The boys (Cave, Rad, and Grove dogs) got off to a late start from base camp.  They were hoping the leave around 2pm so that they would get to the Peekamoose trailhead where there was a @3 hour hike into the race starting point around 3:30pm.  This plan would have had them breaking camp around 6:30 – giving them a chance to set up camp, eat some dinner, and make sure that Cave Dog could get a good nights rest.  Unfortunately they didn't get a chance to get out of Base camp until somewhere around 4:30 – we got a call from them as they reached their destination at @ 9:53 pm.

Meanwhile... back at Base camp D, Lady, and Crazy worked on planning and preparing the next days meals.  During this time we were awaiting the arrival of  Dura Dog  who was due to arrive around 7pm.  While we were waiting we contacted Adiron Dog, a freelance photographer, who was driving out to meet Cave Dog on top of Wittenberg summit where she was going to capture the Cave Dog's flight on film.  The plan was for Adiron Dog to come to base camp to pick up some supplies to re-provision Cave Dog before heading out – but it became apparent that it was more logical to have her go straight to the region where she would be hiking out from – thus we needed to make plans to meet her with supplies.

Upon Dura Dog's arrival we convoyed our cars over to the Slide Mountain Wilderness Area where we dropped off Dura Dog's car (ready for her pick up after her hike with Cave Dog), Crazy & Lady returned to Base camp, and D and Dura drove to the trailhead where they hiked in and joined Cave, Rad, and Grove dogs at the race starting point.

When Crazy and Lady returned to Base Camp they found several messages from the boys requesting information about the times to observe remembrance of the September 11th bombings – we discovered that it was rather difficult to get information back and forth from the Satellite phones (it seems that you need to stand on one foot on a large rock and grow an antenna out of your head in order to get a good satellite connection).  After getting the needed information and preparing food for the next day Crazy and Lady got a late nights rest with an early wake up call.  :{

    

Crazy and Lady dog got up at 6am to send Crazy off to provision Cave Dog at the road between Slide and Panther mountains.  This turned out to be eventful as the road that she was waiting on (and that Cave Dog ran along) was under construction with construction workers blocking parts of the road.  The construction workers took an avid interest into Cave Dog's adventure and made sure to keep Crazy Dog entertained and cheered Cave Dog on with a fan fare of horns and hollers. During this time the weather decided to make things interesting and developed rain and strong wind.

Tent City Disaster
While Crazy Dog spent the morning waiting for Cave Dog to run by  Lady Dog spent the morning cooking, cleaning, and getting Base camp organized.  During this time Slo and Ski arrived.   When Lady Dog invited them to go see our tent city they were only to find that the tents were blown all over... one of the drop clothes was in the lake, one tent was lifted and carried about 50 feet down into a large track of thorny bushes (this tent is yet to be retrieved!) and the other tents were either upside down or contorted into awkward positions.  We arrived just in time to save two of the tents that were being blown towards the lake.  It took us a little while to take down/retrieve the tents and rebuild some of our city in a more sheltered location.  We probably should have originally had the tents secured a bit better – but the weather was so idyllic when we put them up that we never even considered that this typed of weather would occur – it changed so suddenly from a balmy 80 degrees to a howling 50 degrees.

After the tent situation was resolved Lady Dog went to fetch some groceries, upon her return she promptly shut the locked door of the pathfinder with the keys still inside – of course there was no hide key!  This occurred just before she was due to drive Ski Dog to the next provision site; luckily Slo Dog was able to take her.  We were really fortunate to find a local locksmith that was able to promptly drive out and unlock our car.  The locksmith was really nice – after Lady Dog filled the tank with gas the total bill to unlock the door and gas only came to @ $50 – what a deal!

After all of this excitement of the first part of the day we were finally able to relax and prepare food for the afternoon provisions (crepes – hmmm) and update the web site. 

The afternoon didn't remain 100% peaceful – one of the groups that went out to provision Cave Dog arrived after he had already passed – allowing Cave Dog to get cold and a little dehydrated.  Additionally, there was some confusion when Slo Dog left early to drive Ski Dog, we had made two sets of supplies for Slo Dog, one for him to take immediately and one to be picked up later.  Unfortunately his radio was in the pile that he was to pick up later (which he wasn't able to accomplish) thus leaving Slo Dog without a radio or a cell phone.  Luckily, everything went smoothly and there weren't any major problems – but we should have been more careful about making sure that he had a radio in case of an emergency. 

It certainly has been a challenge finding appropriate food to prepare for Cave Dog.  He has decided that stopping to eat food that requires utensils slows him down too much so we have been trying to only send out finger food that is filling, nutritious, not messy, and that has a feel of variety. It seems that there are only so many ways to wrap things in tortillas that will be interesting and not messy – mashed potato tortilla anyone?  We rose to the challenge and are still working on an interesting menu.  Cave Dog will probably never want to eat another tortilla in his whole life.

Cave Dog met Night Dog, who was raring to go, at the Seager Trailhead. Night Dog was able to keep pace with Cave Dog, which gave him a good hiking companion from 10 pm through 10 am Thursday morning.   During this time they covered approximately 28 miles including 3 peaks (Eagle, Balsam Mountain, and Halcott).  Cave Dog was able to catch a little over an hours rest – twenty minutes on top of Belleayre, half an hour before climbing Halcott, and half an hour on Elk Creek road around 7 am.  After leaving Cave Dog at Johnson Hollow Night Dog returned to Base Camp pumped and anticipating his next expedition.

Thursday was for the most part uneventful and calm.  We had the arrival of a few more dog team members: Snow, Puppy, Hungry, and ADog.  With the team this size we were easily able to provision Cave Dog more often, he is coming across team members approximately every two hours.  At one of the provision sites Cave Dog was welcomed with a foot massage, second skin for the blisters on his toes, and a fresh omelete prepared on site. Cave Dog appeared to be healthy, happy, and ready to tackle the coming night hike.

We had a really interesting evening.  Besides Night Dog who was hiking with Cave Dog, we sent out four other people to provision Cave Dog during the night.  One of the team members got lost on the way to her destination due to the fact that some of the route markers had been taken down. She finally found her rendezvous location when one of the other team members drove over and they were able to figure it out together.  Another team member strained his knee on the hike into his rendezvous location and spent most of the night limping along to the meeting spot.  This team member was a little late making it to his destination but as Cave Dog had slowed down a little things still went well.  A third team member called base camp this morning from a lean-to stating that she was being pursued by a bear.  After swatting at the bear and chasing it away several times she managed to lose the bear and hiked further up the trail where she waited for Cave and Night Dogs.  Night Dog was able to hike out with her through the section where she had first encountered the bear.

During the day we were able to send people out to cheer Cave Dog on.  There was one section of road that was 7

Cave Dog made it the summitt of Windham High Peak at 9:24 pm  making his record in 2 days, 15 hours, and 24 minutes.  He was safe, happy, and healthy.