I’d snatched barely two hours of rest before Peter Kelly and his friends showed up at Cyndi’s on race day. Kelly was impressed that I got any sleep at all. It was 4 A.M., but I didn’t feel tired. The Day was here.
I took advantage of the hour-long drive to interrogate Kelly about the trail. He listened to me ramble for a while, then passed me a cup of coffee laced with a strong shot of Kahlua.
“You need to settle down, man.”
We arrived at Iditarod’s staging area about 5:30 A.M. One of the 225 volunteers assisting with the start checked off my name and directed us to the front of the parking lot. After a wait of about 20 minutes, we were waved through a corridor of downtown streets to Fourth Avenue. Parking spots were assigned in reverse starting order, providing handlers with an easy exit route. Our space was located at the far end of the closed avenue, four and a half blocks from the starting line. “A long, long, long way,” decided Nancy Marti, as she surveyed the scene. Nancy dreaded the moment when she and my other handlers would begin shepherding the team toward the distant countdown area.
Kelly noticed that the stars were exceptionally bright. It was crisp and cool in the predawn hours, a good morning to be mushing. He removed dogs from the truck, one at a time, and fastened Iditarod’s team ID tags on their collars, a ritual that brought back memories of his own grand departures. In his two Iditarod starts, Kelly had relied on cues from the mushers nearby. He watched to see if they thought snow conditions warranted booties. The movements of teams ahead of his signaled it was time to harness the dogs.
Today was different. “Everybody is keying off us,” Peter realized with a shudder.
We positioned the sled and uncoiled the team’s gang line. The length needed for 17 dogs was staggering. Each pair of dogs extended the line another 8 feet in front of my sled. The leaders, Rainy and Rat, would be almost 80 feet ahead of me. Turns were going to be real interesting.
My family soon turned up, as did Eric Troyer, News-Miner managing editor Dan Joling, and a growing swarm of friends and spectators. Rigging chains around the truck, we brought the dogs out for good. I posted the volunteers at strategic places, ready to intervene if fights broke out. “Your basic midmanagement job,” Joling said.
At 8 A.M., with 62 minutes to go, the sun was high and bright. Crowds were building along the barricades. A crew of veterinarians examined the dogs, but found nothing amiss. Jim Kershner was next. The race marshal inspected my sled for required gear, including a bundle of U.S. mail to be delivered in Nome, a tribute to the mail carriers who served Alaska by dog team as late as the 1940s. Finding my snowshoes, booties, axe, sleeping bag, and the mail packet were in order, Kershner wished me luck.
With 45 minutes to go, we harnessed the dogs, rechaining them outside the truck. Aunt Margo was stalking me with a videocam and a newspaper map. Where should she stand to get the best pictures?
“I haven’t got a clue,” I snapped. “I’m just following the damn arrows.”
News photographers and video crews shadowed my movements. This rookie’s lucky draw couldn’t have been scripted better.
“I’ll be leading the Last Great Race, and not many people can say that,” I said over and over.
Another reporter asked how long I expected to stay out in front of the pack.
“For three or four blocks.”
Thirty minutes to go. My handlers began assembling the team. I directed the placement of each dog, working from a chart scrawled on a legal pad. From front to back, the lineup called for Rat and Rainy in lead; followed by Cricket and Raven; Screech and Daphne; Chad and Scar; Denali and Pig; Spook and Digger; Bo, Skidders, and Harley; with Cyrus and Gnat in wheel. Bo, our kennel scrapper, got a solo spot to ensure that the Iditarod’s live telecast didn’t begin with blood spilled in the snow.
Twenty minutes left. Handlers and several Iditarod volunteers assumed positions along the gang line. Troyer knelt in front, calming the leaders. Digger madly shoveled snow with his front paws. Spook uttered his keening wail. Other dogs whined anxiously or jerked on the gang line.
Joling was assigned to the ballerinas, Raven and Cricket. “Approximately ninety pounds of yelping fury,” he called the pair.
I left Cyrus chained to the truck until the very last second, a slight that drove him insane with worry. He whined. He stood on his hind legs pawing the air. Other dogs were going someplace. Why not him? Why not him?
I remembered the day Rattles had brought over the young black-and-white dog for a tryout.
“This is Cyrus. He’s a Rum dog, a Rummm dog,” said Rattles, chanting the phrase like a mantra.
We had been hearing tales of the late great Rum for months. Rum was merely the leader immortalized, according to Rattles, in the Quest’s official sled-dog logo. His bloodline was marked by distinctive barrel-chested dogs with pointy snouts.
Barely two years old, Cyrus was Rum’s grandson. Like his proud owner, the pup was painfully loud. The dog whined day and night and whooped for joy when Rattles’s pickup entered our driveway. At 50 pounds, the big lunk was prone to knocking food pans out of my hands and chewing anything within reach.
“Jesus, Rattles, has that dog even been harness-broken?” Mowry said after wrestling Cyrus into the team for the first time.
“He’s a Rum dog,” Rattles replied, as if no other answer was needed.
Mowry tested the dog during the week I was away on the Klondike.
The Coach began cautiously, taking Cyrus on a 15-mile run. The young dog was hardly panting when he returned. So Mowry ventured to try him on 30-milers, several days in a row, then 3 5, then 50 miles.
