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We're in the middle of a very serious snow drought in south central Alaska. We barely have five inches on the ground at my place, but at least there's finally some snow forecast. The big problem is that the jet stream has been hanging far to the south of us. The storms that would normally hit here have been dragged into southeast Alaska and British Columbia. All we've been getting is some wind and a few clouds and scattered flurries if we're lucky.

Nothing is going to improve until what meteorologists call the "long wave" pattern changes and brings the jet stream back toward us. Of course, when the jet is finally flowing northward over us, bringing up all of the Pacific moisture we've been waiting for, it will swing back south over the central United States, meaning a series of Alberta Clippers for the midwest. Snow for us will almost certainly mean very cold weather for much of the Lower 48.

In the meantime the temperature has been hovering between minus 10 and minus 25 at my place for most of the past three weeks. One day it got up to zero and it felt like a heat wave. Tonight the wind started to blow from the south and the thermometer shot up to 15 above. I almost couldn't get the oil stove turned down fast enough to prevent a meltdown. Even with this short warm break, this has still been way too cold for this early in the year here, at least without some kind of decent snow cover. I'm still holding my breath hoping my septic system or my well won't freeze up.

Other areas of the state with low snow are experiencing some trouble with wolves. When there's not much snow, wolves have more difficulty chasing down their normal prey, such as moose. Moose can move pretty fast when they want to, and wolves often rely on tiring them out in the deep snow. Around McGrath and up in the Koyukuk Valley north of Galena, there aren't many moose to begin with, and the wolves are starting to look for easier things to eat, like their canine cousins.

In the past few weeks wolves have killed and eaten at least fifteen dogs, including sled dogs, near McGrath and Allakaket. All of the dogs were tied up, sometimes within 20 feet of an occupied house or cabin, and sometimes even with a light on. This isn't an unusual occurrence in Alaska, but it's a bit earlier and more widespread than normal this winter. We've got plenty of wolves in our local area--three of them were checking out the Montana Creek Dog Mushers clubhouse a few miles from my place last week, and I'm certain they've been around my place as well. I've never had any problems with wolves getting into my lot, but there's always a first time.

Regardless of the wolves prowling the woods, the day-to-day business of managing my dog lot continues. One of the major events this week was the yearly rabies shots. Mushers in Alaska can give their dogs just about all of their shots themselves, but only veterinarians can give rabies shots and issue the rabies tags and certificates. By law, every dog over six months old must have a rabies shot, and mushers must show proof of vaccination before they can run a dog in any race. A dog's first rabies shot is good for one year, and all subsequent shots are good for three years.

Every year I have some dogs needing shots, but it would be too expensive and time-consuming to run them into town one or two at a time. So, like most mushers, I make arrangements with a vet to travel to my lot to give the shots all at once. This year the lucky vet was Dr. Phil Meyer, who has worked on many of my dogs over the years. He's been one of the driving forces behind the Junior Iditarod for many years, and has also been an Iditarod race vet out on the trail for as long as I can remember.

I had 24 dogs needing shots, including Maybelline's three pups. I sent the list of dogs to Phil's office ahead of time so he had the paperwork and certificates made out when he arrived. Then all Barrie and I had to do was corral each dog in the 20-below cold and hold it long enough so he could do the deed. Some were easy, some weren't. Batman literally climbed on top of me while Dr. Meyer hovered close, looking for an opening. I'm lucky I didn't get vaccinated myself, but Phil has been doing this so long he can strike with the accuracy and speed of a cobra. It all took barely half an hour, but that was long enough to almost freeze our fingers. We were happy to get back inside and stand around the oil stove and warm our hands.

The cold means I'm feeding my dogs some heavy-duty food. They're all getting fed twice a day now, morning and night. The runners also get the equivalent of a full meal when they get back from a run. Last year I was cooking for the dogs, but this year I'm starting with high-quality dry food. Then I'm adding plenty of corn oil, followed by ten or fifteen pounds of thawed ground meat. Then I fill the buckets with water to let everything soak up until I can feed it right on the snow if I have to (which is sometimes the case if I can't find somebody's food dish). Naturally all of the dogs have lots of straw (except Big Mac) so they don't waste calories trying to stay warm at night. (Big Mac has special insulation he can't eat in the bottom of his house to keep him off the cold ground.)

The lack of snow is definitely causing other problems for mushers. The Montana Creek Dog Mushers have canceled their entire sprint race season for the second time in the last five years. In addition, they won't hold the big Su Valley Championships, originally scheduled for this weekend. The Sheep Creek Christmas Classic, a 100-mile race also normally held by the local lodge, has also been canceled.

There is some concern that the Knik 200, the first big Iditarod qualifier in southcentral Alaska, may be postponed or even canceled. It's scheduled for New Year's weekend, but there is very little snow at Knik, where the race starts, and for the first 30 miles of the trail. Mushers down there are still using four-wheelers for training.

Other big Iditarod qualifiers are also on shaky ground. The Copper Basin 300 on the second weekend in January is tentatively a go, but the snow is extremely thin in many areas in the Copper Basin. The Klondike 300 on the third weekend in January is in the same boat as the Knik 200, and everyone is sweating it out. The Tustumena 200 on the fifth (last) weekend of January down on the Kenai Peninsula has enough snow in some areas, but nobody is making any bets.

I'm especially concerned about one other race, the new Willow-Su Valley 200/300, which I'm helping to organize. Our race is the same weekend as the Tustumena 200. We've got barely enough snow for the northern 200 miles of the race right now, and definitely not enough for the southern 100 miles, which goes all the way down to Knik. As the last Iditarod qualifier of the season, we have more time to wait for snow, but nobody knows what's going to happen this year.

