Bonfire parties raged through the forest for miles. The festivities were widely spaced among the thick alders and stands of spruce. I’d be traveling alone with the dogs, then enter a clearing ringed by snowmachines and cheering fans.
My fleeting lead in the Last Great Race was gone for good. I knew that I’d probably see Nome before catching Swenson, Runyan, and the rest of the serious racers. But I hadn’t completely surrendered my bragging rights.
“Still ahead of Susan Butcher,” I shouted to the clusters of merry celebrants, attired in thick parkas and fur hats. It was a claim any Alaskan could appreciate. Thick mitts raised toasts in my honor.
Though well intended, my hurried departure from Knik backfired about ten miles out. Passing through a narrow, tree-lined alley, faster teams kept catching mine, resulting in a series of bruising passes. The trail here resembled an icy gutter. Burt Bomhoff, the old Silver Streak, was one of the few who successfully muscled his sled past us without slamming into my leaders. The blows left Rainy and Rat increasingly skittish, further slowing down my team.
It got so bad that I stopped each time someone approached and ran forward to protect my dogs. That was the situation when Dee Dee Jonrowe tried to pass. Her dogs were sailing ahead when her sled snagged my snow hook. Jonrowe continued on, probably unaware of the problem, and dragged my sled backward through the team, scattering dogs everywhere until the lines finally tightened, halting Jonrowe’s progress.
“Sorry,” she said, noticing the predicament at last.
Freeing my hook, Dee Dee casually tossed it back.
I was left standing knee-deep in a spaghetti pile of tangled lines. Seventeen dogs were balled up against my reversed sled. More than a few were growling.
Tying a midsection of my gang line to a tree, I began methodically sorting out the dogs.
Bill Cotter, a bona fide contender in this year’s race, rolled up behind my roadblock.
“What’s the problem?”
“Sorry, I got a big tangle here.”
“Well, we’re going to have a big pileup in a minute,” he said.
“Blame it on Dee Dee Jonrowe!” I shouted, feeling like an abused hit-and-run victim.
Cotter’s fears were realized as Roger Roberts, the cocky Loafer from Ophir, barreled into him from behind. Curses flew through the woods as Roberts tried to pass Cotter, creating another tangle.
“Sorry Bill,” I said as Cotter finally passed me after a 10-minute delay.
The Loafer cursed as he followed Cotter on by. Couldn’t blame him. I was a lousy rookie. He was a three-time veteran with hopes of winning real money. Then he turned and kicked Rainy as he passed her. He deliberately kicked my lead dog!
“You son of a bitch!”
He was lucky Cyndi’s.357 was stowed in the sled. In my state of mind, I might have shot him.
Young Daphne couldn’t handle the freedom of traveling in a long Iditarod string. Each dip or bump caused a break in the tension of the gang line, the center cable that connected the pairs of dogs from the leaders back to the sled. Daphne kept taking advantage of the slack in the gang line to leap to her partner’s side to catch a paw in one of the lines. An experienced sled dog might hop for a few steps, but usually cleared such easy tangles with a swift kick. Not Daphne. The little black-haired dog merely looked back at me, stumbling forward as she begged for another rescue.
On, perhaps, Daphne’s hundredth tangle in the first 15 miles out of Knik, Gnat crumbled. He lay whimpering in the snow, squealing horribly as I tried to raise him to his feet. When I backed off, he just stared at me in abject surrender. Why did I ever agree to bring this quitter?
But Gnat had smacked that tree. Something could be seriously wrong. Unhitching him from the team, I loaded Gnat in the sled bag. Seventy miles from Skwentna and over a 1,000 miles shy of Nome — I had my first passenger.
The sun was setting on the first day of Iditarod XIX. I heard a dog team behind me, closing fast. The musher was wearing a bright red parka. As the lead dogs nipped at my heels, I recognized the driver. It was the Butch.
“You want to pass?”
“Not here.”
By waiting for the point where the trail branched into several interweaving paths, she eliminated the risk of contact with a rookie’s potentially ill-mannered team. Butcher urged her dogs ahead, leaving me to admire her form. Hell, it was thrilling. We shared the trail with the Iditarod’s defending champion, if only for an instant.
Coal black darkness filled the thick forest. Cricket and Daphne had taken advantage of my ineptitude to suddenly backtrack, twist, and turn, knotting the team in what my headlamp revealed was another unbelievable tangle. I was shifting bodies to sort out the mess when Gunnar Johnson drove his dogs past us, then abruptly stopped.
“Do you think you could get it?” shouted Gunnar, shining his headlamp at a spot roughly 20 feet behind me. His snow hook, completely unattached, rested in the center of the trail.
