When you bump into the Mushing Mortician, Scott Janssen, you’ll never lack for conversation. Janssen made Unalakleet this morning at about 0800. While he was doing dog chores, he talked about his recent runs from Koyukuk to Kaltag and Kaltag to Unalakleet. Scott spoke so enthusiastically about the performance of his dogs on these sections of the trail, they might have been the best runs of his entire racing career. Scott said all of his dogs was right on top of their game. When Chief Vet, Stu Nelson stopped to chat, Scott went into what his dogs have been devouring. He’s snacked generously upon arriving at the checkpoints and then feeding generously about 2 hours later. Currently he’s got 12 dogs in his string and he’s feeding the quantity of food and snacks he’d feed for 16. There’s not a crumb left. One of the experienced village mushers, Doug Katchatag liked the looks of Scott’s team when they came in this morning and advised him to rest eight full hours before departing for Shaktoolik. Scott is a moving, not sitting around sort of guy so I wasn’t surprised when he left after a six hour rest.
The Mackey brothers rested in the checkpoint from around 0300 this morning until 1430 this afternoon. They both ate hearty and slept before deciding to depart. They are running together and both of the guys look good. With warmer weather they changed runner plastic on their sleds. While doing so they started telling Jim Lanier stories. Jim had used eight feet or runner plastic on a seven foot runner. The foot that extended from the back of the runner created a rooster tail. the brothers decided they liked the effect and left the extra plastic hanging off the back of their runners too. I didn’t see any rooster tails though as they left the checkpoint. Lance Mackey carries a little mascot on the brush bow of his sled. Lance says the little stuffed dog is and extra leader. Jason departed the checkpoint first followed by Scott Janssen and then Lance.
Rookie Ben Harper took off for Shaktoolik a little before noon today. In the checkpoint he was sporting a pair of jeans, a Nome Kennel Club long sleeve t-shirt and the result of frost bite on his nose. Ben wears glasses and so he choose being able toes in the cold weather over overing his face and having his glasses fog up. What a challenging race for a rookie. Photo of Ben shared by Kim Henneman, DVM.
Bryan Bearss was booting his dogs so I asked him a question about how he came to be running this race. He took over Karin Hendrickson’s team after she was injured in the car – four wheeler collision. Bryan earned his finishers buckle in the 2006 race. He says, since then he’s lost some of his race skills. With the cold, the learning curve to get back on track was pretty steep but now at 700 plus miles into the race, he feels right at home. Bryan finished in 37th place in 2006 in 11 days, 1 hour and forty minutes.
Curt Perrano has been a regular on the Iditarod Trail since 2012. While he was born in New Zealond, he’s also lived in Singapore, Europe, Canada and the United States. Once he became interested in sled dogs, he an his wife worked for musher Jamie Nelson in Minnesota. Curt enjoys the outdoors and running dogs. The combination has brought him to long distance racing. During the summer, Curt and his wife run a sled dog tour business, Under Dog New Zealand, in the southern Alps of New Zealand. Serrano left Unalakleet this morning with a happy enthusiastic dog team.
The village of Unalakleet installed wind chargers a few years back to supplement their energy production. On average, the six chargers save the community about 80,000 gallons of diesel fuel a year in producing energy for the village.
