Rainy Pass to Rohn – Lots of Video Moments!

Our time at Rainy Pass was uneventful…treated a couple of sore wrists, everyone ate and rested well. It took us a couple of hours to get a vet check, as so many teams came in at once. This was also the first place where we encountered the nasty foxtail straw. I hadn’t noticed it so much when we stopped at Skwentna, but the straw we got at Rainy Pass was bursting with foxtails. Ugh! I typically spend all sorts of time, energy and money to avoid foxtails at all costs – they are utterly evil to dogs, who get them into their ears, eyes, nose and skin, where they fester and abscess and generally wreak havoc. I’ve spent too many trips and dollars on emergency after-hours vet visits having foxtails removed from where they’ve been inhaled into dog noses to ever think of them as benign. So I was pretty unhappy to see them in droves throughout the straw. One of the vets warned me of them, but I’d already seen them, however there was no alternative and nothing to be done except keep my fingers crossed that we would have no problems. Another vet then told me she was concerned about 2 of my dogs who were coughing and she thought they should be checked for pneumonia or kennel cough. Pneumonia? Try inhaled and ingested foxtails! They eventually got the foxtails out of their throats and stopped coughing, so we were OK…for now.

Heading out of the checkpoint, the dogs were so ready to go when we swung the team around to head to the trail I needed help holding them from some of the tourists who were stranded there due to non-flyable weather. Luckily they were game, and one gal was most helpful, including keeping her sense of humor and adventure when the team dumped the sled (and her). Then just out of the checkpoint we got off the hard packed trail and they dumped me. Sigh…my oh-so-well-trained team knows how to keep me humble.

The next humbling experience came when we hit our first open water crossing. A little stream…maybe 4 inches deep, about 10-12 feet wide…you would’ve thought I was asking them to cross the Pacific Ocean. Rope and Coast were in lead, we came around the corner to the water crossing, they put on the brakes and we all balled up…much to the delight of the couple sitting there on snow machines and taking pictures. While the woman took photos of our mess, the guy actually offered to help hold the sled while I got the dogs untangled and pulled them across the “chasm”. I knew once the front end of the team got across there was no way they were going back into the water, so they would pull the rest of the team across no matter how much they balked. It all worked as planned…didn’t dump the sled, just drug it through the water so the bottom and sled bag was pretty soaked. Thanked them and on our way.

As we started up Rainy Pass itself, the trail markers were a little thin, and we got off the main trail a couple of times – it was wide open, so that wasn’t a big deal as we could look around and eventually find a trail marker to get back on track. Then as we got into the heart of the Pass, the wind came up, and we were suddenly in a near whiteout. The trail crossed some exposed knobs that were deep with blown snow, and kept climbing, generally to the left. Shortly after the water crossing we came across a knob where the wind was blowing strongly toward our right (downhill) and the trail veered sharply uphill to the left. Rope would have none of turning into the wind and pulling uphill – he insisted on going downhill and out of the wind to the right. Just as we started a discussion about how that was not where the trail was, a helicopter cleared the rise ahead of us, circled and saw we were having problems, and went back to hover just above the rise and watch. Nuts! I tried a couple of more times, but it was clear it was going to take quite a while to convince Rope to head into the wind, and it was really fatiguing to hike up and down the team through the deep snow he’d pulled us into. So I opted to pick my battles…and save that one for another day. I switched he and Gerry, showed Gerry where the trail was – and off we went, much to the disappointment of the helicopter folks, I’m sure. As soon as it was evident we were on the move again, they continued back down the trail to find more trouble. Shortly I heard them hovering over the open water crossing, so they didn’t have to look far.

Rainy Pass, the upper gorge, and the Dalzell Gorge itself all kind of blended together. Not sure what I was expecting, but while there was a lot of pretty intense sled driving, it wasn’t undoable, it wasn’t scary, it wasn’t overwhelming. It was a lot of work and energy. HUGE moguls – we dropped into holes over my head, and the dogs would pull and out we’d pop over the opposite side. Steep uphills and downhills. Trees and rocks to avoid, sharp corners to negotiate…but so much snow it was eminently doable, and I kept waiting for “The Gorge” to bite me, but it never was as bad as I’d expected. The moguls were pretty tough on the sled however, and I think that’s where I broke the bracket on one of the front stanchions of the sled.

At the bottom of the Gorge the trail zig-zags on ice bridges across the Dalzell River, and a couple of those did bite me. Once they caught it on an Insider video (see the one titled “Tipped Sled in Rainy Pass”, shot on 3/6/2008). One someone caused…the video/audio team was on the left-hand side of the trail, and the dogs headed right for them, before suddenly veering back onto the trail. Glare ice, no steering, no stopping, so we slammed right into their sled and gear, as they jumped out of the way at the last second. At least the audio guy helped get us back on track…while the video guy kept shooting and I kept my mouth shut. But all in all a pretty fun tour of the Gorge, and I kept waiting for the really bad stuff – then suddenly I saw a sign on a tree saying 2 miles to Rohn. What?! And we were there, shortly before sunset…what a days’ work!