It was a tense moment. The hook lay in the direction no musher wants to walk: backward from the sled, where even a lunge can’t prevent the team from escaping.
“I’ll stop your team if they get loose,” he said, pleading.
I gently let go of my sled and tiptoed back. The dogs remained quiet as I picked up the hook and carried it to him.
“You owe me one.”
Mike Madden caught me at the bottom of a hill, where I was providing Daphne with yet another assist.
“Hey, Madman, I led the race for twenty-five minutes.”
“So what are you still doing here?” Madden had made up some two and a half hours already. “Let’s get out of here O’D. Let’s go to Skwentna.”
Though my dogs exuberantly chased his, Madden’s headlamp floated steadily away. Fair enough, I thought. I’ll catch you in Skwentna.
The strains of the last few weeks were catching up. I caught myself dozing before the team even reached Flat Horn Lake, a mere 3 5 miles from Knik. A crackling bonfire cast dancing shadows on the bordering bank. A half-dozen teams were camping, including one of the Russians and Don and Catherine Mormile. Pulling my team off the trail, I stomped the hook into the crusty snow.
I threw the dogs frozen chunks of liver and beef. Leaving them contentedly chewing, I walked over to the bonfire, hoping to beg a soda. Cyndi had filled my thermos with Tang mixed so strong it was more suitable for peeling paint than drinking.
I had a nice conversation with a young couple curled up near the fire, but they didn’t have anything to drink. Chewing snow, I returned to my camp. The team was resting peacefully. I stretched out on top of my sled bag. The dogs can use this, I told myself.
Dawn was not quite breaking. My team trotted past the quiet remains of Susitna Station, bringing the Big Su River into view. Little more than a month had passed since I had last made this crossing to retrieve Beast and Gnat after the Klondike 200. To the southwest, Sleeping Woman reclined across the horizon, luxuriant and majestic as always. The river itself was barely recognizable. New folds in the snow-covered ice gave the landscape the appearance of a huge rumpled comforter. Crossing the river the trail rose and fell as much as ten feet between each wrinkle. The team and I crossed the river like tiny ants.
Entering the Yentna River, I came upon a cluster of tents. Sagging banners proclaimed a rest stop sponsored by a long-distance telephone company. The fire was smoldering. I wasn’t planning to stop, but then I spotted a cardboard box with a fruit-juice logo. Thank God! I was desperate for something to quench my thirst.
Rummaging through the supplies left on an outdoor table, I found plenty of juice packets. Each one frozen solid.
One of the hosts stumbled out of his tent. While I babbled about the Death Tang, he found me a couple of semi-thawed juice cans. I chugged them. Stuffing a few juice containers in my pockets, I prepared to depart.
The guy stopped me. “For some reason, teams leaving our camp are having problems with that tree,” he said, pointing to the left, toward a low-hanging branch leaning over the river.
“Sure, sure,” I said, wondering why anyone would stray so far from the marked trail.
When I pulled the hook the dogs bolted left and dashed under that low branch. The route wasn’t the one flagged by trailbreakers; it was the path countless dogs had already picked. And any dog that came later was bound to check it out. Trailing other dog teams in a crowded race field, most leaders are so reliable about following the common path that it’s easy for a musher to slip into autopilot. This time I was almost knocked flat.
It was bright, incredibly bright on the river, as it can only be with snow reflecting the sun from its white surface. Hundreds of weaving paths stretched before us, attesting to the heavy traffic accompanying the race. People scooted by on snowmachines. Small planes flocked overhead like migrating birds. Many of the planes looped past two and three times, often tipping their wings in salutation. Some buzzed the team, passing so low that Screech, Cricket, and the other shy dogs dropped their ears.
I saw a team camped in the middle of the river. As I approached, the musher waved his arms for me to stop.
“I’m really in trouble here,” Joe Carpenter said. “Bad, bad trouble.”
I looked around. A beautiful day was taking shape. There weren’t any holes in the ice. His dogs looked peaceful. He was outfitted in a fine blue Northern Outfitters parka. So what’s the trouble?
“The team quit on me,” Carpenter said. “The dogs won’t go. Won’t go at all.”
I suggested that he rest them, maybe in the shade by the bank.
“No, no,” Carpenter said. He explained that he had no food, no supplies and HAD TO GET TO SKWENTNA without delay.
The Coach had warned me to stay clear of mushers who were losing it. Carpenter, wide-eyed and panicked on this peaceful morning, fit the description. Well, I was going his direction. Wouldn’t hurt to try.
“I’ll pull in front,” I said. “See if you can get your dogs to chase mine.”
The jump start worked. Carpenter’s team chased us. But, alas, his swing dogs began overtaking his leaders.
