Jeff & KattiJo Deeter : Racing

Every year, the goal is to finish with a happy, healthy dog team. That is the most important thing to every musher.

Another popular goal is for mushers to beat their previously fastest race time. For example, in 2019 Jeff Deeter finished the Iditarod in 10 days and 20 hours. In 2020, his goal was to finish in under 10 days.

Someday we would like to win the Iditarod, of course. But it’s important that when we set goals for ourselves we make those goals realistic and measurable. Based on our experience level, and the experience level of our dogs, it’s not realistic for us to have a goal of winning the Iditarod yet.

Jeff really loves bad weather! His favorite thing on the Iditarod is when there are lots of storms with high wind and falling or blowing snow. This makes the race trail particularly challenging. It can be hard for the dogs to see where they are supposed to step, and hard for Jeff to keep the sled from tipping over. But he loves the challenge! Even though sometimes it’s scary and difficult, a challenging trail makes the race exciting. And a musher can feel proud of themselves and their dogs for being able to make it through these tough parts.

KattiJo’s favorite part of Iditarod is the beautiful scenery and the remoteness of the trail. She loves going where few other people get to go, and to be alone with just her dogs. She feels very lucky and at peace.

Cold temperatures can be very difficult, and our winter clothes are designed specifically for the conditions we face. Did you know that our parkas are handmade by a woman who lives in Fairbanks? Having appropriate clothing is critical, as is eating a lot of high fat, high carb foods to create energy and keep us warm. Hot coffee and tea are our favorite drinks while mushing down the trail.

Storms are very exciting, and the thrill of the elements typically keeps us plenty warm. If it is very windy and snowy, we have to focus to stay on the trail, and we may also help the dogs through the snow by pedaling and running with the sled. Moving our bodies keeps us warm and awake.

The most challenging part of the Iditarod is going for many days without good sleep. On a six hour rest, mushers are only taking about two hours of sleep. And we do that for many days on end. Even on our 24 hour rest we still have to wake up every few hours to feed and stretch our dogs. They get very hungry, even when they are sleeping, and their muscles need to be massaged and warmed up so they don’t feel stiff and sore when they start to run again.

The scariest parts of Iditarod are usually the Happy River Steps, The Dalzell Gorge and the Farewell Burn. These three areas are all between Finger Lake and Nikolai. First the Happy River Steps is a series of steep drops that you mush through in the Alaska Range. Basically you start up really high in the mountains when you leave Finger Lake. Then you drop down some very steep and narrow cliff edges, down to the Happy River below you.

The next challenge is the Dalzell Gorge. A gorge is a skinny cut between two sheer mountains, with a river running through it. We mush alongside the river for a little while, then we have to cross over the river a few different times. It is hard to control your sled in this area because the trail is very narrow with super sharp corners and lots of open water. After you leave the Dalzell Gorge you get to take a break in Rohn.

Then, when you leave Rohn, you enter the Farewell Burn. This is a good time to talk about “rain shadows.” A rain shadow occurs when precipitation comes off of the ocean and dumps itself all out on the front side of some mountains. Once the clouds are all empty of their rain or snow, they drift over the tops of the mountains and don’t have hardly any precipitation to leave on the backside. This is why the Farewell Burn is famous for having no snow. This area can also be very, very icy with lots of driftwood, boulders and gravel bars getting in the way of the sled.

Every musher sets up a different schedule of running and resting for their team based on the age of the dogs, experience of the dogs and the musher, and the difficulty of the trail. We run day and night, it doesn’t matter. At night we use really bright headlamps so we can see the trail.

A good schedule for young dogs or inexperienced mushers is “equal run and equal rest.” That usually means running for 6 to 8 hours, and then resting for 6 to 8 hours. Then running again for 6 to 8 hours, and resting again for 6 to 8 hours… And so on.

A schedule for a very competitive team that wants to win is something more like running for 6 to 10 hours, but then resting for only 2 to 4 hours… Then running again for 6 to 10 hours, and resting for 2 to 4 hours… And so on.