If the early races have problems and the rookies can't get their qualifiers done, we might find ourselves with a much bigger field of mushers than we'd planned. This wouldn't be bad by any means, but our race is a very low- key, low-money operation and we'd have to make sure we could handle everyone. This is my first shot at putting on a big race, and I'm already scrambling to find things like donated fuel for volunteer snowmachiners and a few extra prizes for the mushers. Stay tuned--this is going to get interesting.

Overall, this situation is starting to look like a dead ringer for the winter of 1995-96, when the Knik 200 was postponed and then canceled, and the Copper Basin 300 started with an 8-dog limit because of low snow and then was stopped after 70 miles because of minus-65 temperatures. That same year the Klondike 300 went on as scheduled but half of the mushers had to drop out because of hideous trails and temperatures which dropped down to 55 below and never got above thirty below. (I finished that one in 9th place, but I was in a total survival mode.)

The 1996 Iditarod was my second rookie year (I didn't make it my first time in 1995), and it was a nightmare of bad trails and scant snow and overflow. The trail up to Finger Lake and Rainy Pass was as bad as any of the grizzled veterans had ever seen. There was so little snow that all of the bushes and shrubs that were normally buried under ten feet of white stuff were bashing us in the face. Every rock and stump and snag was waiting to ambush us, and it didn't get much better on the other side of the Alaska Range.

Right now I'm not sure I'm going to be able to run the Copper Basin 300 due to a combination of unexpected expenses and not having my dogs trained as well as I'd like. The money problem comes from a combination of things, like having to replace the front bearings on my new (used) truck, which set me back more than $600. The final bill from Big Mac's straw-eating episode came to more than $400, and I've had almost a thousand bucks in other stuff in the past month or two. This has basically wiped out all of the money I had set aside for the Copper Basin and has taken a huge chunk out of my Iditarod cache. I'm still hoping to be able to somehow put it together for the Iditarod, but it's looking less likely every week.

The training aspect has also been troubling. Although I'm running on sleds, I've been hit hard by not having a handler during the fall as well as by the lack of snow. I've got the dogs doing 30-mile runs, but they have barely 200 miles on them, and that's not enough to be competitive in the Copper Basin 300, which is one of the toughest mid-distance races in the state. I had hoped to be able to try for the top ten there this year because I've got a decent team, but I'm not going to go if I have to worry about just finishing.

The big-name mushers have been trucking their dogs to the snow and getting some concentrated training. There has been a steady stream of dog trucks headed north from the bigger kennels. For instance, a couple of weeks ago I met Mitch Seavey and two of his handlers at our our local truck stop. They were taking two trucks and a few dozen dogs up to Nenana to train for two weeks. I wish I'd been able to do the same thing, but there's been no way I could get away for even a couple of days.

The unfortunate bottom line is that mushers in this part of the state who must work for a living or who don't have the ability to truck are at a serious disadvantage right now. The professional drivers with sponsors and handlers are way, way ahead in training and there's virtually no way for the little guys to catch up. Even back-of-the-pack drivers still have to have reasonably well-trained teams just to have a chance of making it to Nome. I wouldn't be surprised if some mushers don't pull out of the Iditarod over the next month or two because of lack of training.

There is another, much cheaper way to go to Nome with dogs this year--the Serum Run. It will start a week ahead of the Iditarod and will go from Nenana to Nome along the route of the 1925 Serum Run. This is the 75th anniversary of the original run and promises to be a big affair. There will be about 15 mushers and maybe 20 snowmachiners traveling on the run, stopping at every village and spending time visiting with the people and talking to kids in the schools.

The Serum Run isn't a race and there is no entry fee. It's an old- fashioned journey with dogs across Alaska, stopping as a group every night to make camp or to stay in a village. The longest day's run is about 60 miles, and mushers only take 10 to 12 dogs. The snowmachiners will break and mark the trail and help carry some of the gear on the longer legs. Like the Iditarod, all of the food and gear is shipped out ahead of time.

The Serum Run will join the route of the Iditarod race at Ruby and will stay on the race trail all the way to Nome. The Serum Runners will take 17 days for the 770-mile trip and will arrive in Nome just ahead of the leaders in the Iditarod. There are celebrations and events in most of the villages along the way, and mushers will sometimes get to stay with villagers in their houses.

The organizer of the Serum Run, which first started in 1997, is Colonel Norman Vaughan, legendary Alaskan adventurer and explorer. He was the chief dog wrangler for Commander Byrd's famous "Little America" Antarctic expedition in the late 1920s. Col. Vaughan is the very last of the old-time polar explorers and has been recognized around the world for his exploits. He even has a 10,000-foot mountain in Antarctica named for him, which he climbed on his 89th birthday a few years ago.

Col. Vaughan also holds the record as the oldest musher ever to complete the Iditarod, which he did ten years ago at the age of 84. He still mushes dogs and loves the outdoors. For his 100th birthday, he plans to climb his namesake mountain in Antartctica again, although he acknowledges he might need some help.

I stopped in at the Serum Run meeting last night, which was also Col. Vaughan's surprise 94th birthday party (his real birthday is tomorrow). I'm planning to go on the Serum Run if I can't get everything together for the Iditarod. A friend of mine is interested in going as well, and we're thinking about taking all 20 of my "A"-string Iditarod dogs, splitting them into two teams, and heading for Nome with the Colonel.

In addition to going on a real adventure with a living legend, I would get some invaluable training on my dogs for the 2001 Iditarod, in which I have every intention of being a top-20 competitor. If I get my Iditarod entry fee back, it will more than cover my expenses for the Serum Run. Just to be safe and to hold a spot, I signed up. I'll make a final decision by mid-January as to which route I'm taking to Nome--but I'm definitely going to Nome with my dogs one way or the other, and the Serum Run would be a most satisfactory alternative to the Iditarod.

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