Karin Hendrickson (EnvCons’91) found herself on a 130-mile stretch along the Yukon River in a complete blizzard.
“The wind was so strong it was blowing the dogs over, but they kept going because they trusted me” she says.
The recollection of her experience in the Iditarod last winter is enough to send a shiver through the body of even the warmest listener.
Wind, snow and sub-zero temperatures are just a part of life for Hendrickson though, who owns a 24-dog kennel and, in addition to a day job with the state of Alaska, works as a musher running long-distance races through the wintertime wilderness with her teams of dogs.
After six years of training, she completed her first Iditarod last year, the infamous 1,000-mile dogsled race across the icy, mountainous Alaskan landscape from Anchorage to Nome. Last year’s particularly horrendous conditions didn’t scare her away and this year Hendrickson had her eyes set on the race again.
She pushed off from the starting line on March 6, but sadly, 20 hours into the race her sled broke, forcing Hendrickson to pull out of the race she worked so hard to prepare for.
Her preparation for the 10-to-14-day long race began long before most people turn their thoughts to snowfall and winter sports. From August onward, she spent every spare moment taking care of her dogs and training them for runs that lasted up to six or seven hours. She scrimped, saved and fundraised constantly to collect the $35,000 it takes to prepare and maintain a kennel of dogs for the race.
In her eyes, the work pays off every time she steps out on the sled.
“Being out there with dogs you spend your whole life with and the bond you create out there on the snow is really amazing,” she says.
Her dogsled history began when she agreed to take a vacation from her job in environmental regulation in Boise, Idaho, to help her mother volunteer at the Iditarod in 2002. The experience was a surprise from the boring, cold trip she was anticipating.
“I ended up harnessing dogs, packing sleds and I even got to go out with a few teams,” she says, “It much more active and fun than I expected.”
After the trip, she realized that she belonged on the dogsled and moved to Wasilla, Alaska. She worked as a handler for another musher and in 2007 started her own kennel.
In the weeks before this year’s Iditarod, Hendrickson was busy organizing the ton-plus of food and supplies that she dropped off at different points along the course, as well as selecting and training the team of 16 dogs that would pull her over the long stretch of Alaskan ice.
While she says that the preparation for the Iditarod is the hardest part, the physical toll is not insignificant. The riders only get a couple of hours of sleep a night after they’ve taken care of the dogs and have to choke down food over the nausea that comes with the lack of sleep.
“It’s a very long grueling race because while dogs rest you take care of them,” she says. “Because of the fatigue, the race becomes an endurance event for the musher more than the dogs.”
The difficulty of the experience is what keeps her coming back.
“I love the challenge of putting myself against horrendous weather, the terrain and the mind boggling huge distances,” she says. “If you can finish Iditarod you really feel like you have accomplished something.”