“I can’t tire that dog out,” the Coach said when I got back, for once truly impressed.
Today I had a special slot reserved for Cyrus. He’d be leaving town paired with Gnat in wheel position, which locked them down directly in front of the sled. Rattles’s pup was too wild to trust anyplace else, and I wanted Gnat where I could keep him under close watch.
It was time.
Coleman stood ready on the back sled. “Let’s go!” I shouted, pulling the rope. Feeling give in the gang line, the dogs plunged ahead. Clawing and straining they dragged the sleds and handlers forward. My handlers skidded and struggled to keep their footing in the mushy snow, which had been trucked in to Anchorage and dumped on the barren street for the occasion.
“Like walking through a big pile of cornmeal,” Troyer told himself. He glimpsed Butcher directing a swarm of handlers attired in matching suits. Passing by Redington, Swenson, and other famous drivers preparing for their own approaching departure, Troyer noted similarities to the pits at the Indianapolis 500. He was amused at the thought of his former Yellow Press bowling partner competing against these legends of the sport.
I didn’t notice any of that. My eyes were fixed straight ahead where I couldn’t see through the crowds blocking the street. But the sea of parkas, cameras, and barking dogs kept parting mere yards ahead of our advance, as ranks of race volunteers screamed for people to clear the way.
Officials halted us a few doors down from the Iditarod starting-line banner, which was fluttering grandly above the avenue. After a brief pause marking the late Doc Lombard’s honorary departure, my team was waved into the chute. A crew of burly guys grabbed my sled. An announcer boomed out my name, giving a brief biography. I walked up the length of the team, petting each dog and talking to him or her for a second. Cricket’s ears drooped. The commotion had her cowed. But looking at me she shyly wagged her tail.
“Five,” the voice boomed. “Four. Three. Two …”
The howls ceased. Noses dipped toward the snow. Tug lines snapped taut as my 17-dog team bent to business, effortlessly yanking our two sleds forward. Loosely fastened booties flew from the paws up front. I briefly scowled, conscious that I faced a booty shortage, but the regret was soon overwhelmed by the thunderous cheers greeting my team.
Pumping my right fist at the sky, I mushed the dogs down the center of Fourth Avenue, savoring my moment as front-runner on the Iditarod Trail. Butcher, Swenson, Runyan, Buser, and King — all the name mushers were chasing me out of Anchorage today.
The start was broadcast live across Alaska. Watching at a friend’s house in Two Rivers, Rattles leaped to his feet as the camera zoomed in on a manic dog in the rear of my team.
“That’s CYRUS! That’s CYRUS! CYRUS!” the Rattler shouted. “He’s going to Nome!”
Five blocks from the starting line, the trail hung a sharp right turn onto Cordova Street. Rainy and the White Rat guided the team through the curve in a fine tight arc. My sled neatly skidded around the berm piled on the corner. Riding the handler’s sled, my brother Coleman wasn’t so lucky. Slamming into the hard snow wall, his sled flipped over sideways. Coleman understood that I wasn’t going to stop, certainly not as long as we were leading the pack. Fortunately this was the one mushing maneuver my brother had actually practiced.
The week preceding the race had largely been consumed with official meetings and last-minute chores. The dogs, sitting on their chains in Cyndi’s yard, had energy to burn. My brother Coleman also needed a sled-riding lesson if he was going to man that second sled. Finding a few hours free, I grabbed the chance to take the dogs on a short run. It would be my family’s first chance to see a real dog team in action. Bonnie, who was three months pregnant, asked if she could go along for the ride.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think it would be a good idea, Bon.”
She was disappointed and somewhat offended by my protective attitude. I felt guilty. Her father had made this thing possible. But bringing her along would be asking for trouble. I was taking 14 dogs, leaving behind only Skidders and the two casualties. Too many things could go wrong.
We didn’t get started until after dark. Coleman was zipped inside heavy Carhartt coveralls, wearing bunny boots and a headlamp for the first time.
“These dogs are stronger than they look,” Blaine said appreciatively, unloading them from the truck. Until that moment, when he felt his arm being twisted by my squirming bundles of muscle and fur, my younger brother hadn’t been impressed by sled dogs.
As the moment of departure drew near, Screech and Digger began leaping in place, straining to go. The excitement spread, and my sled bounced and wobbled under the team’s pressure, but we were firmly tied to a pole. I positioned the second sled about ten feet behind mine, attached by a thick poly towrope. Coleman planted himself on the runners.
Bonnie was feeling apprehensive. The dogs were much wilder than she had imagined. The landscape stretching before her, an icy field giving way to a dark mass of trees, was forbidding. “I would feel a lot safer if we were doing this in daylight,” she said.
Coleman’s sled trailed slightly at an angle to mine, but I figured it wouldn’t matter.
“Ready?”
“You got it,” Coleman said.
I yanked the anchor rope. The dogs surged forward, whipping both sleds across the hard-packed crusty snow.
Coleman’s sled slammed into the anchor pole, and he lost his footing on the runners. Remembering what I had said about never letting go of a dogsled, he hung on for all he was worth. The dogs dragged him, facedown, into the darkness.
