Champions' Corner

Practice what you race

By Jon Little / October 22nd, 2009

Understand the basics of camping before you race

Recently, a musher friend casually mentioned that the first time they ever fired up a cooker was during a layover in their very first distance race. Holy cow.

Whether the excuse is laziness, fear of the unknown, or a job/dog-training schedule so hectic it leaves no time for so-called extras such as testing gear, there is no valid reason for never breaking out a cooker until the heat of competition.

It isn't that the shiny new cooker won't work, because it will. Those things are low tech and idiot proof. The issue is that the musher obviously hasn't practiced a key part of an essential routine that is important to a successful race, not to mention the health of their dogs. If someone can't operate a cooker, what else don't they know about caring for dogs on the trail? At the very least, they will be painfully slow at their chores and make lots of mistakes if they haven't practiced, practiced, practiced.

Fortunately, camping with dogs falls way short of brain surgery or rocket science. It is, in fact, easy.

Get familiar with your cooker

Yes, being without shelter in the middle of Alaska, Canada, upper Michigan or Norway when it is the middle of winter can be intimidating to someone who has never done it before. I understand that. (My first two Iditarods were a garbled mess of lurching runs because I went out of my way to avoid camping on the trail.) But if you want to run a distance race of any length, and you harbor an irrational fear of winter camping with your dogs, get over it.

The best way to get over it is to make yourself do it.

Start slow. Camp at home. Drag your cooker out of storage, or order one, or make your own. Get some Heet, pour cold water or put snow in the smaller pot, and spark a flame in the bigger pot. Time how long the cooker takes to melt snow, or to heat cold water to the lukewarm or scalding temperatures you desire, whether you're just pouring water over kibble, or using it to melt frozen meat chunks.

If nothing else, you will learn what it feels like to ignite a flame in alcohol. You will also learn how many bottles of Heet it takes to heat up cold water (usually one) and how many bottles it takes to melt snow. That depends on your cooker; it might take two or three bottles, or more if it is cold and windy.

Why wait until you are 100 miles into a race to figure this stuff out?

Cooker tips

Before you light your cooker, break a few small branches off a nearby bush or tree, or grab two ski poles (if you have two), to form a simple support beneath your cooker. Lay the sticks or poles flat on the snow and put the cooker on top. Otherwise, the hot metal cooker will rapidly sink in the snow, and always at an angle.
Use a dry dog bootie or a few strands of loose straw for a wick in the pool of alcohol.
Don't bother with a Bic lighter. They fail in cold temperatures. Wooden matches or book matches work great (as long as your fingers are dry), and some high-end weather-proof lighters are handy, but only if you keep them in a warm internal pocket, and inside a plastic bag. I've also had good luck with simple metal fire starters that use friction to make sparks. Those will work no matter how cold or how wet they are. I carry all three: Matches, lighter and fire starter.

Be prepared

The are two significant differences between trail camping and checkpoint pit stops, but for the most part, the routine -- whether at a checkpoint or along a remote stretch of trail -- should be identical for the musher. The only advantage to pulling over at a checkpoint instead of along the trail, is checkpoints have a warm building nearby with a pot of stew and a floor to sleep on, and they typically have water, sometimes even hot water, which should be viewed as a luxury that speeds up your routine. But every musher should be well versed in melting snow with their cooker. They should anticipate doing it a lot, and be grateful when warm water is provided.

The only way I know to get comfortable with camping on the trail is to do it, repeatedly, in training, until the routine becomes a mindless chore, something that's second nature, that you don't have to think about. Getting it down pat will come in handy at 3 a.m., four days into the Iditarod or Yukon Quest, when you have trouble remembering your own name.

One of the cornerstones of smart distance racing is to test everything -- techniques, distances, gear and feeding -- in training, and do nothing new in a race. Don't even take a risk trying out a new pair of sunglasses; test those on the last training run, at least. So when you camp in training, do whatever you would expect to do in a race. And when you are racing, simply do what you did in training. Don't freak out over what the musher parked next to you is doing, and suddenly try something new. Everyone has their own routine.

Do the same thing every time you stop

I have a basic pattern that I do every time I pull over to bed the dogs down for a while. Disclaimer: This is merely my routine, and it is definitely not the only way to do things. My routine goes like this:

Set hooks in back and front of team to hold them in place, and quickly grab straw and put it down for the dogs, especially early in a race when they may not want to stop. The straw lets them know they're stopping, and entices them to calm down.
Give them a salmon or beef snack or other treat.
Remove booties.
Pour dog food into cooker and either melt snow or go find hot water.
Put bowls in front of dogs, and give each a wet meal out of cooler.
While removing booties, snacking and feeding, you might see a problem with a foot or a poor appetite. Treat the foot issue, if you can. If it is something you haven't seen before, mention it to a veterinarian or even a musher camped next to you. If a dog doesn't want to eat, leave them alone and let them sleep; chances are they will be hungry when you come back out in a couple hours to give them another meal. If not, that dog is a candidate to be dropped.
Put blankets on dogs if it is cold, and (if you are at a checkpoint) gather every piece of gear that needs to be dried out, and head inside for food, water and a nap.
If camping on the trail, eat your meal and drink plenty of water, lay down on top of sled bag and be impressed at how comfortable it is; set alarm clock or kitchen timer and tuck it next to your ear under your hat. Chances are you will wake up on time anyway because your fingers and toes will start feeling clammy.
Wake up a good hour and a half before you plan on leaving to give the dogs a second small meal and any water they may want.
Repack your sled
Give yourself 20 to 30 minutes to bootie your dogs, depending on the size of your team. (Better yet, time yourself in training runs so you know just how fast you get bootying done. Some do it in 15 minutes.)

Every winter, as early as the trails allow, I take my dogs on "camping" trips, which might involve a 35 mile run to a spot on the trail, or to a friend's cabin, where I take a two- or three-hour break where I feed the dogs, let them sleep on straw, re-bootie and then run them back to the dog truck. The trails in the Caribou Hills, here on the Kenai Peninsula, wind up littered with tell-tale piles of straw and sunken fire rings where a dozen or so distance mushers have practiced their routines.

In the process of doing all this, you'll also get familiar with packing your sled with a cooker, fuel, food and straw, and the dogs will get used to hauling that amount of weight.

And when you camp, make it nice for yourself by bringing food you really like and a Thermos of your favorite hot drink. Lay down on spare straw next your leaders for a short nap. Have fun with it.