Beargrease 120 2026

Now that I feel like a human again...let's Beargrease recap!

Definitely the most anxious I've ever been for a race. I was having a panic attack during the musher's meeting and the trail descriptions. All I could think about was my really bad experiences with night runs last year.

The start was equally stressful. We had to get up at ass o' clock to be parked, so I'm going in sleep deprived. An hour before my chute time, I drop the dogs and start harnessing and booting, decide to put coats on Bogey and Compass because it was going to be -8 or so by the time we finished our run, and they have short coats and tend to get cold. The team was:

Compass - Foucher

Zirkle - Bogey

Croissant - Kestrel

Watkins - Ordona

Photos courtesy of handler Erin Kaprelian and my friend and Flounder lover, Barbara Liukkonen

We get picked up by the sideXside, driven to the chute, and Bogey slips her collar. 60 seconds for the handlers to put it back on. We get into the chute. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1....Bogey slips her collar again! So we get out of the chute like 30 or 60 seconds late to fix that snafu. Uphill the snow road, and down a giant hill. Then we have a right turn on the snowmobile trail. The last time I did Beargrease, that turn was scary but it was pretty gradual. This year, it was a pretty hard right turn with a big snow berm on the inside. I stand on my bar brake, and the snow is worn all the way through from all the teams before me doing the same, meaning I am just scratching the carbide tips on pavement below. Slow, slow....and then at the last second I get off the bar brake and whip around the corner at about 20mph. Thankfully after that, nothing else was too scary!

The first leg is about 36 miles. It is a lot of up and down hills, with a few steep climbs and a few big WHEEE! sections. My general philosophy when driving a sled is "we can zoom a little" - I'm watching the dogs, not my GPS, so I try to watch the dogs' gaits to judge their speed. When I found out our average speed was almost 12mph, I later wondered if we zoomed a little TOO much. The trail was hard packed and a little icy from the deep cold, and it was a very fast trail. They were tackling those big hills like beasts, sprinting up some before I could even get a chance to help them out. They came into the checkpoint looking great. Kestrel was weirdly not pulling for the second half of the run, so I massaged him and out of an abundance of caution, I decided to drop him here. If he quit on the second run, he is a big, heavy dog to bag and carry, and I didn't want to take that risk when I still had 7 eager dogs.

The dogs saw a tent for the first time on the trail - they had no clue what it was!

On the way to Highway 2 Checkpoint. Second photo courtesy of Barbara Liukkonen

Resting at Hwy 2. Photos courtesy of handler Erin Kaprelian and my friend and Flounder lover, Barbara Liukkonen

When it was time to leave for the second run, the sun had set and the temperature was dropping. I knew it would be getting near -20 by the end of this run, so I decided to leave the jackets on all the dogs. I don't normally run at these temperatures for my comfort, so it was actually my first time running the team in full jackets for both warmth and frostbite prevention. I have a new fuck-you bright headlamp this year, a fancy Lupine Wilma, because I had so many headlamp issues last year which led to a lot of anxiety and bad runs. All of that anxiety was weighing on my shoulders as we set out, but that headlamp was worth every penny. I only had it on medium brightness and I could see the whole damn trail. It was such a different experience. Yes, it was cold, I had to keep wiping frozen fog off my glasses, I was uncomfortable having to put SO MUCH CLOTHING on, but I could SEE and it made all the difference. My Bluetooth headphones died halfway through the run - I had put my podcast on to distract me from the anxiety I expected to be feeling - but it wasn't even a huge deal. I was feeling fine, the trail was beautifully marked with the reflective signs lighting up.

Compass was amazing - there was one spot where the trail forked in two, there wasn't a trail marker so I was slow making the decision which way to go, and the dogs took us to the right because I train them to stay on the right side of the trail for safety. By the time I got the sled stopped, the lead dogs were already past the snow berm separating the two trails. But I told Compass, haw! And he pushed Foucher over onto the left trail, over the snow berm, onto the correct trail. I couldn't have been prouder of him. Having him in lead was truly like driving a car with his gee and haw, I've never had a true command leader like him and it was amazing to experience. I don't know where he picked it up, because it sure wasn't me, but boy am I glad he figured it out!

This leg was relatively flat in comparison to the last. There were some longer, slower climbs but nothing too steep and no big up-down-up-down like the first leg. For 25 or so miles, the dogs looked great - slower than our first leg, but plugging along and trotting away happily. But as we continued on that last third of the 38 mile run, the dogs seemed to really slow down on hills. Every single uphill, no matter how shallow it was, no matter how short it was, the dogs looked back at me and if I didn't kick or get off and walk behind the sled, the dogs would stop. It was a totally different mentality than our first run where they were like, hills? What hills? As soon as we crested a hill, the dogs would be fine again, moving well on any flat or downhill section with their usual gusto. But I had to kick or walk up every hill those last 13 or so miles. I do help the dogs a lot, don't get me wrong, but I usually only help them on the really tough hills. I cannot help on every single hill, I don't have the stamina of a sleddog. It was pretty miserable for me in that cold trying to exercise, between my face being cold, my nose running and making me cough, and my core being hot and sweaty. It is really tough to balance how much to wear.

We came into Finland and the dogs were tired, I could tell. I had a feeling of what I needed to do after they just mentally quit on hills after that last leg, but I know the rules: don't make any decisions until you eat, sleep, and the dogs have rested. So I did that. I also looked up the elevation graph for the final leg. We were at 75 miles when we stopped to rest in Finland. You see the elevation for the rest of the race, right?

When I walked back over to the truck, the dogs were all curled up tight and shivering. It was tough for them to recover in the frigid cold. I know everyone was dealing with the same thing but...between the cold, the dogs not running up hills, and the anticipation of the final leg being a LOT of uphill, it was tough to imagine we should keep going. Could we have toughed it out? Probably. But it wouldn't have been fun for me or the dogs. And truly, I could not see myself, the human, walking up every hill behind the dogs and coming out the other end ok. Croissant was the only one who was up and ready to continue once my earliest out time came around, everyone else was still curled up tight in their straw beds.

Once I made the scratch official, I returned to the truck and started unharnessing dogs. I was still struggling with the decision, until I took Compass' coat off. He had been wearing it since the start so I hadn't been looking at him. But I was flabbergasted by how much weight he lost between the running and the cold. He passed his vet check fine, but the dogs all lost weight for sure. After I realized that, no more regrets. I wouldn't have wanted them to keep running like that.

We had two really great runs. No regrets! I have unfinished business and I'll be back for the Trestle Inn breakfast next year.