Lonely Hill rose from a flat frozen marsh, a solitary sentinel guarding the Iditarod Trail’s entrance to Norton Bay. At the foot of that towering rock stood what, on clear days, you’d have to call a crude plywood shack. On bad days, when searing winds whipped the barren coast, grateful travelers found those worn boards a priceless sanctuary.
The shelter looked bleak and unappealing when I caught the others there. A quick visit inside did nothing to change my opinion. Then again, it was a hospitable night. No wind to speak of, it was relatively mild, with darkness just slipping over the gray horizon. And there was comfort in the company gathered at Lonely Hill. Only Daily was missing from the convoy.
A faint breeze was rising. Cooley wanted everyone to agree to stick together crossing the ice. Plettner protested. She didn’t want to play nursemaid, as she had out on the Yukon. Her dogs were faster, she pointed out, so she had to keep stopping and waiting for the slower teams. Stopping at some arbitrary exposed place, midway across the ice, sounded awful cold to her.
I didn’t like the idea any better. I may have needed help with the deep Yukon snow, but this was entirely different. I was confident that Rainy and Harley, even Chad, Raven, and Rat, could handle the ice. My team was slower, not slower than everybody else’s, but definitely slower than Plettner’s, Herrman’s, Cooley’s and, perhaps, Williams’s. Traveling with the convoy compounded the speed differential. Speedsters shot ahead, then rested awaiting us slow pokes. As soon as teams like mine closed the gap, the fast drivers took off again. The net result was that the teams in the rear of the convoy were getting progressively less and less rest, resulting in our slowing down even more.
Scar was curling so tightly at every pause that he looked like a pretzel. Digger still leaped like a pogo stick when the team paused, but that bouncing exuberance seemed reflexive, almost zombielike. Even Harley seemed a bit shell-shocked, but his trembling had always been disconcerting. I argued that my dogs would be better off setting their own pace.
Cooley hung tough. “Every team in this group is going to get to Nome” he declared. “And that means we’re going to stick together tonight.” He suggested that we all go inside the shelter to discuss it.
Plettner was sick of discussions. The group was making her crazy. She pictured herself holding a machine gun and laughing as she shot us down. Rather than waste more time, she agreed to Cooley’s plan. I went along, albeit reluctantly. Each musher pledged to watch out for the team directly behind. We came up with a code for the headlamps. One blink meant “everything is all right.” Two blinks: “I’m in trouble.”
Based on the order of our arrival at Lonely Hill, Don Mormile owned the last spot in line crossing the ice. He approached me before we broke camp.
“I’m having some trouble with my leaders …”
Mormile was a ceaseless complainer. He whined about checkpoints, about race officials, and about his dogs, which were leased from Redington. I didn’t like Don Mormile. I didn’t trust him. But my personal distaste faded when I saw the fear in his eyes.
“Why don’t you go in front,” I said. The parade order made no difference to me. Not with Nome still 200 miles away. “But you better be watching for me, Mormile. You better be watching.”
Tom Daily enjoyed the climb out of Unalakleet. He hadn’t expected to see so much timber this far north. The sun was so inviting he lay on his sled and napped atop one of the hills. He awakened feeling refreshed.
Reality was waiting in the marsh below. Clouds rolled in, hurling a bitter wind at the Red Lantern musher and his dogs. The only encouraging sign came from Bogus. From the moment he hit the coast, the dog had undergone a personality change. His tug line was taut, and he trotted with the enthusiasm of a pup.
Daily assumed he would catch us in Shaktoolik. But all he found waiting behind the armory were empty beds of straw and a loose pile of race-related trash.
“Oh, you Iditarod mushers. Thank God you’re the last one.” As if it weren’t depressing enough to find us gone, the village checker’s sour greeting stung.
“Let me use a bathroom, and I’m out of here,” Daily said.
