Album & Stories: Team Baker Preps for Iditarod 2008

Team Baker Preps for Iditarod 2008 by Lori Henry

Lori with John in the village of White Mountain (2005)

Tollef Monson with awards from the 2007 Iditarod banquet

Benoit Gerard eating a meal in Noatak during the Baker 120 Race

Darrin Nelson

Robert Nelson

Uncle Louie with his wife Lulu and niece Lori

A sled load of sheefish for dog food

Robert and others chipping & bagging beef

Iva Baker with a pile of dog booties

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Family & The Iditarod

This year, my family will have six teams in the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, starting March 1st.

Mushers

My brother, John Baker (shown with me in the photo), will have two additional teams driven by:

• Tollef Monson (who drove for John last year)
• Benoit Gerard (a rookie musher from France)

Other family members also racing:

• My uncle, Louis Nelson (pictured with his wife, Lulu)
• His two sons, Robert and Darrin Nelson (both rookies this year)

Musher Meals

As you can imagine, preparing for this race takes a massive effort. I’m responsible for cooking meals for my brother’s kennel (three mushers), and this year we’ve added my cousins — bringing the total to five mushers.

I don’t do all of the cooking myself (thankfully). Instead, I organize our many family chefs. We prepare breakfasts, lunches, dinners, baked goods, and desserts. Every meal is pre-cooked, frozen, and vacuum-sealed so mushers can heat them up easily on the trail. The goal is to provide meals that are both nourishing and appealing — careful planning is key.

This year, we prepared 1,010 individual meal packets — absolutely incredible!

While studying in France this year, I sampled dishes I thought would reheat well and appeal to Benoit. We added:

• Coq au Vin
• Chicken Chasseur
• Boeuf Bourguignon
• Cassoulet

Each dish is cooked with wine or brandy, making them the most gourmet meals we’ve ever packed. We also prepared croissant sandwiches with sausage and cheese. After tasting them all, I think Benoit won’t be the only one enjoying French cuisine.

Meal prep for this year’s race took me 10 full days (compared to 5 last year). I also made two trips to Kotzebue for intensive cooking marathons with my family.

Dog Food

Cooking for the mushers is just a small part of the work. We also:

• Chip and saw meat and fish
• Bag dry food for the dogs

Each dog needs about 12,000 calories per day, which means mushers must send out around 1,500 pounds of dog food per team. Patrick has already made one trip to Kotzebue to help with the cutting and may make another.

Dog Booties

Another huge task: sewing dog booties.

Each team of 16 dogs needs 64 booties per checkpoint × 19 checkpoints = 1,216 booties per team (roughly one per mile). Booties must be sewn, turned, sorted by size, and bundled so mushers can quickly put them on each dog.

John’s wife, Iva, made booties for three teams — a total of 3,648 booties! She thought she was finished, but then John mentioned possibly switching two dogs, which meant she might need to adjust sizes.