“Ride your brake,” I shouted. He needed to keep his team lined out — moving slower, perhaps, but moving.
Instead Joe screamed holy murder. His leaders faltered under the verbal abuse. I left him there on the frozen river, yelling at his demoralized dogs.
Dozens of resting dogs dotted the snow fronting Yentna Station’s big log cabin. The skies were sunny, and the temperature was pushing the 40s. And there was John Suter slipping coats on the dogs responsible for his notoriety as the one and only Poodle Man. Most Iditarod veterans were embarrassed by the presence of Suter and his poodles, whose fur was so ill suited to Arctic conditions that they stuck to the ice when they slept.
As a rookie, Suter had stunned Mowry and five other Iditarod mushers when he passed them in a storm on the final day of the race. The team’s complement of Alaska huskies made that possible, but those dogs got little credit in the publicity surrounding the three poodles who had gone the distance, or the four who made it a year later. Poodles were Suter’s ticket to network TV appearances and the pages of Sports Illustrated. As John Suter liked to brag: “There’s five billion people on the planet, and only one of them mushes poodles.”
Mowry dedicated his second Iditarod to beating the Poodle Man, which he did. I wasn’t as competitive as the Coach, but I didn’t intend to lose to Suter.
Ken Chase saw me throwing my dogs chunks of whitefish. He asked if I had any to spare. The Athabaskan from Anvik was one of the mushers who had defined Iditarod in the early days. He was renowned for racing with a light sled, trusting good dogs and a lifetime of experience to overcome any lack of supplies.
Mushing toward Unalakleet several years before, rookie Mark Merrill had been flagged down by a trapper traveling by snowmachine. “Man, you’re crazy,” the fellow said. “A bad storm’s coming this way.”
Merrill, a proud woodsman from Willow, spent several hours building himself a survival shelter.
“What are you doing?” Chase asked, mushing up from behind. He was amazed that someone would stop with a storm moving in.
Merrill told him about the snowmachiner’s warning.
“Trappers! They aren’t dog mushers,” the Indian snapped. “What do they know!” He advised the rookie to quit wasting time and get moving to Nome.
Merrill hadn’t ever heard of Ken Chase, and he wasn’t impressed by the stranger’s ragged outfit. He stayed put in his nifty shelter. Within 48 hours, Chase was mushing into Nome, beating Babe Anderson, an old rival from McGrath, by 10 minutes. The failure to heed the old veteran’s advice caused Merrill to spend 2 days pinned down on Topkok Hill, battered by wind so fierce it blew his dogs backward.
“I didn’t know who Ken Chase was,” Merrill sheepishly told me. But Merrill had come from behind to preserve his honor by beating the damn Poodle Man.
Chase’s eleventh Iditarod wasn’t going well. His dogs were bummed after cutting their feet on the icy trail out of Knik. A few whitefish might perk them up, he said. Unfortunately, I was only carrying snacks. By the time Chase asked, my one small bag of whitefish was gone.
The roadhouse radio was crackling with discussions about Carpenter, the screaming idiot “in trouble” down on the river. The musher’s wife and handler were desperate for information. Apparently this was Joe’s second flameout. Five years earlier, Carpenter had scratched in Skwentna. He had better dogs this time, “a great team,” his handler said. What was going wrong? The musher’s friends had access to a plane. They wanted to fly out and DO SOMETHING. The handler asked Dan Grabryszak to pass a message to Carpenter that there would be a meal waiting for the dogs in Skwentna.
Dan assured the callers that Carpenter was in no immediate danger. He also gently reminded them that Iditarod has rules limiting outside assistance.
Barry Lee sacked out in the frozen marsh. Back on the trail by 5:30 A.M., he quickly caught and passed Gary Moore. Two hours later, Lee camped a second time near the Yentna, building a fire and serving the dogs a hot meal. It was part of Barry’s schedule for working his dogs into shape.
He was napping on the sled when Moore found him.
“Everything all right, Barry?”
Lee smiled and waved Moore by, appreciative of his concern.
He’d hardly closed his eyes before two snowmachiners drove up. It was Craig Medred, a reporter from the Anchorage Daily News, and photographer Jim Lavrakas, who snapped a few pictures of the “sleeping musher.”
A few minutes later, Lee was disturbed yet again. A bicyclist no less! The guy was training for the Iditabike, an upcoming 200-mile mountain-bike race.
“There’s a guy a mile or two up the trail who can’t get his dogs to go,” the bicyclist told Lee. “Said he’s been stuck there for nine hours.”
Nap time was over. Lee got his team rolling to see if he could help. He found Moore rigging a tow line for Carpenter’s team.