The armory’s compost toilet was overflowing owing to heavy use from earlier racers. Tom was directed to a nearby house. The family was very friendly. They ushered him into a room with a toilet in a corner. He was taking off his gear, layer by layer, when he noticed a little Eskimo girl watching. He tried to shoo her from the room, but the little girl kept sneaking back inside, delighted by this new game with the oddly costumed stranger.
“Nothing comes easy on this Iditarod,” the musher mumbled.
Conditions became hellish after Daily left Shaktoolik about eight that night. Loose snow shot across the hard drifts making it tough to see. And while Bogus set a good pace, he kept veering from the marked trail. “Gee! Gee! Gee!” Daily felt as if he had shouted the command a thousand times.
Daily sensed his dogs were nearing their emotional limit. He was being sandblasted by the wind and was starting to doubt his own judgment. The trail ahead looked awful, but Tom wasn’t at all sure he could find the way back to the village. Less than 15 miles out from Shaktoolik, Daily’s sled abruptly stopped. Curling into balls, his dogs lay down in the storm.
Begging my way onto the Associated Press plane one year, I got a look at what mushers faced crossing Norton Sound. The pilot, Larry, swooped low over several teams so Rob Stapleton and I could get pictures. The light was magnificent. The sun, already low on the horizon, threw long shadows off the dog teams, which were cutting a straight line through patches of white snow and dark blue sea ice. As Larry circled and banked, Stapleton and I leaned out the windows, chewing up film in our motor drives.
Mushing across the ice wasn’t bad, not at first. The dogs were rolling. My runners neatly sliced the crusty mounds. In the areas free of snow, numerous white cracks showed through the dark ice, but the visible depth of the fractures was actually a comfort. I caught Mormile whenever I pleased. He was conscientious about checking on me. Every five minutes or so he turned back and flashed his headlamp, awaiting my response. The bouncing lights of the full convoy stretched out half a mile or more into the darkness. Odd shouts floated back across the ice, mixing with the wind and the steady crunch of sleds on the move.
It was the perfect moment for listening to my much-traveled Miles Davis tape. I was still amazed at the journey the tape had made. A race volunteer had found it on the trail leaving Rohn, where the tape had fallen out of my overturned sled. It had then been sent ahead to Unalakleet, via Iditarod’s air force, and the checker there surprised me with it. I had the tape with me, but it was purely a good-luck charm. My Walkman had quit. Too bad, the trumpeter’s wail would have suited this forlorn place.
Another annoyance: my thermos was empty. I had meant to refill it when I melted snow for cooking in Shaktoolik. But I had forgotten and used all the hot water for mixing dog food. I was thirsty.
As the temperature dropped, I reached inside the sled bag and pulled out my parka. Wearing the coat loosely over my shoulders helped, until it got colder. The parka zipper was icy, and I had trouble sealing it. I needed that full hood — the breeze was turning vicious. Balancing on the runners as the sled continued to bump and slide across the ice, I gripped the zipper tab with Channellock pliers. I had worked the zipper to just below my neck when the goddamn tab tore loose. Lurching backward, I almost fell off the sled. I swung my arms until I regained my balance on the runners.
The hood on my parka now became a wind scoop, funneling the subzero breeze into my chest. I held the neck of my parka shut with one hand, while I gripped the sled with the other. Hunched over the handlebar, I concentrated on keeping Mormile in sight. Northern lights were rippling overhead, neon green, soft white, and hints of red, but I was in no mood to appreciate them. I was cold, damn cold. Too cold to care.
Later, I don’t know how much later — time having become secondary to the absolute necessity of clinging to the sled and staring at Cyrus’s and Rat’s steps as they ran in wheel — I came upon the others. They were stopped for some reason, talking and snacking their dogs. I watched them, making no move to get off my sled.
“You OK?” Terhune asked.
I had trouble even processing the question. And when I sorted “yes” from “no,” my mouth just wouldn’t work. I shook my head. By then, I was surrounded by headlamps.
“Drink this,” someone said, handing me a cup of warm juice.
