JerseyCaptain wrote:
I'd also like to point out that the third photo down, in the first post, is not of Balto and his team, nor is it even proven that this photo was taken in Nome.
Consider this...one clear way to identify animals is by the markings on their coat. Now, look at the "socks" (the white markings) on the legs of the dog in the lead of that team. And then look veerrrrrrrrry carefully at this known photo of Balto (or just look at the other ones of him in the set):
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a389/JerseyCaptain/Balto.jpgThe markings are different. Similarly, the musher of Balto's team during the serum run was Gunnar Kaasen...a young Norwegian who was over 6 feet tall. The man at the sled in the photo here, even though he's crouching a bit in the turn, is certainly not more than 6 feet tall...in fact, I submit that he's rather shorter than that.
This photo has been referenced before as being of Balto and his team. And it's because people don't do their research well.
This might be true, but it's hard to say for sure. We can estimate the average husky height at the shoulders to be somewhere between 2 feet 2 inches and 2 feet 7 inches (I'm mostly going off estimations after bathing one two weekends ago. He came up to the end of my hip, roughly at 2' 5". He might just have been taller or shorter than other dogs, or I might have estimated incorrectly though, so that's why the range is there.) The dogs in the photo are roughly an inch tall (with variation here and there, of course). So we can assume that in the photo, 1 inch ~ 2' 4" (the ~ means, "is approximately equal to". I could find the real symbol for it, a double squiggle, but that will work for now.)
Unfortunately, we can't see the musher's feet. However, we know that they will mostly likely be on the back of the sled (there'd be a little problem for him if they weren't, after all). In the picture, it looks like the ground is higher on either side of the sled (which makes some sense) so we can't base the musher's height off any of the other people. We can see the bottom of the sled poking out to the right behind one of the dogs, though, and since the musher's feet are on it, we can measure from there and then draw horizontal line where the musher's head meets the ruler. If you want to get really technical, you can even move the rule up a little because of the perspective (meaning that because life is in 3 dimensions and not 2, the back of the sled will be far away from the front. The only way a picture can show that is by having the back of the sled seeming 'higher' than the front.) However, measuring at the front of the sled, will only seem to make the musher taller than he really is, and since I think he might be shorter than Gunnar, I'll measure at the front, just to dispel any doubt.
With measuring from the front of the sled at its lowest point (from what I can tell) and using a piece of paper to match his head height to the ruler, I got 1" and 10/16ths of an inch (to simplify, that's 5/8ths of an inch. 4/8ths would be 1/2 an inch, just to demonstrate the approximate size of 5/8ths an inch.) Now, let's multiply that by 2' 4". Obviously, the 1 inch gives us 2' 4" then, you multiply the 5/8ths by 2' 4" (I multiplied first by 2 to get the number of just feet, then 4 to get the remaining number of inches and with this I got a total of 1' 5", ironically enough) Add this to the 2' 4" we already have, and we get 3' 9". Obviously, he can't be this short and still be able to control his team, after all, I'm 5' 4". So, if we say that he's leaning over, which he does appear to be doing to get through that turn, and since we can't see the curvature of his body, let's estimate that he's lost about 2 feet due to this lean. That gives us 5' 9". This is roughly three inches away from 6'. Though, again, most of this is filled with approximations and doubt, since we can't see where his feet are and how he's bending, or even detail of his face. Though, I'm willing to say that this is probably not, Gunnar Kaasen, based on all of the estimations I through in his direction.
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