There are also some mandatory rests that are required on the trail, too, that all mushers must take. Everyone has to take two 8-hour rests and one 24-hour rest. This is a good time for us and our dogs to catch up on sleep, and for the veterinarians to look at our dogs and make sure everyone is happy and healthy.

When we are resting, we are either camped on the side of the trail or in checkpoints. Checkpoints are usually small, remote villages which are mostly populated by Alaska Native people. In the village, mushers will usually sleep in churches or school gymnasiums! Usually school is cancelled when the mushers are in town because the kids are too distracted to pay attention in the classroom, haha

When we rest on the trail instead of the checkpoint, we are just laying down in the straw with our dogs, or sleeping on top of our sleds. We have very warm sleeping bags and do not use tents. Tents do not provide any warmth, and they are just something extra and unnecessary to carry in the sled. In our sled we are really only carrying things that are crucial for survival – a cooker to melt snow into water, an axe to cut wood, booties for our dogs’ feed, and extra food and extra clothing for us and the dogs.

When we are resting we spend our time feeding the dogs, stretching or massaging the dogs, feeding ourselves and sleeping. We also like to talk to other mushers and ask them how their race is going and how their dogs are doing. But mostly if we have free time during a rest period, we are trying to get some sleep!

We send most of our human food and dog food out on the trail ahead of time in “drop bags.” These bags are labeled and left at each checkpoint along the trail. Each bag weighs about 40 pounds, and we send about 40 of them out on the trail (2 – 3 bags to each checkpoint). These bags are mostly full of human food, dog food, dog booties, gloves, batteries, dry socks, heat packs, runner plastic, dog blankets and foot cream for the dogs.

Sometimes the volunteers at the checkpoint will cook for us, too, and that is really nice!

When racing, the dogs eat a snack every two hours. A snack is usually ¼ pound of beef, chicken or salmon. This is a little bit bigger than the size of a hamburger or chicken sandwich from McDonalds, and without the bun! The dogs eat bigger meals whenever we are resting. We can’t feed them big meals when they are running because they can get really bad stomach aches and get very sick. On a six hour rest the dogs will eat two times. When the rests are longer the dogs can eat more meals and snacks. They love all kinds of food, but their favorite thing is frozen salmon!

The dogs run at about 9 miles an hour.

On average, we cover just over 100 miles in each 24 hour period. (Remember that we run during both the day and the night.) To measure this for yourself, look at the GPS tracker for a couple days during the race. Look to see what mile your favorite musher is at, and what time it is on the clock where you live. Tomorrow, at the same time, check the tracker again and see what race mile your favorite musher is at now. Subtract the smaller number from the larger number to see how many miles your musher has traveled in 24 hours. The number you come up with should be something around or over 100. If it’s not, the musher may have taken a significantly large rest during this time period. Check the numbers again tomorrow.

Most of the time if a dog gets sick, injured or tired while we are running down the trail we just stop and put them in our sled bag to give them a ride to the nearest checkpoint. When we get to the checkpoint we try to see if there is something we can do to help the dog feel better. Sometimes a good rest, a meal, a nice long massage, or some medicine can get them feeling better quick. If we can’t get them feeling better we will leave them in the care of volunteer veterinarians at the checkpoint and they will get flown home on an airplane. Most dogs heal up quickly and will run the Iditarod again next year!

Yes, we do listen to music when we’re racing and training. Our favorite kind of music is fast, upbeat, and easy to sing-along to. The thing we like to listen to most on the trail is audiobooks! We like fiction the best. Historical and post-apocalyptic stories are our favorites. We also really like books by Stephen King (but NOT the scary ones!) One of our favorite books is Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. It is a western, about a group of guys have a great adventure.

Yes, we see lots of ptarmigan, grouse, snowshoe hares and foxes. We also see some moose, and sometimes even caribou or wolves! We don’t see any bears because they are all hibernating.

We have a lot of feelings at the finish of the Iditarod. Of course we are pretty happy to get to the finish line because it means we can finally get a good rest, but we also feel a little bit sad for such a fun trip to be over.

After Jeff’s first and second Iditarods he felt a huge sense of accomplishment for having worked towards and finished something really challenging.