My eyes stayed glued on the dogs, alert for hints of a tangle developing in those first crazed minutes. Coleman’s sled remained upright, and I didn’t realize he was down until we had traveled about a quarter of a mile. When I finally stopped the team, Coleman staggered to his feet. He was weary and winded, his hair was gray from sprayed snow, but otherwise he was fine. He’d been shielded from harm by the heavy coveralls.
“That was a rush!” he said, chuckling as he dusted himself off. “You dragged my ass a long way.”
Coleman strapped the headlamp back on his hat before we continued, but the light slipped free. He was too nervous to let go of the sled and reach for it, so the headlamp dangled, still lit, from the end of its power cord.
As they stood and watched, Bonnie and Blaine couldn’t see much beyond the two lights steadily moving across the open field. The lamp in front moved smoothly away, floating several feet above the dark line of dogs. But the trailing headlamp, the one Bonnie knew was strapped to Coleman’s forehead, continued bouncing on what had to be the hard, icy ground. Bonnie was horrified by that awful dancing light; she pictured her husband’s head being battered to a pulp. Blaine bellowed with laughter.
After the lights were swallowed by a line of trees, Bonnie was nearly overcome with dread and grief. Coleman had only recently gotten over pneumonia. Even if he wouldn’t admit it, Bonnie knew that her husband was still weak. What kind of insanity had brought her here, to Alaska, to this dismal edge of known creation, to watch him dragged to his death? Bonnie hugged her stomach, swollen with the pregnancy. To think that she had wanted that dogsled ride. She felt tears coming as she imagined having to explain Coleman’s death to Sarah and Devin, the children they left at home. She and Blaine drove back to Cyndi’s. The waiting was just too awful to bear.
Coleman and I took the dogs on a ten-mile loop. After the rough start, Coleman remained tense for several miles, expecting the sled to flip again. Nothing bad happened, and he finally relaxed, leaning into the corners and having fun. Riding a sled was like getting your sea legs, he concluded.
Coleman put on a show for the crowds lining Anchorage’s Cordova Street. He was dragged, facedown, for about a hundred yards, then righted the sled with a twist and pulled himself aboard the runners. He was riding the brake with one knee when he noticed a pedestrian running alongside.
“I’ve got your hat! I’ve got your hat!” cried the sprinter. The man had snatched the hat from the snow and dashed after us. He had chased the team three blocks before Coleman heard his cries. With his sled righted, we were pulling away. The man made a last desperate throw with the hat. It fell short.
Unbeknownst to us, Daily News photographer Fran Durner caught the incident with a telephoto lens. Safely ensconced in his hotel bed the morning after the start, Coleman was awakened by Bonnie’s shrieks. Somebody had slipped a copy of the paper under the door. The back page was illustrated with a six-inch-square color photo. It showed me shouting at my brother as he belly-surfed through downtown Anchorage.
That first morning I didn’t expect my two-minute, lead would hold up long. Team number 3 was driven by Brian Stafford, who had dusted us in the Klondike.
“We got company,” Coleman shouted, as Stafford’s dogs began closing in on us. We held him off for a few more blocks. But he was coming on strong as the trail shifted to a bike path and continued on into the woods.
A short tunnel gave me the edge. Rainy and Rat sailed through it. Stafford’s leaders threw on the brakes. I pulled away as he sorted out a tangle. Fifteen minutes past the starting line, the lead in Redington’s Last Great Race remained mine. All mine.
Minutes later, Barve’s team appeared from behind. I had to hand it to the veteran. We were approaching the exact spot he described at the banquet.
“Stop your team. Now,” he cried, pulling alongside.
I braked. The Iditarod had a new leader. But, it had been fun while it lasted.
Beginner’s luck had run its course. Seconds later, rounding an easy turn into the woods, Gnat dodged the wrong way around a tree. His thin neckline snapped, as it’s designed to, but that didn’t arrest the accident in motion. A 17-dog team doesn’t stop without major persuasion. “Whooa!” I shouted, braking as hard as I could. The team rolled on, yanking Gnat backward by his tug line. He slammed into the tree and spun back around its trunk, yelping horribly.
Damn wolves with collars, that’s what the ranchers in Colorado called Tom Daily’s sled dogs. Real dogs wouldn’t raise the unholy howls that were heard coming from the hippie’s place. The simmering resentment was getting to the easygoing, longhaired musher. Tom and Fidaa, his Saudi Arabian-born bride, were itching to move to Alaska, where Tom dreamed of mushing the Iditarod. But where were they ever going to get the money?
The snow was on the way out. Daily figured his season was over, when a four-member group booked rides. The party included the owners of Track ’N Trail, a sport-shoe company. Daily had his hands full, keeping his dogs in line while answering their usual questions. The Iditarod came up, of course. Daily admitted that competing in the great Alaskan race was his personal goal. He described how he had once spent a few months helping at Redington’s huge kennel in Knik. It was nothing he hadn’t told tourists a thousand times before. He almost hated talking about it. The dream felt tainted by such small talk. Daily didn’t take it seriously when the clients mentioned that they might be interested in sponsoring him.
“It costs a lot of money,” he snorted. “Thirty thousand or so. You don’t even want to think about it.”
