Fighting spirit
Katie Davis takes a sharp turn as she goes from the trail onto the road heading for home on Jan. 4 in Whitefish. Davis has gone on 70 training runs this winter, completing 1,500 miles. She will compete in the Lincoln - Seeley Lake Sled Dog races this weekend, then pack on Monday and leave for Alaska.
Katie Davis shares a moment with Whitney. Whitney is one of the team leaders and is expected to be on the Yukon Quest team.
Goon enjoys the view from the top of her dog house as she watches Davis get set for a training run in Whitefish. Goon is one of the dogs slated to be a member of the Yukon Quest team.
Davis loads Shilo into her truck on Dec. 23 in Whitefish. “Shilo is the most experienced dog on the team,” said Davis. When Davis ran Iditarod, Shilo was the dog that led the team to the finish.
Katie Davis copies a list of names from her “Yukon Quest bible,” a detailed record of which dogs are to train on which day and for what distance. In the background is the loft bed in the Whitefish garage, which has no running water, that Davis calls home. “I wouldn’t be living in a garage doing this if I didn’t love it,” said Davis.
Katie Davis and her team have been in training for five months, putting more than 1,500 miles behind them, mostly on trails above Olney in the Whitefish Mountain range.
Davis is the coach, and the dogs at her Evening Star Kennel are the athletes that will carry her on the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest race from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Whitehorse in Canada’s Yukon Territy starting Feb. 6. It’s the same distance as the famed Iditarod sled dog race, which Davis completed in 2006, but it comes with different challenges.
“Historically, the weather, the elements are the most challenging part of the Yukon Quest,” said Davis, who has been mushing in the Olney area for the last three years. “Temperatures around minus 60 are not unusual.”
Davis, 30, will be among 27 mushers participating in the race, and the only one from Montana. She and her 14-dog team will be trekking across frozen rivers and lakes, over mountains and rolling arctic terrain.
The deep-freeze conditions will require gear to match.
“When I have all my clothes on, I’ll look like I’m twice my body weight,” she said. “I have pants with one-inch foam insulation ... My boots make me about two and a half to three inches taller.”
The dogs will run with fleece jackets and booties on their paws.
“My goal is 12 days” for finishing the race, Davis said. “That should be a totally reasonable goal. I planned an 11-day schedule, but things always come up.”
She anticipates her team will be running between 80 and 100 miles a day.
“There is a lot of hill-climbing, so I’ll be doing a lot of what we call pedaling,” she said, referring to the one-legged kick off the back of the sled. “It will keep me warmer and more awake.”
Davis made the decision to enter the Yukon Quest just over a year ago and has been preparing for it since, with serious training starting last August. Her training regimen has varied, most recently running one day and taking the next day off.
This weekend, she is running 12 dogs in the Lincoln/Seeley Lake 200. It’s a race she’s won twice before but does not anticipate winning this time because she regards it more as a test drive and audition for some of her younger dogs.
“I’m leaving my four or five best dogs home,” she said. “I’m taking the younger dogs who have never raced before and it will tell me who’s got what it takes.”
Davis is still working out her 14-dog lineup, along with two alternate dogs, for the Yukon Quest. “I don’t know who my last three or four dogs are going to be on the team,” she said, and this weekend’s race will answer some questions.
“Anything can happen. Someone could cross the line and be a superstar that I didn’t expect,” she added.
Raised on a North Carolina horse farm, Davis said she got into mushing after attending a winter Outward Bound program. About nine years ago, she started running dogs in Jackson, Wyo. She moved to Montana to work for four-time Iditarod champion Doug Swingley in Lincoln for about two years, and has been in Olney for the last three years.
Working with Swingley played a part in her ability to finish the 1,000-mile Iditarod in 2006, an accomplishment that qualifies her to enter the Yukon Quest.
A big part of it is logistics. Swingley’s team helped a great deal in arranging for “drop bags” of food and supplies, for example.
“They had it pretty dialed in on how to do drop bags,” she said.
Whitefish area sled-dog enthusiasts Brooke Bohannon and Anita Williamson will be Davis’s support team on the Yukon Quest, driving her truck from Fairbanks to Whitehorse.
“This will be an adventure for them too,” Davis said.
As computer access comes available along the way, Bohannon and Davis will file updates on Davis’ progress on her blog at http:eveningstarkennel.blogspot.com
The race will also be tracked on the Yukon Quest Web site at http://www.yukonquest.com