OLNEY – Blog entry, Dec. 17: “As of yesterday, I am officially a full-time dog musher until the Quest is over.”
The “Quest” Katie Davis refers to is February’s Yukon Quest, a journey that will take her through more than 1,000 miles of arctic wilderness in temperatures of 50 below or colder. Davis, who completed the Iditarod in 2006 as a 26-year-old, said many mushers believe the Yukon Quest is the most difficult race. In any event, she’ll be ready.
Since her Dec. 17 blog entry, Davis has been training her dogs on a near daily basis, quitting her job, shunning her social life and living amongst canines. She pours herself into the dogs, “physically, financially and emotionally.”
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Katie Davis smears a protective substance onto the feet of each dog before heading out. Davis used the substance instead of boots because of snow conditions. |
“In order to do what I do now, you define yourself as a musher, nothing else,” Davis, 30, said last week as she readied her dogs for a practice run on a trail system near Olney. “You have to put everything you have into it.”
Dog sledding, when covering more than 1,000 miles, is a tutorial in endurance, for both the animals pulling the sled and the human guiding the animals. But, as Davis asserts, it’s also an illuminating study in human-animal relationships. Davis has been an animal lover since childhood when her family had horses.
The bond she has with her dogs, which are simultaneously companions and workers, raises the question of who is responsible for whose life. While human-dog relationships inherently involve a one-sided dependence, Davis said dog sledding tips the balance.
“They’re completely reliant on me, but when I’m out there I’m completely reliant on them,” she said.
“Out there” being the frigid no-man’s land of interior Alaska and Yukon, where moose have been known to attack and kill sled dogs, but wolves stay away, fearing another pack in their territory. The bears are already hibernating, leaving temperature as the main concern for a musher and her loyal team of dogs.
Davis’ dogs have names like Shilo, Detour and Diablo. Or, in a nod to literature, there are these two Alaskan huskies: Charlotte, as in the Charlotte Bronte, and Margaret Atwood. They all have names, they all have specific jobs and they all live to run.
The Yukon Quest, scheduled to begin on Feb. 6, is often called “the most difficult sled dog race in the world,” taking mushers from Fairbanks, Alaska to Whitehorse, Yukon in Canada. The terrain is tricky, occasionally hazardous, and it’s held in February, when the harshest temperatures occur.
Also, Davis said the distances between checkpoints are as much as 200 miles. In the Iditarod, she said they’re between 50 and 60 miles. Davis plans to race for five to six hours on average, and then rest for six to eight. Averaging eight to 10 miles per hour, or 80 to 100 miles per day, Davis will endure long hours and cold nights in the wilderness between checkpoints. She hopes to complete the race in 12 days.
At checkpoints, Davis’ friends Brooke Bohannon and Anita Williamson will meet her in a truck with straw for the dogs to sleep on and fresh supplies. In between checkpoints, Davis will set up makeshift camps for both her and her dogs to rest. The dogs will huddle in groups of four, sometimes requiring blankets.
Planning is essential for the Yukon Quest. For the dogs, Davis cuts measured cubes of frozen meat with a band saw. On the trail, the dogs will consume a pound of dry dog food and a pound of meat each per day. The proteins of choice are beef, salmon, tripe, straight beef fat and poultry skins. Everything, of course, is frozen.
Likewise, anything Davis eats on the trail is frozen as well. She has a cooker that is essentially a metal five-gallon pale that uses ethanol. With this, she heats up her food and melts snow to make drinking water for the dogs. Davis drinks the occasional bottle of water or Capri Sun, but mostly she doesn’t drink much. It’s too cold.
Her food, vacuum-sealed and frozen solid, includes cheesecake, lasagna, casserole, salmon, pumpkin pie and jerky. Davis will soften her normally strict vegetarian diet for the race.
“I’d be a horrible sled dog, because I’m a picky eater,” Davis said.
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Katie Davis greets her lead dogs Detour, left, and Whitney after harnessing them to the gangline connected to her dog sled before heading out on trails near Olney. |
The food – hers and the dogs’ – is shipped to the race weeks in advance. Davis can carry only so much in her sled. The rest awaits her at designated spots where she can re-supply. But if she hasn’t prepared enough, she can’t exactly make a run to Burger King or the grocery store.
“You have to have everything exact,” Davis said. “If not, you’re kind of screwed.”
Davis will stay warm with layers of clothes, including a down jacket and parka on top, and one-inch foam pants over long underwear on bottom. The one-inch pants aren’t designed for mobility, but they trap body heat well. Her hood has coyote fur, and she pulls a neck gator up to her eyes to protect her face. Though it’s cold, she’s also working up a sweat, standing and steering all day.
“When I finished the Iditarod, I had muscles in places I didn’t even know I had muscles,” she said. “I had this weird muscle across my collar bone.”
Even when the logistics of food and clothing fall into line, there remains the issue of sleeping. Basically, you don’t do much of it. At resting points, after attending to her dogs and covering all other bases, Davis gets about two to three hours of sleep at a time. The team rests twice a day, giving Davis four or five hours of daily sleep.
Before falling asleep, Davis makes sure to drink water. So if her alarm fails her, nature’s calling won’t. Davis doesn’t change her sleep schedule before a big race to prepare. She just dives into it.
“Everybody deals with sleep deprivation differently,” she said.
Davis added: “After the Iditarod, it took me six months to sleep through the night again.”
For Davis, what started as a random childhood interest has grown into a lifestyle. She recalls the first time she saw sled dogs. Skiing with her parents in Colorado when she was 10 years old, a team of dogs pulled a sled underneath her on the chairlift.
That memory never faded away, ultimately leading her to an “Outward Bound” sled dog excursion as a senior in college, then the Iditarod and now the Yukon Quest. When asked why she does it, she points to her furry companions.
“I love these dogs,” Davis said. “I can’t even explain it. We’re a team and I’m the coach, but I’m also part of the team.”
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Katie Davis races up a trail near Olney on a dog sled pulled by 16 Alaskan huskies. |