Two days later, the shoe-company owners called Tom and offered him full Iditarod sponsorship for two years. It was like winning the lo tery, only he hadn’t even bought a ticket. It was karma. Fate. The gods were speaking through his dogs. Packing their lives aboard a truck, the Dailys moved to Alaska.
As Iditarod’s opening day for registration approached, Tom began to panic. He and his wife were penniless. They were living in a cloud of mosquitos, surrounded by hungry dogs, and they hadn’t seen a dime of that promised money. Tom wondered, Have I been faked out? Was this whole thing some kind of rich man’s joke? Full of doubts, Tom went into town and called the sponsors collect. He described his preparations for the race and demanded a check to cover the $1,249 entry fee. The check arrived on schedule, followed by others. Daily’s sponsorship was real. Moonshadow Kennel’s driver was bound for Nome.
Hectic months later, the musher and his wife were entertaining Tom’s shoe-company sponsors in Anchorage. It was the last thing they wanted to be doing the night before the race. The couple hadn’t slept in two days. The packing wasn’t finished. But the sponsors suddenly turned up in Anchorage, eager to see their musher start the race — made possible by Track ’N Trail’s money. What choice did Daily and his wife have? The meal dragged on for hours. Fidaa’s self-control was strained to the limit. After dinner, she and Tom pulled an all-nighter finishing preparations for the race.
Daily had drawn position number 20. His pit crew was weak beyond his wife and Big Larry, a bouncer from The Bush Company, a local topless joint. The rest were inexperienced helpers from the shoe company.
“Oh no,” Fidaa cried, watching one of their volunteers fumbling with a dog harness, “we have to train the handlers.”
Kershner’s inspection added to the stress: the handle on Daily’s axe was shorter than the 22-inch standard specified in the race rules. The race marshal could have forced the team to wait until a legal substitute was found. Instead he ruled that Tom could leave Anchorage on time, but the team wouldn’t be allowed to continue past the first checkpoint until Tom’s gear met Iditarod standards. The crisis appeared resolved when friends in Eagle River promised to meet the team there with the necessary replacement.
“Still ahead of Butcher and Swenson!” I shouted, playing to the trailside gallery lining the first miles of city streets, parks, and power-line trails. A lot of people knew who I was from the publicity surrounding my going out first. Others relied on the photos and starting positions of each musher that had been published in the Anchorage Times that morning. True fans used the photo spread as a program to greet us by name.
I had to change my script after Swenson joined Joe Runyan, John Barron, Garnie, and a half-dozen other top mushers streaking ahead of us. I yelled to Coleman not to worry. “Those guys are contenders.” Nome wasn’t the only goal for those top drivers. A series of prizes awaited the first musher into half a dozen of the checkpoints ahead, starting with a new pickup parked in Skwentna, 100 miles up the trail. Those guys were out of my class completely.
It was a different story to be passed by driver number 15. Kraft General Foods employee Larry Munoz, who crept by us during a tangle, riding a sled decorated with a huge Oscar Mayer wiener. I wasn’t going to take that without a fight. I got my dogs loping, and we caught and passed the damn Hot Dog Man. Alas, my team again balled up and Munoz slipped by.
Big Larry lost his grip on Tom’s sled as it moved toward the starting line. The other handlers were flung aside, leaving Daily powerless to slow his surging dogs. Fidaa sprinted after her husband’s team on the snowy avenue. Like Tom, she was decked out in new Northern Outfitters gear. The bright parka looked sharp, but it was too warm for the day. By the end of the first block, Fidaa was drenched in sweat. Daily was using a single sled. Fidaa was still running when the announcer called her husband’s name. He couldn’t start without a handler and she barely made it, jumping into the sled bag as the countdown ended.
The excitement of the city gradually faded. With their sled gliding through the woods, the long hours of preparation caught up with the musher and his wife.
“Tom,” Fidaa said, “I’m falling asleep.”
“Yeah, I am too.”
The Dailys exchanged foolish grins.
Back in the city, Madman and dozens of other mushers were still fussing with their teams, awaiting their turn in the starting chute. Noon was approaching before the last musher, Mowry’s old trail companion Malcolm Vance, heard his countdown.
Miles ahead, Tom and Fidaa were sleeping soundly while their 20-dog team trotted on, navigating the forest without any guidance. The Dailys didn’t awaken until their sled flipped and went crashing through a trail barrier. Tom sleepily righted the sled, and his frisky dogs resumed their march on a hiking trail that followed Ship Creek up into the mountains. Daily had flickerings of doubt as the trail split from the creek bed and began climbing a high canyon. He had gone a long way without seeing a marker. These curves were dangerously sharp for long strings of dogs. But this had to be right.
The trail dead-ended at a tall fence. Daily’s leaders, some 80 feet ahead, turned and ran alongside the fence, halting finally on a cliff overlooking Ship Creek. Tom now found himself in an awful fix. It was a treacherous place to turn any dog team, let alone a full Iditarod string. Fidaa couldn’t offer much help. Not from her position inside the sled. Topping it off, Tom’s damn suspenders were screwing up, dropping those high-tech pants down around his knees, and this was no place to make adjustments.
