Cascade Quest Sled Dog Race 2009 @ Trinity

This weekend was the annual Cascade Quest sled dog race and we had 4 Purebred 6 dog teams, and 12 6 dog teams plus a 12 dog team that wasn't racing just a practice run. The teams started getting here around 6:15pm last night and last team arrived at 9:05pm. It took a while to get the dogs fed and settled in for the night so it wasn't real quiet for a little while after they arrived but once they got full and laying down for the night it got fairly quiet until about 4 am when someone must have been moving around and within a moment all 108 dogs outside started singing in harmony with my 3 dogs joining them for a moment. The dogs outside continued singing until they finally restarted the last leg of the race at 8:30 am.
This was the largest group of 6 dog teams in the last 5 years that I have been here for the Cascade Quest. This year we had a completely new crew here except for us and Dr Ty Johnson the Trinity vet not only for the race but also for my dogs and cat also. It's nice having a vet that makes house calls to Trinity and this year he brought his daughter Haile who is 8.
Haile got to meet Emma Porter a first time musher to Trinity who made here first snow run, night run, & overnight run all in one race, but she isn't new to Trinity. For the last 4 years she has come up here as part of the crew here during the races with her dad Tom. This year Tom ran the sporting class team race while Emma ran the 6 dog staged race.
This year the trail was fairly fast due to the conditions we have had the last 3 weeks with very cold nights and warmer days so we were expecting some of the times records to fall this year. We had a great time, had many returning mushers and dogs some with different teams and owners along with some new mushers to this class race who did very well. Not sure how things finished today at the Rec club but should know in the next couple of days. If you haven't had the chance to witness the superb atheletes in action you should check it out. Once the mushers start putting the harness and booties on the dogs the switch goes on and the dogs are ready to run, it's a beautiful thing to watch.

Now even though we had all of those dogs here the only ones that didn't enjoy it were Peace, Bear & Lillie because they were put on house arrest and lockdown while all of the other dogs were here, just didn't need them wanting to play with all of the tied up dogs, it wouldn't have been a pretty site.
We found our Paradise, hope you find your's too. Peace