The liquid was startling, rolling down my throat like fire. I drank several cups and felt the energy spreading through my body. Snapping out of my delirium, I babbled about the zipper. “You need a shell, something to block that wind.”
I dug out Nora’s shell. It was too small to fit over my big parka, but it might fit between the parka and the snowmachine suit. The zipper was still locked under my neck. The others helped me duck out of the stiff parka and slip on the lightweight shell, which was really too tight for this purpose. I felt like a mummy as they lowered the parka back over my head, but the deadly chink in my armor was closed.
Gripped by the cold, I’d stopped eating, a telltale sign that I wasn’t thinking clearly. As I revived, I felt ravenous. But I was careful. I hadn’t forgotten the story of the musher who had knocked himself out of the Quest with a handful of M&Ms. Popping them in his mouth on a 40-below night, he gagged as they froze to his mouth and throat.
I settled for gnawing on a rock-hard brownie. Then I took care of the dogs. Their ears perked as they heard the rustle of the stiff plastic snack bag. They were tired, I could see that in Rainy’s brown eyes, and in the way Cricket, Screech, and Scar sprawled, wagging their tails lightly as I approached with the goodies. Harley stood stiffly, trembling with anticipation. Only Pig and Cyrus showed no signs of fatigue and leaped for the chunks of sausage fat and frozen whitefish.
The rest stop abruptly ended when Tom Cooley called our attention to a low black fog swallowing stars on the horizon.
“A ground blizzard is coming,” he said. “We better run straight through.”
Low-blowing powder was streaming across the ice, parting on contact with the dogs like water around boulders. Eye-level, visibility wasn’t bad, but the wind penetrated my face mask, making my cheeks ache.
Crossing a dip, Spook caught a foot in the lines. I let him hop for a few seconds, hoping he would clear it on his own. No such luck. Mormile pulled away as I stopped to clear the tangle. Nothing to worry about.
I ran back to the sled. Yanked the hook and …
Harley had doubled back and was humping Raven.
“Harley, no!” I ran up front and tried to separate them. Too late. They were locked together in the unstoppable romance dance, indifferent to the blizzard gathering force around us.
“Why now. Why now,” I groaned.
Mormile’s light steadily sailed away. I looked at my watch, marking off 20 minutes, wondering how far ahead the others could get in that span of the dial. Would I still be able to see their lights? Two, three minutes passed, Mormile hadn’t turned around. I cursed him, calling on the stars to witness his perfidy. Finally, he turned.
One blink. Was I OK?
How to explain? Hell. I returned one blink. “A-OK here,” sure. So I was trapped on the ice with a storm bearing down, waiting for Harley to get his rocks off. Up front, the lesbian was trying to mount Screech. The other dogs were watching me. Scar and Pig looked envious. Cricket was shyly wagging her tail. I started laughing and petted them. I wasn’t scared, and I wasn’t alone. These 13 friends of mine provided plenty of company.
Mormile, much farther away now, turned his light back toward me again.
I blinked once, sending the “A-OK” message. I was delayed, but there was no serious trouble to report from the Norton Bay Sex Club.
Mormile slowed down and waited for me. The musher directly ahead of him, Terhune, stopped when he lost sight of Mormile’s headlamp. In theory, this should have put the brakes on the entire convoy. But Gunnar Johnson, traveling in front of Terhune, never looked back. The chain was broken.
Daily couldn’t let the dogs quit on him. Not here, crossing an exposed, windy marsh. He grabbed Bogus by the collar and dragged the team forward. It was a struggle, but he got the dogs moving. Tom didn’t know anything about the shelter cabin at Lonely Hill. Somewhat miraculously, he found it anyway. Being inside the rickety structure was better than being outside. Daily was tempted to bring in his dogs. That was against the rules, but who was going to know? He sighed. He would know. Daily wasn’t comfortable with that, and he hadn’t come this far to be disqualified by a stupid mistake.