Barry Lee had just 13 dogs — one of the smallest teams in the field — but most were proven Iditarod finishers. He had Louie, an old lead dog from Dewey Halverson’s third-place 1987 team; Onion, from Bill Hall, whose wife Pat Danly was also running the race; Mutt, from Dave Allen; and a young leader named Chiko from Mitch Brazen. Of course, Barry Lee also had dogs from his older brother’s kennel.
Former race marshal Bobby Lee was working in the chute with a microphone, interviewing racers for the live TV broadcast being fed to stations across Alaska. Musher number 46 got the standard questions. Then Bobby switched off the mike.
“You made it. You made it,” he said, hugging his younger brother.
Listening to the countdown, Barry Lee reveled in the moment. His eyes were puffy and red from three weeks of sleep deprivation. His smile was huge. Others were chasing prizes in the days ahead. Lee was already savoring the achievement of his lifelong dream.
The musher gave the signal. His dogs bent to work, cutting a slow but steady pace past the crowds still lining Fourth Avenue. Only a few blocks passed before Lee’s weariness made concentrating difficult. He was thankful that he didn’t have to worry about getting lost. The route followed trails familiar from a childhood spent near the Tudor dog track in Anchorage. He could handle this on automatic pilot.
“Yea Barry! Go Barry!” Lee reveled in the cheers, but how did all the fans lining the route know his first name? Was there a radio announcer on every corner telling them who was coming by? He was chagrinned when he finally noticed the newspapers in people’s hands. The musher sporting number 46 on his chest had cheered on others for years using that same information. It unnerved him how long that information took to process. Fatigue was affecting his thinking. Lee knew he ought to keep that in mind.
The Hot Dog Man was faltering. Sensing a chance to catch him, I jumped off the runners and ran, giving it everything I had, pushing my sled up the short hill crowned by the American Legion arch. But it was no use. We coasted into the legion hall parking lot in thirteenth place, 34 minutes behind Barve, the first musher into Eagle River’s checkpoint 20 miles from the start, and 2 minutes ahead of fellow rookie Joe Carpenter.
I sent friends for a veterinarian to examine Gnat. Two vets promptly appeared. They knelt over the young dog, flexing his limbs and probing for sensitive areas. A local TV crew raced over to catch the action. Just what I need. “Reporter cripples dog. Footage at six.”
Blaine, Jim, and Nancy tossed the other dogs chunks of whitefish and dished out a meaty broth to those willing to drink. Kelly pulled off any remaining booties, which were reduced to shreds, and checked the dogs’ feet for cuts.
“Nobody is putting on those booties the right way,” I shouted. “From now on, I am the only one putting on booties.”
Nancy figured I was freaking out because my mom had sewed them. She didn’t know that I faced a booty shortage. If the bundles I mailed out after the food drop weren’t waiting at the checkpoints ahead, I’d need every last one we had.
I calmed down after hearing good news from the veterinarians. Gnat’s back was bruised, but it didn’t appear to be serious.
“See how he acts in Wasilla,” a vet said. “If he looks all right, put him back in the team and see how he handles the run to Knik. That’s only fourteen miles.”
Coleman watched the action from the second sled, chin planted on his fist. He hadn’t budged an inch since arriving in Eagle River. He looked like a crooked old man to our sister Karen.
The day was looking good to me. My team hadn’t mutinied in front of the ABC cameras. I hadn’t lost the dogs, or Coleman. We hadn’t been run over by snowmachines, mail trucks, or damaged by any of the freak hazards awaiting people crazy enough to mush dogs through Alaska’s largest city.
We loaded the dogs back into the truck. With Blaine at the wheel, Team number 2 rolled up the highway, bound for Wasilla, where the serious race for Nome would begin.
Coleman stayed behind. A nice smooth ride in the van with the rest of the family sounded appealing to him. “It’s nice to have completed my part of the race without a train wreck,” he declared, as my aunt zoomed in with her video camera.
Descending the hillside, Tom Daily’s leaders decided that the frozen creek below looked more appealing than the narrow trail they had used on the way up. When the chance presented itself, the leaders plunged down the bank. By the time the musher managed to stop the sled, ten dogs were standing on the creek ice below.
This is absolutely nutty, thought Tom, who could see water gushing through open holes in the ice. His sled was precariously balanced. If he let go to haul his leaders back up the slope, he knew he might well lose the entire team. Fidaa spied a sign alerting hikers about the dangerous cliffs. She wondered what advice authorities had for sled dogs.
Bowing to the inevitable, Tom launched his sled over the bank, sending the team on a careening descent along the narrow frozen creek. The ice offered nothing for his brake to grab, so Daily concentrated on steering the sled past massive rocks, stumps, and the holes he couldn’t skate over.
For the first time ever, Fidaa saw her husband was terrified. “Tom, just scratch!” she cried.
Tired, sweaty, and scared, Daily considered bailing out. His wife, the love of his life, was in danger. Assuming he could figure a way to save her, he might just let go. But the musher thrust such thoughts aside. Of course, he wasn’t going to let go of his dogs. Hanging on to that sled, Tom Daily felt intensely protective of those childlike companions in front. His whole life was tied up in those dogs.
