Here I am in Nome.  The weather is a little cool, minus three, but I keep on wearing my North Carolina boots.  I do have proper Alaskan footwear with me; a top-of-the-line waterproof boot put out by Cabela’s.  The problem is that I just can’t move fast enough in the big boots, so I continue to wear the lighter boot with foot warmers and my feet have stayed perfectly dry and warm.  That’s the important thing.  My feet are dry and warm.

Aliy Zirkle was the seventeenth musher to arrive in Nome today, just minutes behind Paul Gebhardt.  She was her usual upbeat smiling self, but I noticed she was wearing some unusual footwear.  They looked like giant, black, puffy slippers that weren’t put together quite right.  Aily had run into a problem out on the trail, she had gone through an overflow and completely saturated her boots.  She had to get those boots off so her feet wouldn’t freeze.  If she were to get serious frostbite she could lose her toes.

Aily had to think fast.  How was she going to cover her feet?  What would you do in this situation?  She didn’t have extra boots and there was no one to ask for help.  Aily was on her own.  She solved her problem by cutting her extra $300 snow pants to a size to wrap around her feet.   She roughly sewed the sections together with bungee cords. They weren’t beautiful, but they did the trick, her feet were warm and dry when she passed under the burled arch.

The boots Aliy got wet were in her sled, frozen solid, and covered with frost.  She had a really good reason for not wearing her Alaskan boots.