Daily started a fire with the alcohol left by Plettner. After feeding his team, the musher became depressed. Partly, it was the storm, which was really howling now. The surroundings didn’t help. The cabin was filled with trash. He could tell it was mostly from other mushers. Iditarod mushers trapped here, like he was now. While the storm rattled the shelter’s exterior walls, Tom Daily busied himself, cleaning house.
Harley and Raven didn’t get to savor their rendezvous. The second they separated, I put the lovers to work chasing Mormile, who had slowed to wait for me.
When Don and I caught up with Terhune, he took point for our trio, driving his dogs with a verbal whip. The storm blew over, and the stars soon returned. When we caught up with the group, Terhune quit yelling at his dogs and yelled at Johnson instead. The young musher swallowed the abuse; there wasn’t much he could say.
My night of torment continued. The sled was pounding, pounding, pounding over rock-hard drifts. I lost my footing several times and was dragged on my knees or chest. The lights of Koyuk beckoned, but the village didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Checkpoints were never more than an hour beyond the first hint of lights. Yet these lights stayed out of reach. I found it harder and harder to stay awake. The temptation was growing to park and curl up inside my sled.
Harley was giving me fits. Those lights and the other dog teams were dead ahead, yet he kept veering to the right. Always to the right. I kept having to drag him back to the tripods and the scratches in the hard drifts that defined the trail.
Convinced, at last, that Harley was dragging us toward another village dump, I lost my temper and ran up front. The big dog was cowering as I caught myself on the verge of making an unpleasant scene. He didn’t deserve blame for seizing the opportunity to get laid. It had happened during my watch. I put Chad and Rat in lead, figuring they wouldn’t lose sight of a checkpoint. But they too kept turning right. What was going on?
Man, was it hard to stay awake. We had to be close. So close. I kept driving, screaming at Chad and reaching for the pretty lights. We were mushing toward the Emerald City. In the distance, I could see the headlamps of my companions. They were driving their dogs up a spiral staircase, climbing twin towers rising on either side of a huge gate in front of the village. I calmly wondered what it was going to be like, climbing that Emerald City tower. Nothing seemed unusual about the scene. Reality was blending with fantasy, and the Yellow Brick Road wasn’t all that strange compared with mushing dogs toward these unearthly lights.
My trip to Oz was rudely interrupted when the dogs plunged over a ten-foot cliff, the result of a pressure ridge formed by past movements in the ice. I hadn’t noticed that we were climbing a big fold. The sudden drop flipped the sled and sent me crashing hard. I hung on, landing chestdown on the ice and smacking both knees. That one hurt. I wondered if my legs were broken. The dogs sensed my distress. For once, they passed up a chance to drag me.
Nothing was broken. I pulled myself together and resumed the march. Herrman was the first to arrive in Koyuk, checking in at 5:25 A.M. Traveling about 45 minutes behind, I watched the other teams entering the village. Drawing closer, I could see headlamps moving near a brightly lit building. Had to be the checkpoint.
The trail swung left, looping into the village. Observing the activity by the checkpoint, Chad made a beeline for it. Too drained to protest, I concentrated on hanging on as the team crashed through several backyards, dodging parked cars and snowmachines, before finally emerging on the street below the checkpoint.
“Why didn’t you follow the trail?” the checker asked sternly.
“These guys had other ideas,” I mumbled, terrified he might make me reenter Koyuk using the marked trail. I was at my limit, ready to beg. Please. Please don’t make me do that. But the villager was just curious.
A mushing angel appeared at my side.
“There’s a good place for the team over there,” said Catherine Mormile, aiming her headlamp at an open spot between two houses. “Need help?”
“Please,” I said.
After parking the team, I unhitched Raven and tied her to the sled, separated from potential lovers. I heated water for the dogs, petting and scratching them while I waited for it to boil. I served them a meal. Then I grabbed my sleeping bag and trudged inside the checkpoint on leaden feet. The long room echoed with snores. Finding a clear spot near a video machine, I carefully spread my sleeping bag on the floor and flopped on top of it. Still dressed in my snowmachine suit, bunny boots, and three layers of facial masks, I fell asleep instantly.