Eighteen teams skipped past Daily during his team’s adventurous detour. Yet Tom was only two hours behind Barve checking into Eagle River. That wasn’t so bad at all. The bummer arrived in the form of the replacement for his illegal gear. His friend’s wife hadn’t understood. Instead of meeting the team with a legal axe, she brought Tom Daily a bow saw.
Friends expected great things from Sepp Herrman. The longhaired, blond-bearded German expatriate was a newcomer to the Iditarod, but no one questioned his ability as a dog musher. The reclusive Herrman spent winters trapping out of a remote cabin, 50 miles from the closest road, in the Brooks Range, a mountainous region north of the Yukon River. Sled dogs were his engine of survival in that treacherous, unforgiving wilderness. The trapper’s savvy and grit were matched by excellent dogs. He had several on loan from Rick Swenson. The master musher respected Sepp’s ability to train good leaders.
Herrman drew position number 71 in the chute, putting his team’s starting time nearly three hours behind mine. High noon overtook him as he mushed those tundra-seasoned dogs through unfamiliar city streets. By that time the snow, trucked into the city for the occasion, was getting thin and dirty. The sun felt scorching. It was easily 80 degrees warmer than the conditions the team had so recently left in the Brooks Range. Dogs capable of breaking their own paths through deep snow and fierce winds, dogs upon whom the solitary trapper routinely staked his life — those same dogs faltered on the warm, well-groomed trail to Eagle River. Twenty miles into the 1,150-mile race, Sepp Herrman was third from last in the standings and was packing three dogs in his sled. His entire race was in jeopardy.
Larry Munoz rode his big wiener out of Wasilla at eight minutes past four. I was scheduled to depart a minute later. Ushering my dogs toward the chute, Vicki noticed I wasn’t wearing a numbered bib. It was required gear, because the restart was also being televised live.
Vic sprinted back to the truck and fetched it. Friends were tying on the bib as my name again blared through the surrounding speakers.
Bobby Lee, seated overlooking the starting chute, was providing running TV commentary. The former race marshal took note of my rapid fall from first to thirteenth position in the overall standings. Lee added that I was still keeping good company for a rookie.
“I’m sure Brian would be glad if he could keep that position — but he won’t.”
The safe approach was to leave the White Rat and Rainy in lead. That had been my prerace strategy. On the spur of the moment, I now scrapped that idea. Moving Rat down inside the team, I shifted Cricket into lead with Rainy. Gnat’s tiny sister was much faster than Rat.
The player change looked brilliant as my little girls set a swift pace leaving Wasilla. Trouble hit when the trail emerged from trees, and we entered Lake Lucille’s glassy, wind-polished ice. Alone, I’m sure Rainy would have made straight for Munoz, who remained visible in the distance, hunched over his sliding wiener. There were scratch marks to follow and a handful of marked tripods. An experienced dog might have noticed such clues. It was all new to young Cricket.
There were scattered clusters of people, some of them seating on folding chairs. There were cars and trucks, haphazardly parked. Groups of children were playing. Snowmachines were zipping in different directions. Confronted by all these strange sights and sounds, my little girl freaked, peeling Rainy and the team away from the trail at a 45-degree angle.
I yelled. I hit the brakes along with Troyer, who’d replaced Coleman on the second sled. But the sheer ice offered nothing to grip. Spooked, little Cricket remained on a tear, propelled by 64 additional flailing paws. Both sleds swung wildly behind the team, which twisted like a mad snake. We slammed into several hard-packed mounds of snow before my hook took hold, finally ending Cricket’s charge.
In the distance, I saw other mushers trotting past us in neat formation. I would have changed leaders, but the situation remained precarious. One slip and Troyer might be on his own. All I could do was coax them. “Go ahead, Rainy, go ahead. Good girl Cricket! Good dogs!”
The leaders were finally headed in the right direction, when they spotted a spectator’s dog.
“Put that thing in your car!” I yelled.
“My dog has every right to be here,” the guy shouted back, ready to debate the point. The man reconsidered as my excited crew barreled down on his lone mutt. Scooping up Fido, he dove into his car.
We continued skidding in the general direction of the trail. Just short of a dangerous cluster of spectators and parked vehicles, I again stopped the team.
“I think we’d be all right if you could just please steer my leaders past these cars,” I called to a woman standing near Rainy and Cricket.
The woman crouched down and gave the pair directions, pointing out relevant land marks. Cricket wagged her tail, sensing an opportunity to be petted. Rainy held the team in place, but she shied away from the woman. My lesbian didn’t know what to make of a talkative stranger.
Troyer was too busy laughing to be of any help.
“Lady,” I shouted, “just grab the dogs. Please, grab their collars and drag them to the trail.”
As the trail joined Knik Road, my old landlord, Tom Renggli, appeared alongside up in his van, waving madly and pacing my team. Rushing ahead, he parked and greeted me at a road crossing.
“Need anything, Brian?”
Several friends were throwing a bonfire party on Knik Lake, the trailhead first used by dog teams hauling gold miners and their supplies to a place called Iditarod. This year Big Sandy had gone all out, renting a portable John for the festivities. As the team trotted past, I urged my landlord to meet us out on the lake. “Look for the John,” I said by way of a landmark.
