Well, what can I say……I think this event was more a test of will for the mushers rather than a work test for the dogs!! The usual motley crew (minus a few regulars) turned up early on Saturday morning ready for an 11 mile jaunt round the woods only to be met with a rather icy access road in. There was also a distinct lack of an event organiser as well. As it turned out, said organisers had struggled for an hour to get out of their own driveway due to ice. However, they did eventually manage to get to the forest albeit a tad on the late side. The trail still had to be marked so it was obvious we were going to miss the 10am start. Off went Mrs P, Mrs P and Mr P to mark out the trail, singing along to Elvis (much to Helens disgust). The trail itself was in much better nick than the access road with only a few small patches of ice at the sides and so was deemed runable. Unfortunately on the long back stretch (those of you that ran it last year will remember the mud with fond memories!) the waterlogged part of the trail had completely frozen over and was nothing short of an ice rink. This meant we had to cut the trail short to 6.68miles (accurately checked by ‘old man’ Halliday ).
All teams had a good run and everyone came over the finish happy. Sunday however was not quite as rosy. The access road was even worse than it had been the day before. Most of us still had a little hope left in us and proceeded down the access road to the start with our fingers crossed that the trail would be ok and it was just the road in that was bad…. Yeah right! It had rained overnight and frozen so what had been a runable trail on Saturday had turned into a trail we could have skated on. Helen had no choice but to cancel the event and everyone was in agreement with this decision. We managed to get a hold of Graham and Sandra to let them know but everyone else had already turned up. Not to be defeated we hung about a bit and let the dogs out for a stretch. David and Cameron went for a walk in the woods, Brian and I taught Helen all about Jack Bauer and old man Halliday kept us entertained with stories about upsetting the Americans and Guantanamo Bay. We were really just kidding ourselves that if we waited about for a while the ice would melt enough to drive out without getting stuck! Unfortunately it didn’t and on the way out Patterson and Pack got stuck. Cameron then whipped out the snow chains that he had obviously bought on the sly as I knew nothing about them! They did the trick but David was still stuck. Along came Jay Whitley to the rescue with her trusty 4x4 truck and towed David up then went back for his trailer. Well done Jay! I think it would have been at least Tuesday before he could have driven out of there!
The times for Saturday are as follows. It should be pointed out that Jay W and David P both had passengers and David was running with a particularly heavy Fritz Dyke cart which I think reflected in the times. Suzanne Alexander was the quickest of the day with her 4 dog team in 35 minutes. Well done everyone and hope you enjoyed the event. It was nice to see some new faces at the event and hope to see you all soon for ‘The Balloch’. Lady-P.