I was falling off the sled. Reaching for the handlebar, I awakened inside the Koyuk checkpoint. I wasn’t capable of sleeping more than a few hours anymore. None of us were. Trail rhythms were too ingrained.
Feeling groggy, and a little foolish about awakening with a lamp still strapped on my head, I went outside to check on the dogs. They were fine, luxuriating in piles of fresh straw, which I didn’t even remember spreading. I threw each of them chunks of frozen beef and liver.
It was gray and blustery. Gusts of wind picked at a mound of Iditarod trash outside the checkpoint and sent scraps dancing in the street. Inside the checkpoint, the others were talking about staying awhile. A monster of a storm was on the way.
Sticking around sounded fine to me. The dogs and I were running on reserves. I walked over to the Koyuk general store. Strolling down the aisle, I found myself staring at a packet of spaghetti. Practically drooling, I scooped up the noodles, a fat brick of hamburger, and sauce.
There was a long line at the cash register. Waiting my turn, I realized that I had other needs besides food. I crossed my legs. I shuffled from foot to foot. There was a white outhouse across the street. I could see it in my mind. It wasn’t far. I was close to making a run for it when my turn came at the cash register. I collected my change, and bolted for that outhouse.
I threw down my shopping bag. I yanked the suit zipper, the vest zipper, pulled up my fleece shirt, fumbled with the drawstring on my pants … and … sighed as the burning stream ran down my right leg and pooled inside the rubber boot.
The wind was blowing even harder, if that was possible, when Daily left the shelter cabin at Lonely Hill. But it was daylight. He could see a marker, maybe two. And, if he waited any longer, dog food was going to become a problem.
The team hadn’t gone more than a few miles when Bogus quit again. Daily tried each of his leaders. Each refused to go. On a hunch, he placed Diamond — the slow leader he had bought from Barve — in front. The dog balked. So Daily bit him in the ear. That got Diamond’s attention. Moving at one mile per hour, the old dog led the team across the ice, traveling marker by marker.
In Koyuk, like many Alaska villages, most homes lacked running water. People made do with a public shower and laundromat. I made an emergency visit, toting an armload of dirty gear and chewed dog harnesses. After loading the washer, I climbed in the shower and soaked for the second time since leaving Anchorage. While I waited for the laundry to dry, I patched the dog harnesses. Part of me was embarrassed at squandering racing time in a laundromat. But, even barring my outhouse mishap, having clean clothes was beneficial. Sweat reduces thermal protection in cold-weather gear. The final miles would be warmer thanks to this village pit stop.
Later, I walked over to the village school to see if I could borrow a Coleman stove to cook my spaghetti.
“The kids in the village really enjoy seeing you guys,” one teacher said. “Most of the mushers pass through the village in such a rush they don’t often get a chance.”
I’ve always enjoyed talking to school groups about my profession. I offered to return in the morning and speak to an English class about careers in journalism, or just talk about the race, if that’s what the kids wanted. My presentation was scheduled for 9:30.
Owing to the approaching storm, a scheduled basketball game with another village had been canceled. Concern was also growing about Daily, who had left Shaktoolik the night before. Villagers were talking about sending out a rescue party when Tom was finally sighted in the distance, late Thursday afternoon.
I was talking to an AP reporter on the pay phone when Tom walked in. I collared him, Herrman, and a few other mushers who happened past and put them on the phone for interviews. It was part of my campaign to make sure the Iditarod headquarters didn’t forget us.
“You should see O’Donoghue,” Daily told the reporter. “Skin’s falling off his face. He looks hideous.”
I was a little nicked, that’s all. Coming across the ice, wind had leaked between my goggles and the face masks and burned a line across my cheeks and nose. The shower had left the branding raw and bloody. It looked worse than it felt, but I was embarrassed by the way people kept gasping.
