning for Sheep Creek. They met Vern Halter and his handler out on the trail on a training run, and Vern said all three teams looked good. They all had a good, fast run until the last three miles into Sheep Creek, where a temporary bridge over Caswell Creek collapsed while Ray was trying to straighten out his dogs. Ray and Chuck and David all went in the creek up to their chests, but everyone got out fine and none the worse for wear. Weak ice has been a major problem in the past few weeks as the warm weather has caused creeks to erode ice from underneath.

They all steamed into Sheep Creek about two on Tuesday afternoon, and everyone declared victory and went into the lodge to warm up and get some lunch. Chuck King actually crossed the finish line first, followed by Ray Redington, and then David Straub. In reality, they were all running together and the actual order of finish was purely coincidental. It was all good practice for the Iditarod where they'll have to band together with other mushers at times to get through tough spots. (By the way, the lost Tustumena 200 musher, Rod Boyce of Fairbanks, was still missing without a trace as of tonight. The Caribou Hills through which the race runs have had seven to eight feet of new snow and continuing storm conditions and the search is very difficult. Everyone hopes he found one of the many cabins in the area and is hunkered down with his dogs keeping warm until he can be located.)

So, we got everyone qualified who needed to be qualified and we put on what everyone seems to think was a good race. At least most of the mushers who ran it said they'd be back next year. All of the mushers made sure to say they appreciated the incredible effort by the volunteers who put on the race. This was probably one of the toughest mid-distance races to put on in recent memory because of the weather. Next year we're going to do some things differently, with emphasis on having a well-equipped staff of trailbreakers and trail sweeps to keep the trail open. If we can get all of the wheels moving smoothly enough, maybe I'll get a chance to run my own race next year.

As for this year, my training has been at a complete standstill for two weeks while I've been working on the Willow race. Now the storms have wiped out my trails and I'm not sure when I can get them restored. I'm starting seriously to consider pulling out of the Serum Run because I'm just so far behind the power curve I don't see how I can catch up. Our food drop is only ten days away and it's every bit as complex and extensive as an Iditarod food drop.

Unfortunately, my band saw is broken, which means I can't cut any meat until I get it fixed. The temperature has to get down toward zero before I can cut meat anyway, and it probably won't until next week (it was 39 here today). Also, Barrie is house-sitting with her dogs at John Barron's for two more weeks while he's down at the Beargrase in Minnesota, and it's just me around here to do everything from feeding the dogs to shoveling snow to trying to get the trail notes finished for the Iditarod web site. My dog lot is completely cut off and I can only get back to it by snowshoe. The dog box for my truck is buried under the snow in the dog lot and I couldn't truck to train even if I had the time. To top it all off, my snowmachine is in the shop waiting for a new engine after Barrie burned out a cylinder week before last trying to put in a trail for her sprint dogs. And somewhere in here I've got to snag some substitute teaching jobs to pay for the dog food and heating oil and snowmachine repairs.

This just doesn't look like my year to run dogs. I might be just as well off to stay here and train my youngsters for next year. I definitely intend to be top-30 competitive in the 2001 Iditarod, and it's not too soon to start getting ready for that. There's also a chance I might get a flying job to take a passenger along the Iditarod for Hudson's, which would help a lot with the expenses. I'll just have to wait and see how things work out over the next few days. In the meantime, it's back out to the dog yard to pull up dog houses and find the food dishes again.

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