IditaProject Forum

Yes, I mailed her and thanked her for the great article. She then agreed to let us use it here - translated into english
Oh, and I googled Gøril - she is one foxy lady

Eskil

Haha, I guess you prefer blondes.

Anyway, there are sure to be other articles coming up these days as the start of the race is getting closer; we should make a habit out of contacting the locals (ie newspapers) for permission regarding the translation of the pieces.

WOW many thanks and a GREAT translation Tilstede and Eskil! Thanks so much .. must be a real pain to type it all out ..

Gift for ya ---> *incoming platters of cookies, brownies and pitcher of milk*

More to come, darling WIll soon start translating the next part.

Next part (and still one to go)

Exchanged the car with a dog

In 2007 she decided to participate in the hard dog sled race through Alaska’s wilderness.

I had no place to live, no money and no plans. But I was determined to participate. I got hold on some spare dogs and among other things, I swapped my old car, a Nissan, with a husky. All in all, at last I had a team, and I was able to start.

Now Sigrid has 21 adults and eight puppies. She looks forward to Iditarod, but is humble to which position she will get.
- The race is extremely hard, and even if I hope for a better position than in last year’s race, I should be happy with even be able to reach Nome. Many mushers have to scratch, she says. Herself she used 10 days to get to Nome.

First man or woman who reach the burled arch wins, in addition to honour and glory, 75.000 dollars. But it is expensive to participate.

- Owning dogs is expensive. It costs me about 25.000 dollars to go to the start, and the double to keep the team running during a season.
A lot of factors have influence in the world toughest race.

- You cannot foresee what kind of weather you will get or which trail conditions you will meet. Me myself prefer to travel at night, especially when the temperature is warm. – 20 celcius is perfect, and -10 celcius is too hot. There is a mandatory 24 h layover during the race, in addition comes 2 x 8h mandatory rests. So one should make a tactical plan of when and where to have the breaks and runs. There are vets at every checkpoint. If a dog is ill, they have to be left behind.

She is training the dogs the year around. In the summer of 2006 Sigrid got to test the dogs on one of Alaska’s glaciers, where she worked as a guide. - With a small budget, I had to get paid work in the summer, and being so the guiding on Juneau was perfect. Here I got to combine working with training the dogs. It was here I met Mark, who after a while became my handler.
March 1st the Iditarod starts. Together with Sigrid on the start line, there will be 106 other mushers from North America and Europe. Already 6 have withdrawn.

- I fell we are a good team and that things works fine. It’s important to me that the dogs are happy and pleased.

Thanks to our friends in Norway, if it wasn't for you we wouldn't even know about the articles. Thank you very much for sharing.

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I strongly recommend all Norwegians to rush out and buy todays issue of Dagens Næringsliv. There's a 9-page special on Sigrid Ekran and mushing in the supplement. I haven't read it yet, I wanna save it for some cosy Sunday reading in front of the fire place, but by the looks it's a super article with lots of great photos.

Still one part left to translate. I was expecting Eskil to be in process, but seems like he is busy?

I haven't seen him logged-on for a couple of days. Maybe he's on winter holiday?

Great story, many thanks for sharing Ya'll ROCK!