Later, Daily trudged up to the laundromat with a load of his own. Cooley was already there and had beat him to the bathroom. Tom shrugged and put his clothes in the washer. Long minutes passed. Cooley remained busy in the bathroom stall. Finally, Daily couldn’t wait any longer. He knocked. There was no response. Yanking open the door, he found Doc sitting on the toilet, sound asleep.
Back in the checkpoint, I cooked my spaghetti feast in a dog pan. Other mushers laughed as they saw what I was doing.
“You’re not going to eat all that yourself, are you?”
“Watch me.”
We were shell-shocked. Twenty days on the trail, and Nome was another 170 miles yet. But no one was complaining tonight. Half a dozen mushers agreed to accompany me to the school in the morning. Don Mormile was in rare form, mumbling songs and waltzing across the floor with a broom.
“We’re going to be here until spring,” someone cried.
“You already are,” another musher shot back.
It was indeed March 21, the spring equinox. The concept seemed ludicrous.
A television, tuned to the state’s rural satellite network, was blaring in the kitchen area. A news program was on. No one paid much mind until the Iditarod update started. “Snowmachiners are out searching for musher Tom Daily,” the announcer said, looking grave. “The rookie, traveling in last place, has been missing since Wednesday and is feared lost in a storm….”
Inside the checkpoint, all eyes turned to Daily, who was also watching the broadcast, munching a handful of caramel-coated Screaming Yellow Zonkers.
“Gee. And I didn’t even know I was lost,” Tom said, beaming. “Should I be worried?”
By morning, the sky had cleared. Below the village, the next section of trail stretched before us, flagged by tiny markers streaming bright orange tape. Other mushers scrambled to depart. I had an appointment to keep at the school. Let them go. I figured I could catch the slower teams without difficulty.
Looking at the bright faces of the school’s older students, I was glad I had kept my promise. Life is so cloistered for kids in Alaska’s small villages. Personal contact with outsiders can have a big impact. I’d learned that traveling to small villages as a reporter. It was even more true for a visiting Iditarod musher, a role that bridged our two worlds.
Sepp Herrman was the only musher left when I returned to the checkpoint. He was sweeping it out. The small contribution made him feel a little less ashamed of the Iditarod trash blowing through the streets outside. It may have been piled neatly when the front teams passed through Koyuk, but ten days of wind had spread the mess the length of the street.
Leaving Sepp working the broom, I crossed the street to my team. The males, now rested, were enraptured by Raven’s alluring scent. Cyrus was a hopeless case. The young male was on his feet, straining toward Raven rigid as a pointer, barking and barking. The other dogs stretched and sniffed each other as I moved through the team checking their feet. Their paws looked remarkably good, even those that had been sporting cuts a few days before. Coastal snow was kinder to sled-dog feet.
A sudden snarl spun me around. Harley had Chad on the ground, with his big jaws clamped around Golden Dog’s neck. You could hardly call it a fight. Chad, limp, was on his back in complete submission.
Herrman had come over to look at my team. He understood the situation instantly. “You have a bitch in heat. Yes?” the German said. “The males fight for the lady’s love.”
No blood was spilled. I shifted Harley to the rear of the team and tried to shelter Raven among the females up front. The lesbian promptly spun around and tried to mount her.
Herrman remained behind in Koyuk, but caught me within the hour. We shared a snack in another crude shelter cabin, then he left me behind.
Out of habit, I grabbed teetering markers whenever I could, firmly replanting them for the teams following behind. Did that for an hour or two, before a startling thought stopped me in midmotion. I was again mushing the last team on the Iditarod Trail. Chuckling, I slipped the marker into my sled bag. With Nome a mere 100 miles away, I had room for a souvenir alongside that damn Lantern.
If it weren’t for the rooftop-high drifts and the spider web of snowmachine tracks, Elim, population 220, could have been a small suburban community anywhere in the United States. The streets were laid out in a grid with matching modular houses arranged in neat rows, the legacy of a federal housing project. Within those homes, however, resided a traditional Eskimo community, which had taken root here around the turn of the century, tending the local reindeer herd.
