akaquaman wrote:. . . Sounds rather like what happened to Jeff King a few years back in a similar situation where the wind blew him and his dogs off the trail and forced him to hunker down for pure survival. Did Jeff end up hitting his emergency button and then had to scratch when help arrived - can’t remember? . . .
When I saw Brent's detailed account of what had happened to him when he had that unexpected hour plus delay due to powerful wind I was most struck by how very very nearly he had the same experience that Jeff had in 2014. As I recall, Jeff left White Mountain with what would in most years be a sure winning position -- about an hour lead over Aliy Zirkle and about two hours over Dallas. When he got to the blowhole area he got hit by winds that threw his dogs around and into driftwood, threw the sled around, plus the snow was blinding. He has a *lot* of diverse experience, but all he could do, finally, was get his dogs together in the best sort of limited windbreak area he could find/devise for them and hitch a ride with some passing snowmobiles to get to Safety and bring back help for his dogs. Which meant of course that in just a short time he went from nearing completion of a near certain win -- which I think would have made him the oldest winner -- to having to scratch because of outside help -- but he was seriously concerned about whether his dogs would even survive and when someone like Jeff thinks that, you know it wasn't undue panic but a real data based concern. He got help as quickly as he could and brought it back to where he'd left the dogs, but at first, no dogs in sight. He wrote later that he almost dreaded finding them (of course, it wasn't just the cold and snow and wind but he knew they'd been thrown around and wasn't sure of their conditions except that he wanted to get them help and relief as soon as possible.) When he called to them, though, they began popping up out of the snow and as I recall none of them had serious injuries and they were taken to shelter by the assistants Jeff had brought back with him. Aliy had passed him without ever seeing him or his dogs, never knew, in the ground blizzard, exactly where she was, near the trail or headed out on the sea ice or whether she passed near Jeff or his dogs, said she might well not have survived, but the famous Quito was leading Aliy's team and suddenly, to Aliy's surprise and relief, Safety loomed up in front of them. She stopped there to let the most dangerous conditions pass and was back with her team contemplating that conditions had improved enough that she could go on when Dallas came through, not seeing either Jeff or Aliy and assuming that both were ahead of him somewhere as he knew both had an 'uncatchable' lead over him, unless something almost impossible happened . . . Aliy *almost* caught him -- Dallas saw someone behind him, but thought it was his Dad, then when he went under the arch, did he ever get a surprise.