Jessie's Sled Dog Page

IDITAROD 2003

Hi Sled Dog Fans,

I want to thank everyone so much for all the letters and e-mails of support and encouragement and to all who supported me financially, thank you so much. I couldn’t have done it without you. I received alot of letters from all over the country and I will try to answer as many of the questions as I can.

The 2002-2003 winter racing season has been a very successful & exciting winter. The winter started out with very poor snow conditions in Alaska and because of that we ended up driving south looking for snow! I trained alot of the winter in Montana and ran in a couple races in Wyoming & Oregon, placing in the top 10 in both races. February found us deep into preparing my food drop bags for Iditarod. (Between myself and another Iditarod musher, Ken Anderson, my mom’s living room and basement was wall to wall stuff; she said it was utterly amazing what it took to support a team.) There were 18 checkpoints that I shipped to for a total of 2500 lbs of food & supplies. For the dogs food I had a dry kibble, beef, lamb, fish, beef fat, chicken, liver & poultry skins. For my food I had things like lasagna, pizza, strawberries, cheesecake, jerky, & cookies. Some of the other supplies sent out were dry clothes/socks/gloves, vet supplies, runner plastic for my sled, batteries for my headlamp, & booties for the dogs. I changed the dog booties at every stop & I used around 800-1000 booties. Once the race starts some of the gear I carried with me in the sled was a cooker, axe, snowshoes, sleeping bag, parka, dog coats, dog booties, headlamp, knife, vet supplies, sled fixing kit, cooler for mixing dog food, & dry boot liners & gloves.

This year’s Iditarod was like no other one in history. Because of the lack of snow around Anchorage and the Alaska Range, the race was unable to go its regular route. It had to be moved north to Fairbanks. The majority of the race ran down the Yukon River until it eventually led us to the normal route on the coast. For the most part, the trail on the river was pretty good, only a few places had alot of holes in the trail and the coast had very little to no snow, mostly alot of ice. During the whole race we battled alot of wind--head winds, & side winds, & just more wind. Sometimes it was very mentally tough to keep going in such strong head winds. One time in particular was going out of Shaktoolik with winds of 45 mph & gusts up to 60 mph. I was down to a pretty small team very early in the race. The dogs that got a plane ride home all had small injuries from the hard, holey trail. They are all doing great now & are back to running strong. The 8 dogs I ran the last 1/2 of the race with were truly an incredible 8. They gave their best & did just an amazing job. I would spend my whole time at every checkpoint massaging their muscles & feeding them. Sometimes I would only get a 1/2 hr of sleep for every 6 hrs of rest the dogs got. By the time we came into Nome, the dogs were doing great but I was very tired. Our efforts paid off as we made it to Nome in 11 days, 4hrs in 20th place.

Looking back over the whole race, one of my favorite times and spot was camping out about 23 miles from Kaltag going to Unalakleet. It was a place called Tripod cabin. I was traveling with 2 other mushers, Jim Lanier and Paul Gebhardt. It was a sunny warm afternoon and the cabin was behind a hill so it was out of the wind! What a nice change! I liked it so much I stayed 8 hrs.

The following is a list of all my dogs on my team this year. A * marks the dogs that took turns leading. I rotated my leaders as much as possible to give each one a break.

Starting team		Finishing Team
Kuling* 3yrs Spider* 2yrs Sawyer* 4yrs Eos 3yrs Leo * 4yrs Calvin 2yrs Nike * 7yrs Peanut 2yrs	Asics* 7 yrs Judd* 4yrs Kate * 4yrs Dottie 4yrs Zephyr 3yrs Hobbs 2yrs Brave * 8yrs Mozart 3yrs	Leo * Eos Nike * Sawyer*	Brave* Asics * Dottie

Again, thank you all so much for your interest and support in the 2003 Iditarod. See you next year for Iditarod 2004.

Jessie Royer and the gang

Click here for Photos from the 2003 Iditarod
Click here for the Iditarod 2001 Story
Click here for Photos of the 2001 Iditarod

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