Daily was staying with a family that had only recently moved into their new government house. There was no curtain on the new shower, but the musher wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity for a soak. He cranked the hot water valve and nearly leaped out, scalded by the first truly hot water to touch his skin in weeks.
A feast was waiting at the family’s dinner table: moose, caribou, and fresh buttery cinnamon rolls. Afterward, Daily’s hosts sat down around their television to watch an hourlong Iditarod special.
“If you folks don’t mind, I think I’ll take a nap,” Tom said.
He’d been asleep for about an hour when a conversation on the family’s CB radio roused him. In a voice that creaked with age, a village elder delivered a warning.
“Don’t let those mushers leave,” the man said. “They’ll be lost on McKinley.”
The argument continued over the CB, with what seemed like half the village chiming in. A young-sounding local musher declared that he would personally lead the Iditarod teams across Little McKinley, a treacherous hill overlooking Golovin Bay. Listening from his bunk, Daily thought that we probably ought to do what the old guy said.
My host was a young teacher. Sue and her boyfriend, Marty, shared a house in the center of the village. Outside, children, sporting furry parkas, flocked around, spreading out straw for my dogs.
As I requested, Sue awakened me after a two-hour nap. “Is there anything I can get you?” she asked.
Three more checkpoints lay between me and Nome. White Mountain was the only place I planned to stop. My thermos was already filled with hot Gatorade. I had the teacher place a few spoonfuls of instant coffee in a sandwich baggie. It was a secret weapon for the final push. I was ready to start racing again.
Sue’s boyfriend Marty led me out of Elim on his snowmachine at about 11:30 P.M. It was dead calm and dark. Snow was falling in wet, feathery clumps. About a mile out of town, I saw a headlamp behind me. The team closed in on us depressingly fast. It was Plettner. Exchanging a few words, she took off like a rocket.
Snow was coming down hard as my team climbed Little McKinley. Rainy and Harley weren’t the least bit bothered. I was running blind myself. There were hardly any markers. I was thankful for the tracks of the other teams. It was hard to miss the groove, six to eight inches deep, which they had kindly left behind.
Descending the formidable hill was more of an adventure. It was a steep sidehill slope. The teams ahead had cut an erratic weave of traversing paths. I tipped my sled, riding on one runner, fighting to hold the team in a straight line. But it was hopeless, too many of the teams had already slipped sideways, carving cutaways that repeatedly slammed my sled into downhill bushes and trees. Roughly halfway to the bottom, I caught Plettner and the others. The convoy was stalled. Our lone Iditarod veteran was furious.
“None of them knows how to find a trail,” Plettner said. With a sigh, she slouched down against her sled.
After a lengthy pause, word was relayed back up the line that Sepp Herrman was in trouble. That was a jolt. I hated to imagine a situation Sepp couldn’t handle.
More shouting back and forth yielded word that Herrman’s team had charged off a mountain cliff, or something to that effect. Cooley and a few others had heard the trapper shout “help” from below. Doc was leading a party to investigate. Naturally I was curious. But our parking spot was precarious. It wouldn’t take much for the team to bolt and crash into the others directly below us.
“Send a gun!” Cooley’s message was relayed by Urtha Lenthar, who was positioned midway down the hill.
“What?”
“Cooley says to send down a pistol,” Lenthar repeated.
Terhune figured the comment was directed at him. Cooley knew Terhune was packing a large-caliber pistol. Well, the vet was asking the wrong guy for help. Terhune had no intention of lifting a finger to assist Super Trapper. “Fuck Sepp,” he snarled.
I turned to Plettner.
“What could be going on?”
“Maybe he injured some dogs, and Cooley wants to put them out of their agony,” she suggested, shaking her head at the thought.
Throwing my sled on its side, I stuck my borrowed. 357 in my pocket and set forth down the slope. The snow on the hillside was waist-deep. Half-walking, half-sliding past scrubby bushes, I made my way to Urtha.