He recoiled at the suggestion.
The van again zoomed by. Minutes later, I saw my old landlord perched on a berm overlooking the trail. Worry creased his brow.
“Bri, you need a porta potty?” he shouted. “I got one at home.”
“Thanks,” I said, realizing I couldn’t begin to explain, “but I’m fine, really I’m fine.”
Tom Daily realized his sponsors were disappointed. They wanted to see more fire in their musher, more dedication toward winning the Iditarod his first time out. As if that were as simple as tying on a new pair of sneakers. They might be generous with their money, but these folks had no idea what this sport entailed. None. Tom’s current objective was to escape town without any more disasters.
The musher arranged with race officials to drop four dogs from his team at Wasilla. Those he left behind weren’t injured. Driving 20 dogs was just too crazy; after careening down that creek, Daily wanted absolute control. But that hope was crushed before Tom even made it past the restart banners. One of his shoe-company volunteers had meticulously fastened each dog’s neckline to a thin tag clip, instead of to their sturdy collar rings. The weak clips held so long as handlers were there restraining the dogs. As soon as they let go, necklines began popping loose.
The force exerted by a working sled dog is primarily channeled into the team’s gang line through a tug line, which is clipped to the rear of the dog’s harness. Those tugs were properly connected, so Daily’s dogs were still pulling, and his sled was launched forward. The neck lines served to hold the dogs in neat formation. Without them, the team fanned out like a riotous mob.
Tom wondered what new bad thing would happen next.
The first time his lead dog collapsed Bill Peele was thunderstruck. The kindly musher from North Carolina assumed that poor Charlie was stricken with a heart attack, or something else catastrophic. Peele was relieved to detect a strong pulse.
Charlie’s eyes popped open. He sprung to his feet. Ready to go.
Peele, 56, didn’t know what to make of it. The lanky, bushy-bearded rookie had no illusions about being a mushing expert. But this didn’t fit with anything he’d learned since coming to Alaska in December to lease a dog team from Redington. Proven Iditarod dogs like Charlie, a trained leader, didn’t crumble in a heap without good reason.
Knik was less than about ten miles away. Peele would have the dog thoroughly checked out when he arrived. He pulled the hook free and resumed his march. The team had hardly moved before the dog went down again. Peele cursed his foolishness. Charlie was dead for sure. He should have loaded that dog! Yet Charlie’s pulse still felt strong. His chest was heaving regularly. Sure enough, the dog quickly regained his feet. Peele was thankful, of course, but the darn dog’s behavior was mystifying.
When Charlie dropped for the third time in barely a hundred yards, Peele became suspicious. This time the musher didn’t stop right away. Instead he watched as the team dragged its prone member through the soft snow. Funny thing. The musher sensed that ole Charlie was watching him.
Stopping the team, Peele knelt over Charlie until the dog finally looked him in the eye. It was as if Peele could read the thoughts underneath that furry brow: “Well, dummy, you best leave me here, cause I ain’t going to Nome again.”
Peele loaded Charlie in his sled. He told himself he was imagining things. A sled dog couldn’t be this devious.
It was Mardi Gras time in Knik. Inside the bar, Hobo Jim’s foot-stomping and slashing guitar work had the crowd in a frenzy. The windows were so steamed from perspiration you couldn’t see through them. Outside, the view of the race was blocked by the mobs of spectators, friends, and handlers swarming each incoming team.
Big Sandy tracked down Kelly and Davis and told them about the party out on the lake. She gave them directions and asked them to guide the team over.
“No way,” Kelly told the other handler after Sandy had left. “Our job is to GET BRIAN OUT OF HERE.”
As my team entered Knik, Rainy bravely trotted through the tunnel of parkas. Digger and Spook flinched at the human tumult, but continued forward, ears low. Somehow I picked Marcie’s face out of the crowd. She chased us to the checkpoint and gave me a hug.
“The dogs look good, Brian. Really good.”
I had a million things to say. But Knik offered no refuge. The race was ON.
“Can’t stop here. Can’t stop here,” an Iditarod volunteer shouted, determined to keep me from parking next to my truck. Kelly ran the guy off, then stuffed a Burger King cheeseburger in my pocket. He and the pit crew were cranked.
While Kelly and Davis unhitched the second sled, Nancy snacked my dogs. I placed on new booties, by myself this time. Cyndi was standing by with the thermos I had asked her to fill.
“Hot Tang,” she said, “just what you ordered.”
Kelly pulled Troyer aside. “Look, we can’t let him stop for this barbecue thing.”
Half a dozen teams had passed mine on Lake Lucille, two more caught us along Knik Road. Countless others were streaming in and out of Knik. I fussed with my sled. Did I need anything else from the dog truck? An important question, since I wouldn’t see it again until my return home.
“You’re ready. Get out of here!” Kelly said as Dee Dee Jonrowe, a top driver, parked her team adjacent to us.
Stepping on the runners, I reached for the hook. Troyer climbed aboard one side of my sled; Kelly took position on the other. Jim and Nancy ran ahead of the dogs, leading Rainy and Rat through the crowd.
Sandy intercepted the team as we approached the open part of the lake.
“This way,” she said, grabbing the leaders to steer the team over toward the bonfire.
