Last night ( in front of a tasteful hamburger at the Monderosa ) we met a local musher, Tony Browning and his wife who volunteered to help us at today's start and even explained us in detail how to reach from Nenana the overland trail - in order to avoid problems with eventual open waters on the river Tanana. Infact this is for sure the most important danger in our challenge, because of the long warm and rainy period.
today, after preparing our sleds and the loads on the three sno machines sleds which are following us with the supplies,at 3 pm, after the arrival of the train from Anchorage and with the help of 3 Tonis, Suzanne, Pat and Kitty and a little bunch of fans, finally we started our challenge from Nenana's railroad station...on Balto's footprints towards Nome.
I'd like to remind you that the serum against diphteria and its instructions, were handed the 27th of january 1925 at 11pm by a conductor of the Alaska Railroad to the first mail carrier William " Wild Boy " Shannon, for the first leg of the trail to Tolovana. Temperature was about -40, as for us today there was a little crowd to cheer him and his team was made up with 9 Alaskan Malemutes. William was a trapper and gold prospector and will meet his destiny some years later just practicing this last job...but we will talk about this...when we'll reach Tolovana.
Using pretty young dogs, 2 - 3 years of age, except for my wonderful two lead dogs Megh and Ciors who are 10 !! but look much youger than that, Sven for his 14 dogs and I for my 12, decided to split the first leg of 52 miles between Nenana and Tolovana, in two parts( to give the dogs more rest ) with a stop over in Old Minto. I never mushed dogs here but the trail today is wonderful, well travelled by other mushers from Nenana who train out here. Infact during our travel I met my friend Aaron Burmeister training his dogs for Iditarod ( that we both raced togheter in 1996 ). We hugged each other with a lot of emotion ! In some parts the trail was soft because of the wind blowing. After an initial section of 5 miles on the river Tanana, we went overland in a long series of thick forests, small lakes, safe sloughs of the river arriving in Old Minto just before dawn, after only 3 and half hours and 33 miles of travel.
Today Old Minto is a small village of log cabins, used as a rehabilitation centre for Indians affected by drugs or alchool addition. The manager, Dorothy, who I contacted the week before in the offices of the Indian Community in Fairbanks for the stop over authorization, gretted us real warmly offering for the night two nice little log cabins....heated by wood stoves, and a warm supper. FANTASTIC. In trade I offered to play my songs with their guitar and give them my official post card and the patch of our Mushing School. The dogs ate real well and noe are resting at their tether line under some birch trees, on thier comfortable bedding made of straw that we brought from Nenana. It's past midnight, I'm getting tired, Gianni the cameraman - who shooted some spectacular shots today -is snoaring strong, I finish this page of my diary, put a piece of wood in the stove ( outside it's -30c )..and go to sleep in my sleeping bed. Tomorrow at 11 am we leave towards Tolovana.
Important P.S. : are you ordering via ararad1@hotmail.com or ararad@ararad.net my official post card to be sent to you from Nome ? You have only two weeks for that , with an offer - sponsor - starting from 10 US Dollars !!!
Yours ARARAD K