At the end of every race we always feel a huge sense of gratitude for our dogs for being so loyal and committed.

Our serious training starts in early September. Our first runs in September are only about 4 miles long, but we build the miles up every week and by January the dogs should be able to run for at least 60 miles with only short breaks for a couple minutes to eat a snack. The dogs run about four days a week, and have three days a week of rest or free play time.

We don’t have another job besides being with our dogs, so we get to spend lots of time with them. In winter our typical day starts by going outside to feed the dogs and clean up their poop. This usually takes about an hour. Then we go inside and eat breakfast. (That’s right: a musher always takes care of their dogs before they take care of themselves.) After breakfast we hook the dogs up and we go for a training run. It usually takes about an hour just to hook up, and then our training runs are usually between two hours and twelve hours long! At the end of the day we feed them dinner before we feed ourselves. Then we go to bed and we do the whole thing over again the next day! In summer we are not going on training runs because it is too hot. So instead of running in harness, the dogs get to go hiking or swimming.

Each musher can start the Iditarod with a maximum of 14 dogs, but we usually have about 20 or more in training all winter long. To see our Main Race Team and learn about each of them, go to our Meet the Dogs page.

To find out which 14 dogs we select for the race, ask your teacher, parent or guardian to check us out on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter!

Most of the dogs we have now we raised from puppies. We bought the mom and dad dogs from other mushers who we really admired and had good racing teams. When the mom and dad dogs have puppies, we raise all of the puppies together in a group and use the mom and dad dogs and other adult dogs for training the puppies. Now most of our racing adult dogs are dogs we raised from puppyhood. We continue to have puppies to replace dogs who are getting old and retiring. (You can ask your grandparents about retirement.) When the dogs are too old for racing they can still train puppies for a little while. Then when they are too old to do that they just get to be pet dogs who come inside and be spoiled! Right now we have three dogs who live inside with us, and more than 45 sled dogs who live mostly outside, although they get to come inside sometimes, too.

Jeff grew up in an Alaska Native village called Noorvik. Every April there is a 440 mile dog sled race that comes through town called the Kobuk 440. The first time Jeff saw that race, at age six, he knew that dog sledding was something he wanted to do. Jeff was very lucky to live in a place where there were people around with me with sled dogs who could teach him.

KattiJo grew up in northern Wisconsin where some people do still have sled dog teams, although not many. She came to Alaska in 2010 to learn more about dog sledding in a place where it is very popular, and there are a lot of dog mushers and sled dogs. She met Jeff in 2010, and they were married in 2013.

Jeff started mushing when he was 15 years old, and spent all of his teenage years focused only on running the Iditarod in 2008. He didn’t think about much else, or think about what he wanted to do with the whole rest of his life after Iditarod. In 2008 he completed the Iditarod at age 19. He was very happy with my accomplishment, but running the Iditarod is VERY expensive. As a teenager Jeff’s parents helped him with a lot of the expenses, but as Jeff’s 20^th birthday was approaching he knew he had to figure out how to pay for all of the Iditarods in the future, and also think really hard about if that was how he wanted to spend all his time and money. So between 2008 and 2018 Jeff did some traveling, and he went to college for a little while, and he mostly did a lot of thinking. He also met KattiJo in 2010 and she really encouraged him to follow his dreams and get back into racing if that was what he really wanted to do. Training sled dogs takes a lot of time and patience (and yes, money!) so it was really important for Jeff to find a partner like KattiJo who wanted to help and have sled dogs, too. Now we love training the dogs together.

In winter we like snowboarding, but we don’t have a lot of free time to do that because we are usually very busy with the dogs. In summer we like hiking, camping, canoeing, and going to the beach to play Frisbee and swim.

Sometimes we have helpers called “handlers.” Dog handlers are people who live with us, but aren’t family. Dog handlers help to feed and pick up after the dogs. They also help with some of the training and providing logistical support for races. Dog handlers are usually people who are really interested in learning about mushing. They may not know very much about mushing when they start working for a musher, but they get to learn by doing the work and helping out. Being a handler is a great way to learn how to be a dog musher.