Our Last Hurrah!

Our last hurrah. Last week I was supposed to run the Taiga 300 but I had to spend the race budget on purchasing our new house, so to make myself feel better Jim and I loaded up 20 dogs and Cosmos into the truck and headed for the White Mountains.

We took 2 ten dog teams 30 miles out to Crowberry Cabin, a BLM cabin and set up a base camp. Everything had been melting fast so we thought this may be our last trip. It was snowing heavily when we left the parking lot, it was like running in a slow globe. That made the trails nice, but was kind of disappointing because without the vistas the whites are kind of blah. A forest fire 2 years ago wiped out much of the trees, and even the old Crowberry Cabin. But it was nice to be out with Jim and the dogs. Actually the burnt black spruce have a sort of charm to them.

We ate HUGE King Crab legs, Spring Asparagus and shared a bottle of Pinot Noir and watched the crescent moon rise behind the White Mountains as it chased the snow clouds away. The dogs were a little rowdy that night, 30 miles isn’t much even for the yearlings. Plus for some of the dogs, this was their first camping trip.

The next morning we woke to beautifully sunny skies and a wonderful view into the mountains we would be climbing. We headed out to the Windy Gap Divide. It was a wonderful trip, we made fresh tracks on the untouched trails, so it gave us the feeling of being “way out there” instead of just 4o miles outside of Fairbanks. It was hot so we stopped often, which provides for tons of doggy/musher bonding. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Back at “base camp” the sun was still out (thank god for Alaska’s Midnight Sun, or 10:30pm sun in April) and the dogs laid and basked in the sun. They were much relaxed after a big work out and the warm temps. Jim and I feasted on Burgandy-Pepper Steaks, and Asparagus, and shared a bottle of Merlot and watched the neon peach sunset dance with the wispy blue sky.

The next day the skies were clear again. We slept in and left at noon to head back to the truck. It was slow going, but we arrived tanned faced and happy. A perfect end-of -the-season trip.