| Endless Mountain Dogsled Race 2008 |
| Below is a map of the race course - a topographic map. The dashed lines represent an increase or decrease of 20 feet of elevation and the closer they are together, the steeper the hill. The course mainly followed the "hollows" between mountains. The flags are where the checkpoints were. |
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| A neighbor came over to talk to us while we were waiting for the first team to arrive. He had his dog with him, a big chocolate Lab. We kept reminding him that the team would be here soon and he kept saying he'd put the dog away in the yard, but Marybeth and her team came out of the woods sooner than we had anticipated. |
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| I don't know why, but her team went right instead of coming straight for us. She stopped them and gave the command to turn left and continue towards us. But just as they began to comply with her command, the guy's Lab went bounding over to greet her dogs. She was not happy and was yelling for the man to get the dog. "But he won't hurt them," he reassured her. Turns out she wasn't worried about their being hurt but about their becoming tangled, one of a musher's nightmares. You can see the look of frustration on her face here as the guy tries to get his dog out of there without tangling the team. Somehow, everything turned out all right and Marybeth was able to continue on the rest of her team's 50-mile run. |
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| I had a great shot set up to catch them as they slid by, but just them my camera decided to run out of battery power. I ran to the car to exchange them for a fresh batch, but Marybeth and her dogs had silently continued across the field and down the hill while I was fooling around with the camera. I was happy to see her in the race again. Last year she had run for the first time in the race with her team. Being the only woman in the race and having a lot of personality to boot, she had everyone pulling for her. She handily won her part of the race and was so happy to see how well her dogs worked together on the trail. This team seemed even happier to run and seemed to work even better as a team than last year. Not many had booties on this year like they had in 2007. |
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