SHEEP MOUNTAIN, Alaska - Lance Mackey set his customary smoking pace in this first distance sled dog race of the season, easily claiming victory in a bumpy, icy and fast 2006 Sheep Mountain 150.
The race, set in the majestic Talkeetna Mountains about two hours from Anchorage on the Glenn Highway, draws mushers looking to test their dogs in steep hills; remind their teams what it’s like to race, camp and race some more; and, mostly, to have a good time in a well-marked, sleekly organized event.
Mackey claimed the $1,750 first-place prize, as well as a new Hans Gatt mid-distance sled, which should only help the Fairbanks musher who has now become one of the hardest-to-beat competitors in the sport. Mackey, 36, won nearly every race he entered last season and is entering this winter with a laser-like focus on winning his first Iditarod. That would be a tough hill to climb, but Mackey is already proving his dogs are capable of climbing their share of steep trails.
He consistently posted run times of three hours and 45 minutes on the three legs of this race, which were in the 48-mile range with very little flat trail to run on. His nearest challenger was Jessica Hendricks of Two Rivers, near Fairbanks. Hendricks said she often caught sight of Mackey, and gained a little in the hills, but could never reel him in. She ended up 39 minutes behind him at the finish, which is an incredibly comfortable cushion for Mackey in a race this “short.”
Hendricks said she practices hill climbing with her team, encouraging them to run as fast uphill as they do on the descent. She was relaxed, cheerful and obviously happy with her team shortly after the race ended. Hendricks’ kennel partner, Thomas Lesatz, will run their team in this year’s Iditarod as a rookie.
A distance of 150 miles may seem like a marathon, but to these dogs, it’s more of a long sprint. Teams down to 20th place could be seen loping along much of the way, completing the stages in roughly four hours. Thin snow that was hard-packed by snowmobiles and dog sleds for weeks and temperatures that hovered near zero during most of the race contributed to the fast times. Mushers such as Sebastian Schnuelle of Whitehorse, Canada, remarked with amazement how fast the race was, compared with the speeds they were accustomed to during training.
Most of these mushers are preparing for longer races such as Iditarod and Yukon Quest, where average speeds fall closer to 9 mph than the 12 to 13 mph at Sheep Mountain. Not only was the pace fast, there was little room for error, Schnuelle pointed out. A missed turn here or a slow pass there added up to lost minutes that could never be regained in such a “short” amount of time. The race took approximately 24 hours to complete, following a format of 50 miles from Sheep Mountain Lodge to Eureka Lodge, with a five-hour break, then a 50-mile loop back to Eureka, a five-hour break, and 50 miles back to the start/finish line at Sheep Mountain. Schnuelle noted that he was six minutes ahead of Hans Gatt after one leg, and when he checked again after another leg up steep hills, over glare ice, through slushy overflow and around blind corners where dogs could make a wrong turn, he was STILL six minutes ahead of Gatt.
Schnuelle said he could see Gatt’s headlamp behind him all the way back on the final leg, through the near-solstice gloom that gradually gave way to dawn by 10 a.m. That headlamp motivated him to keep his dogs moving crisply. Likewise, I saw Gatt’s headlamp up the trail ahead of me by about 10 minutes, motivating me to try to gain on him. Yet I could never make ground.
The race is surprisingly popular, in a way, since it doesn’t offer much of a purse. Only the top three mushers would break even or come home with a little extra money. What it does offer is excellent early-season racing in some tough hills, enough of a motivator to draw its maximum 50 entrants within hours of its opening day of signups.
“From a musher’s standpoint, it seems like such an easy race to go and do,” said Brian Bearss, who was the official time keeper. Bearss is an Iditarod veteran. “There’s no confusion, it’s all laid out beautifully, there’s so many markers it’s nearly impossible to get lost. It’s a mushers’ race, put on by a musher and run start to finish by mushers. It helps out quite a bit. It should be about racing dogs and training dogs, and not all that crazy stuff you see in other races.”
For Gerry Willomitzer, another of the Canadians entered here, the Sheep Mountain race is like a mini-Copper Basin 300, which itself is compared to a mini-Iditarod or mini-Quest. It’s like a little barometer of how the training is going and a reminder to the dogs about what they’ll be facing. Willomitzer set the third-fastest times and was plainly happy with how conditioning was going this winter in Whitehorse. Willomitzer hopes to race the Quest with his veteran dogs, then run as a rookie in this year’s Iditarod with younger dogs.
Many were trying 2-year-old dogs or younger leaders to see what those dogs could do.
Some mushers were just trying to figure out what distance racing is, getting a feel of feeding their dogs and bedding the animals down during the five-hour breaks, at the same time getting a real taste of what it feels like to the human who’s operating on about two-hours’ sleep over the 24-hour race. That takes some getting used to, even for the multi-year veterans.
Personally, it was refreshing to see my dogs run hard for four hours, look a little bored during the first layover, run hard again for four hours before finally looking like they needed a long nap. It was remarkable how a light meal and a good snooze restoked their attitudes. They shot down the trail for the final 50 with the same power they started the race with.
I learned a couple of lessons, the hard way. I like to start slow and finish fast, but in a race this “short,” that doesn’t work. My first run took four hours and eight minutes because I let the dogs set the pace without asking them to run faster at times. That gave my competition an advantage of five to 10 minutes. Then, I overfed my dogs on the first break, embarking on a feeding routine that might work for Iditarod, but was too heavy for a race this “short.” My dogs had full stomachs and bogged down on the second run, posting a four-hour and 11-minute run time, about five minutes slower than my nearest competition, which was Ray Redington, Ed Hopkins, Hans Gatt, Aaron Burmeister and several others. There was a pack of us in that four-hour range. Only Mackey, Hendricks and Willomitzer were posting significantly faster times. I made up ground, passing two teams on the third leg, with a run time of four hours and nine minutes - just a minute slower than my run time over the same trail on the first leg. But I was too far behind to reel in teams that were 10 to 15 minutes ahead.
Next up? There’s a series of 200- and 300-mile races across Alaska, the Yukon and the Lower 48 starting in January. Many are going to the Copper Basin 300, the Kuskokwim 300, a new 200-mile race called the Cantwell Classic, the Tustumena 200, the Klondike 300 and the Knik 200 - to name a few. Most of these races are events in themselves, but each will also be a continuing tune-up for dogs and mushers planning to do their best in the Last Great Race.