“Give it to me,” he said, demanding the gun.
“No way,” I said. “It’s my gun, I intend to see how it’s used.”
Joined by Daily, I continued slogging down the hillside. It was a long hike to where Cooley was waiting. Using snowshoes might have been a good idea. It also occurred to me that it was going to be a lot tougher climbing back up.
We found Cooley bent toward the ground, studying tracks left by Herrman and the local musher.
“You brought the gun?” he said.
I handed it to him.
“Good. They must have been attacked by a moose,” Cooley said, aiming his headlamp several feet ahead. “Look at those tracks.”
A line of moose holes stretched across the tracks of both dog teams. The intersection was marked by a large patch of churned snow. “I didn’t want to go any further without a gun,” Doc explained. “Be careful, we might have an angry moose on our hands.”
Shouting Sepp’s name, we trailed the sled tracks into the thickets. It was hard work. Every third step the crust would give way beneath our boots. The effort was wasted. We never found Herrman, or any sign that either musher had so much as paused.
“I just can’t understand it,” said Cooley, who thought very highly of Herrman. “Where I come from, you don’t yell ‘Help!‘ and take off. And I heard him. I know I heard him.”
Later, listening to the story, Terhune decided that Herrman probably did cry for help, and that it was probably a deliberate trick. Now that Herrman was close enough to make it to Nome without bumming dog food, Terhune figured the so-called cry for help was a trick to slow everyone else down. Terhune chuckled at the way Super Trapper had the rest of us fooled.
Cooley and the other mushers at the front of the pack were reluctant to try Herrman’s kamikaze route. But no one could find any markers.
“More of the void,” mused Daily.
By the time I climbed the hill to my team, I was drenched in sweat. Before long, chills were invading my clammy gear. I needed to change clothes before continuing. But everything I had with me was wet. Everything, that is, except my green wool, military-style sweater. As cold as I had been so far, it gave me confidence knowing that I had the sweater in reserve, one more layer in case it got really bad. But I was reluctant to dig it out. If I put the sweater on and still felt cold — then what would I do?
My dilemma was resolved when the mushers at the head of the line decided to camp. Stripping to my wet skivvies, I dove inside the sled bag. Would have been warmer if I took off the damp underwear first. But I was hoping my sleeping bag would absorb some of the moisture before I had to face another day in those wet clothes.
Shivering inside the sleeping bag, I had doubts about the plan. The blotter effect was an untested theory and might dampen the sleeping bag for no useful purpose. I forced myself to eat and drink, and tried to stay positive.
The musher from Elim had said something about a “short cut.” The comment was made in passing. Herrman forgot about it, working his sled on that tricky sidehill trail. Out of the blue, the villager suddenly ordered his dogs over the hillside. He was showing off, sure. But the local musher knew the trail, and two could play this game. Sepp gave the word, sending his team over the edge. Herrman stuck to the local musher like glue down the steep incline. What a ride. What a ride!
Later, resting in Golovin, Sepp concluded that Cooley and the others must be stuck on that hill. Just as well, he thought. That ride was more than most of them could handle. There was no reason for Herrman to stick around, not with White Mountain a mere 18 miles away. He checked in there at 8:30 A.M., Saturday, March 23, starting the clock on his mandatory six-hour layover.
Herrman later denied yelling anything. It was puzzling to him. Everyone sounded so certain. Even Cooley, whose word Sepp respected. Some of them were actually mad at him, as if HE was responsible for their extra night on the little hill. It was ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. Sepp’s conviction weakened in the face of the group’s certainty. Maybe, just maybe, he had said something. He might have blurted “Aieee!” Something like that. Sepp wasn’t at all sure that it had happened — involuntarily, of course — but he couldn’t rule out the possibility. Funny things occur when one is mushing off the side of a mountain. That was the truth. But he never yelled “Help.” No matter what people thought they heard. He, Sepp Herrman, never called for help. He would have remembered that.