We waited for the weather to change until 11, but it kept on snowing real hard. But we were running short of Eagle energy pack dog food, so we decided to leave towards Galena 55 miles downriver, where we had sent other supplies. The storm on the Yukon has bothered us for ¾ of the trip, forcing us to travel very slowly due to the fresh snow ( almost 2 feet ) and the head wind in some sections of the trail.
As if all this wasn't enough, Keith's sno machine coil broke up. Beth tried unsuccessfully to fix it when…as two Guardian Angels, our friends April ( the girl with…the gun !) and her boyfriend Deryl showed up with their sno machines to check if we were doing ok. Luckily the accident happened 18 miles out of Ruby, so Deryl went back in the village to buy the spare part. We were guided anyhow by Deryl's brother, Bill that we thanked for his assistance letting him drive both of our dog Teams for a while on the Yukon once the storm was finished.
Two hours from Galena the sky freed itself from the blowing snow to gift us with an extraordinaire show : in between the clouds the sun showed up with two points of a rainbow by its sides…it seemed as if there were three suns, unreal indeed ! After a while at the little abandoned village of Louden, on the right hand side of the River and on a bluff on the Yukon we could see the big crosses of Galena's Cemetery, between spruce trees and the river's breeze. At the same time a huge hawk flied over our heads whistling his/her tipical voice as if he/she'd be the spirit of somebody buried over there greeting us….it is very hard for me to describe with words the emotions that I felt in that moment !
In the 1925 relay this section was covered by 2 different mail carriers Bill McCarty ( half Indian and related with our Deryl and Bill ) from Ruby to Whiskey Creek ( 28 miles ) with a team of 7 huskies with lead dog Prince, and Edgar Nollner ( at the time 21 ) from there to Galena with a team of 7 malemutes with lead dog Dixie. I am sure that in this section they were faster than us because of the bad storm that we had to face today. We will make anyway our total calculations of the travel times in Nome…and even so we are faster by now !!
It took us 9 hours to get here !! It took me 7 hours when I ran the Iditarod on this route in 1996! In Galena we are hosted by the local charter school for kitchen, aviation etc..located in the local Air Base, and we were waited by my dearest Indian friend Tom Huntington ( musher and brother of Carl first winner of the Iditarod in 1973 ) Chris Rowe ( The musher friend from Nome who has flown here with her dogs to join us until Nome) and Chef Rand of Project Education Residential School who invited us to stay at the School. In exchange of this favor, tomorrow morning before leaving we will make a presentation for his students, like we did in the other schools.
Now I have to leave you because it's 3 am, and beside changing the plastics of my sled hoping to make it faster tomorrow, I couldn't resist from writing this notes… but now I am really tired like Megh and all the other dogs who have worked hard today. We'll see you tomorrow from Nulato…always and still on the mighty Yukon 48 miles down river.
Hugs ARARAD K
