I like to think of the Iditarod race as a cruise ship vacation. Each checkpoint is a new port of call, and the food might be served buffet style rather than made to order, but it’s a very good buffet. The offerings are varied enough that the route has some texture. For instance, one evening’s meal might feature chicken thighs, wild-caught Alaskan salmon, scrambled eggs, a variety of cheeses, and some kind of fatty frozen dessert. In the morning, there might be strips of tender red beef, pork medallions, whole eggs, some kind of crunchy dried snack, and canned fish in oil.
One staple is chicken legs. I pack over 300 raw chicken legs for the Iditarod race. Something about grabbing the bone and tossing it in the snow and watching my teammates wolf it down nearly whole —well, let’s just say I know well the origin of the term “wolf it down.”
I pack everything. Sometimes gummy worms, sometimes little pats of butter. When you’re tired, it’s hard to get enough calories, so I like to pack fatty foods like bacon, ham, and cheesecake. This year, I went heavy on herring, and I tend to pack a lot of calcium supplements. Probiotics are essential, because travel can do weird things to digestion. I make little sandwiches full of honey. Sometimes I fry bacon; sometimes I serve it raw.
Good old-fashioned Gatorade works wonders for electrolyte balance. I often thaw it in my armpits while driving the sled.
Occasionally I’ll even resort to cat food. Literally. You never know. Packs of ramen noodles. Usually I don’t bother seasoning or even cooking them. The crunch is satisfying, but easy on the mouth. I also tend to favor peanut butter—again, warmed in the armpits or the front pocket of my pants.
But that’s just what I feed the dogs.
I sent a ton of food up the trail for our dogs to enjoy at every checkpoint. The race is like a great expedition for them, punctuated by fun feasts among lots of new friends, when they happen to camp near other teams. It has all the drama of a Caribbean cruise, but without all the heat. Plenty of HEET, though. We carry bottles of HEET methanol antifreeze for our alcohol cookers, so we can melt snow and heat dog food on the trail.
When I say I sent a ton of dog food up the trail, I do mean a ton, or nearly so. My drop bags weighed 1976 pounds when I weighed them to ship them up-trail. My team’s food packages weren’t the heaviest, nor the lightest. But what do I eat?
What I Eat During the Iditarod
A single sled dog needs about 10,000 calories per day while running the Iditarod. Mushers run less, but we’re bigger, so I’d guess we burn about the same. We spend 12 to 16 hours a day behind the sled, often jogging, pushing it up hills, or muscling over rough terrain. Even when the dogs rest, we’re often still working: melting snow for water or chopping through ice, fixing equipment, arranging and packing up camp. I’m sure my parka will be loose by the time I reach the Bering Sea.
Thank goodness for Sarah Hamilton, a longtime sled dog booster who happens to run Trail Center Lodge along the Gunflint Trail in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. She makes heat-and-eat trail meals called CAMP CHOW, and if a box of them hadn’t arrived literally hours before my dogs and I left for Alaska, I would be fighting my dogs for pork.
Which of course I would never do, because the dogs come first. Moms and dads feed their children. Mushers feed their dogs. We take much delight in their hearty appetites. We try to get everything just how they like it, so they can focus on their race. Cutting off the proverbial crusts, if that’s what they need. We’re kind of useless out there compared to the dogs, so this also makes us feel a little better about ourselves. By the time we’re a few hundred miles in, they’ll eat just about anything.
Sarah’s CAMP CHOW meals can be made with hot water or even cold water. She sends me the gluten-free ones, which are incredible. There’s a blueberry parfait that I don’t think I could ever get sick of, which is saying something, because it’s hard to eat when you’re so tired. I’m thirsty out there. My teeth are practically furry. All I want to do is sleep. I am the last creature I feed, and it’s hard to cajole myself into eating, but it’s necessary, and Camp Chow makes it possible.
Other mushers have their own techniques. One friend asked me to pick up 20 McChicken sandwiches right before the Iditarod start a few years back. He kept them in his sled, and thawed them one by one in his armpits when he got hungry. My wife, also a musher, swears by frozen cheesecakes, because she loses her appetite completely on the trail, and they’re caloric and never freeze too hard to take a bite. She likes Twizzlers, too. They freeze solid, but she can hang one out of her mouth like a farmer with a blade of straw, thawing and gnawing it inch by inch. The sugar keeps her warm and the taste keeps her awake.
What about drinks? We mushers drink a lot of hot Tang. Sometimes it’s available at checkpoints, steeping in a big thermos next to coffee that might or might not taste like coffee, although no one cares for taste at that point. I packed bottles of iced tea and coconut water in my drop bags, because I can drop them (frozen) into my cooker when I’m making dog food. When they thaw just enough, I gulp down the slush.
Unless, of course, the dogs decided they want what’s mine. In that case, it becomes theirs. I’m happy to live on the crumbs.
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