HEET: Never mind, Amazon won’t ship to Alaska. So, we’ll need to buy it at Walmart and Costco and carry it. In three locations, we will be melting snow twice a day and this will require at least 24-30 bottles. If we heat up cold water at the remaining locations twice daily, this will require 30 bottles. So, about 54-60 bottles per musher.…[Read more]

HEET: The cheapest price I’ve found so far is at Walmart, for $5.89 for 4 of them. I haven’t seen any cases at the Meadow Lakes Three Bears but I’ll check Palmer and Knik. Now, IF Bering is willing to transport Heet to Unalakleet [Stephanie, please inquire], it could be purchased on Amazon prime for $47.86 for 24 bottles and shipped free to…[Read more]

STRAW PROJECT REPORT

Many thanks to Stephanie and Juliah for their input on this. I spent about 2 hours on the phone with Stephanie today and 2 hours tonight with Juliah in order to come up with a plan. Enough of us are concerned about costs that it made sense to revisit the Manley drop again, because it would eliminate the airdrop to…[Read more]

Kirsten, Cold Spot no longer ships out through by pass mail. So, that is not an option for the straw. They will take it over to Wright’s though.

For those of you who want/need poly bags, the site I am looking at is http://www.uline.com/sandbags and then there are the colored sandbags which come in various sizes. I personally like the size that animal food warehouse uses which is 24″ wide by 40″ long. In the past, the Serum Run has used the orange bags labelled as per the handbook to make its…[Read more]

I’ll find the link to the poly bags and will post it for anybody who wants to buy some.

Thanks, Kirsten. I have been in contact with Wright’s again. We will be shipping out about 600 pounds of straw but would also be shipping out food so may be able to make the 1,000 pound requirement but it might be close. I am in dialog with Wright’s about giving us a price break to 74 cents a pound to Ruby and $1.10 a pound to Kaltag by…[Read more]

Thanks for the update, Robert. Who is making arrangements for the Old Minto onwards Village contacts? It only sounded like the Nome area places were being visited; and, don’t we need permits for the cabins (Old Woman, Trapper, and Boneyard?

Here is the update on the straw report. Please note that I am only doing this from the ANchorage end of things since we have others working on this from the Nome end of it. So, my straw coverage area is Nenana through Old Woman and possibly Unalakleet (more on that later).

Straw Drops: Nenana (truck), Manley (truck), Ruby (air), Tanana…[Read more]

woven poly bags are typically used by mushers as drop bags for dog/people food and items for checkpoints. The Serum Run used to use orange poly bags so that their bags were easily distinguished from Iditarod drop bags, which were landing in the villages around the same time. You can buy these drop bags on line. They have orange and yellow; I’d…[Read more]

I am not sure if anybody has this document. What I have is the “Food Drop Shipping List” from the Serum Run. It has each of the Food drops plus a list of what you should send out for each food drop. The list builds in some extra days of food in the event there is a bad storm, so there is one extra day of food added for each food drop. So, if…[Read more]

I have been looking at the material from the past Serum Run in terms of figuring out how we might cut down on some of the shipping involving the straw. We probably will need to rake up clean straw in order to make sure there is enough for day three. The bales are not the huge ones. Here is my suggestion:

Nenana: we need 12 bales (2 per…[Read more]

Bill got a snowmachine for the trip today. We were hoping we’d get an Expedition that Marla heard about in FBNKS but the owner was not yet sure she’d want to sell it and won’t be making up her mind for a few weeks. Lou is also in the market for a machine, so if the FBNKS one becomes available we’ll figure out if we sell him our machine or get…[Read more]

Robert, Lou Packer is still planning on going. The hold up on his end is that the guy who told him that he’d be there to cover his clinic changed his mind. So, he has been making calls to other doctors to get coverage (which he has to do). He should be reaching out to you to explain the situation. He is going to take whatever machine we…[Read more]

Well, turns out the Underdog Straw bales are too big to ship. I got a verbal quote from AK Mill and Feed but will call again to get something in writing. So far, buying from Cold Spot appears to be cheapest. However, I need somebody to break down for me the places where the straw needs to be shipped. If I understand correctly, the Animal…[Read more]

I’m still on the hunt for a snowmachine. So, can’t tell you yet the model or anything else.

There’s an ARtika Arctic Oven Tent for sale on Craig’s list in Anchorage; it is the larger one and has all the components. It is $1800. Artika sleeps four.

Everts’ backhaul rate from NOme is $.38 per pound. I’ve got the lady’s contact information if anybody is interested. If AK Air is $.45 cents, then the only question is whether NAC is cheaper than Everts.

— I would like fish from Nome for the villages we can get it to (just let me know which ones so I plan accordingly)
— I am interested…[Read more]

Juliah, I’d be interested in splitting fish.