4 am and my six hour shift started an hour ago. Two teams have come thorugh and kept going after a brief top. I arrived yesterday around 3pm after a flight from Anchorage to MGrath on a jet plane. In McGrath we were briefly grounded due to poor viz and snow. There were proably 10-15 of us vets flying in from Anchorage. We walked down the road from the airport to Susie's Cafe, where many of us joyfully reunited with some of the other vets we had met the first week. It felt like seeing old friends. Stu was there too, pacing around with his clipboard. I can imagine hohw little it pleased him to have such a significant portion of his veterinary team idling in a cafe unable to hit the trail. Fortunately after not too long, they alowed a flight carryign to passengers to Takotna, which is just a hop away. When our pilot on that flight reported back to ground control that he could see about five miles, they started sending more flights out.
Takotna is a village, pop about 50. We share the community library with the mushers as our sleeping quarters. Each team is required to take a 24 hour stop at a checkpoint of their choosing, prior to hitting the Yukon River. Many teams opt to do it here because of the comfortable amenities and good, cooked food. So when I arrived in the afternooon, there were teams of dogs bedded down through the town, up and down the hillside, rows of canine concatenations sleeping in the snow.
Nicolette Zarday, DVM, MPH
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