“What? What?” I said, having completely forgotten the party, where my family and dozens of friends were waiting. Kelly rushed to the front of the team.
“Forget it. Brian’s not stopping. This is a race!”
We left Sandy on the lake, looking disappointed.
My dogs were pulling like an engine in fine tune. I shook hands with Troyer and Kelly, and they jumped off. I was looking backward, waving good-bye to my friends, when the team balled up in a tangle. Both handlers saw it and came running. Another team slipped by as I lined out my dogs. Kelly was waiting on the sled when I trudged back. I slapped him on the shoulder, then turned to the dogs.
“All right,” I shouted. The dogs chased the team ahead.
I leaned into the turn rounding the old Knik Museum. When I looked up, there it was, waiting for me: a curving fence rising toward a gap in the trees — the Iditarod Trail.
Dandy should be here. Mushing out of Anchorage, the absence of his trusted leader cast the only shadow touching Jon Terhune’s trail. His Kenai-conditioned dogs breezed through the warm passage to Eagle River, climbing a notch to forty-fifth position.
Watching other mushers streaming through Knik and racing off into the darkness, Terhune’s girlfriend, Dawn, brooded about the unknown dangers ahead. She couldn’t quit thinking about the money, time, and energy being squandered on this mad perversion of a sport. She thought about Terhune’s refusal to return to work the day before, as his company had demanded. Ten years with Unocal and her boyfriend had thrown it away — for what? By the time Terhune arrived at Knik Lake, Dawn was seething.
“You’re crazy,” she told Terhune. “And Joe Redington should be put in jail for starting long-distance mushing.”
It was a familiar argument. Terhune didn’t need a rerun. Certainly not there in the middle of Knik Lake. But he let her rage. He was going to Nome, regardless. And he really had no adequate response to Dawn’s main question: “Why do you do it?” Terhune figured the only answer to that was spiritual. You either saw that or you never would.
“How can you do this for a hobby?”
“It’s NOT a hobby,” Jon snapped.
The musher kept his cool. This was Dawn’s scene, and he let her play it out. Three hours slipped away in a breathy cloud of angry words. Every minute of the delay represented a major sacrifice to Terhune. But he knew she’d never appreciate that.
Barry Lee was disgusted with himself. The little cook pot for his personal food was missing.
While Lee fretted about this screwup, Dr. Nels Anderson faced a painful decision. His admirable, thrilling start was being derailed by illness. The two-time finisher hadn’t come back to the Iditarod Trail only to nurse a sick team to Nome. He resolved to scratch.
Lee hated to profit from another man’s distress, but he couldn’t let this golden opportunity pass. He talked the doctor out of his cooking pot. Anderson also sold him a spare set of runner plastic, dirt cheap. Depending on the hardness grade, a single set of runner plastic sold for $20 to $50. Lee had lacked the cash to buy spares in time to ship them out with his food drop. Lee was particularly pleased with this last acquisition. He didn’t have any runner plastic waiting at checkpoints ahead.
Jeff King, of Denali National Park, trailed Barry into Knik. In the decade since he had made his one and only Iditarod bid, placing twenty-eighth, King had emerged as a champion sled-dog racer, winning the Quest, the recent Kusko 300, and numerous other mid-distance events. None of those victories counted against the competition here. They were tune-ups for the intense, jockey-sized musher’s return to this trail.
Anxious to test the dogs and himself, Jeff King overtook Lee in a narrow section as the teams were descending a steep slope. It was a lousy place to pass, but the driver from Denali managed it with style, dogs loping, steering his sled past the rookie’s team on one runner.
The slick demonstration of dog power and control left Barry Lee truly awed. He felt like pulling over and waiting for the snow to settle.
Daily needed to regroup. He felt lucky to have made it to Knik. That crazy trail out of Wasilla had been lined with badly parked trucks. Already exhausted from the hillside detour after leaving Anchorage, Tom was spent by the time he wrestled his sled past all the obstacles. The dogs dodged through without damage, but his sled had slammed into several of the trucks. Each time Tom feared the blow would finally kill his poor wife, who was still riding in the sled bag. But Fidaa managed to ride it out.
The passage to Knik was further enlivened when Daily lost his snow hook because of an improperly rigged line. Tom was retrieving the crucial hook, entrusting Fidaa with the dogs, when Jeff King mushed past them. Like Lee, Daily and his wife were impressed by the Denali Park musher’s smooth, powerful dogs. It gave Tom a thrill just watching them. Give me ten years, he thought, and my dogs MIGHT look that good.
The shoe-company sponsors were gone. They hadn’t bothered coming to Knik, and Tom was sure they were ready to dump him. They probably wished they had given money to the asshole shouting at him in Wasilla. So his own team took an extra minute getting out of the chute. Daily couldn’t believe the way the other racer had carried on.
Tom rested nearly seven hours in Knik. Midnight wasn’t far away when he adjusted his headlamp, hugged Fidaa good-bye, and pulled the hook, sending his team trotting across the quiet lake. The stars above were bright, and the woods ahead looked friendly.
Driving the last-place team — thus making him custodian of the Red Lantern in the largest Iditarod field ever seen — Tom Daily laid fresh tracks toward Nome.