Mali and Hemi leading the open team both days at the Montana Creek Championship. Photo Ddavid Pphalke

Kicked off 2012 racing season with a win at the Montana Creek Championship January 7-8. Ended up in second place after the first day of racing, 21 seconds behind the leader Arleigh Reynolds. Ran a team of 16 both days with a young leader Mali plus Hemi. Passed one team successfully day 1 and all dogs finished strong. Lots of snow and the trail was a bit soft and not super fast. Sunday and the race is a wrap and I had a pretty strong run. More snow fell during the night and the trail was still fairly heavy and tough but the base was firm all around.
“Despite the soft and snowy trail I hit 19 and 20 mph on several occasions. For those of you studying the times we had longer run times today because of the addition of the 2-mile Hood Loop, which made the trail 15 miles and yesterday 13 miles. The trail-block at the entrance to Hood Loop was not moved yesterday so all teams did a shorter trail. I ran the same team as yesterday and the leaders were again Hemi and Mali.”
Great weekend and whole team was more focused second day of racing and all business the whole way. The youngsters did great and Egil didn’t miss Casper and some of the other core dogs that got the weekend off. Now back to longer training runs at slower speeds and some more hardening for future battles...
We now have so much snow that it’s actually enough… but more to come and it looks like this will be a record snow year here. Forecast is for more of the white is on its way, storm after storm lining up hitting South Central Alaska with full force. Training dogs and shoveling, plowing snow takes up most of our days now and no need to try to do anything else.
To make our snowy Tuesday just a little bit brighter I made a pizza with Italian ham, shrimp and mushrooms. Bon appetite!
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