“You know, Gary,” said Lee, as he helped Moore fashion a connector that wouldn’t drag the trailing leaders by the neck, “he’ll be out of the race.”
“I know, but he doesn’t see any way around it.”
Carpenter stood on his sled, out of earshot, awaiting Moore’s cue. With the tow line in place, Moore’s dogs ambled forward. The Good Samaritan supported the line to Carpenter’s leaders in one hand.
The incident was observed by the reporter, the photographer, as well as Carpenter’s wife and handler, who had just landed on the river in a ski plane. Lavrakas pulled out his camera and documented the rescue.
“Too bad that Joe has to scratch,” Lee remarked to the musher’s wife as they watched the two teams depart.
“Why would he have to scratch?” she asked.
“He can’t accept help like that,” Lee explained. “It’s explicit in the rules.”
Rule 26 stated that teams could only be tied together in an “emergency situation,” which had to be declared at the next checkpoint. Dogs quitting on a mild, sunny day was not likely to constitute an emergency in the eyes of the race marshal.
“I don’t think he knows that,” Carpenter’s wife said.
“I’ll tell him,” said Lee, whose dogs were anxious to chase anyhow.
The tandem pair were barely creeping along. Moore was trying to cut Carpenter loose. But every time he relaxed the rope, Carpenter’s trailing leaders faltered. Lee quickly overtook them.
“Joe, you know you’re going to be disqualified,” Lee shouted.
Carpenter protested that his situation certainly amounted to an emergency. “I don’t have any food. I don’t have any fuel,” he cried.
“OK,” Lee said, shrugging. A reformed alcoholic well versed in self-help litany, Barry recognized denial when he heard it. He’d tried. If Carpenter was too freaked out to accept the inevitable, so be it.
The Coach hadn’t wanted me to even stop at Yentna Station, let alone stay six hours. I thought I was being prudent. In covering sled-dog races, I had seen a lot of people blow out their dogs the first day. I was still there when Carpenter finally made it to Yentna — showing no signs of grasping his predicament. He was talking about schedules. Talking about those supplies waiting in Skwentna. Lee and I shared uneasy feelings listening to Joe rant. It was like watching a driver babbling about scratches on a totaled car.
I headed upstairs for a nap as Carpenter and Medred began arguing. The musher couldn’t understand what was so newsworthy about his little delay. Why would Medred want to write about this? Carpenter’s Iditarod was history, and he just didn’t see it. Lavrakas’s photo of the illegal tow was destined for page 1 of Alaska’s biggest newspaper. Medred was gathering details for the next day’s lead story: the first disqualification of this year’s race.
Had anyone asked, I would have said I was traveling somewhere in the middle of the 74-team field. Like Carpenter, I was deluding myself. Lee better understood our plight. He knew there was no one left behind us.
Joe Garnie led the first wave into Skwentna. The hard-driving Eskimo from Teller trotted into the floodlights set up on the river at 3:14 A.M. Sunday, March 3. Being first counted for more than bragging rights. Garnie had won the “Dodge Dash,” a special Iditarod promotion, and the prize was a $15,000 Dakota pickup. With the keys to his new truck in hand, Joe vowed to set fire to his old truck.
Within 2 hours, 15 teams were camped on the river below postmaster Joe Delia’s cabin in Skwentna. This was the Iditarod’s elite. They fed their dogs and traded stories about the first day of the race, all the while eyeing each other warily, waiting to renew the chase.
The shiny new truck was nice, but Garnie’s sights were set on the arch waiting 1,050 miles north. By half past noon, his sled was packed near the checkpoint tents at Finger Lake, 45 miles farther up the trail. Barve was again second, followed by Adkins, Swenson, Tim Osmar, and Jonrowe.
Seventeen teams reached Finger Lake before Butcher. Everyone was camping when Susan arrived at 6:01 P.M. The Butch had other ideas. She dallied just 15 minutes before ordering her 18-dog team onward toward Rohn. Iditarod’s defending champion was leading for the first time in the race.
As the front-runners maneuvered for position, Mowry burned up phone lines from his hotel in Dawson City, Yukon Territory. According to race headquarters, I had checked into Knik at 6:02 P.M. Saturday and I’d never left. Mowry knew that was probably misinformation. But what if I’d lost a dog? What if the team was sick? What if … It was maddening.
The Coach’s strategy called for me to reach Skwentna by noon on Sunday. Forty-nine mushers managed to do that; I wasn’t among them. Mowry called every few hours. New teams kept showing up on the river below Delia’s cabin. More than 60 teams had registered at Skwentna by 7 P.M. on Sunday. The checker’s log also showed one scratch: Englishman Roy Monk. His dogs’ feet were too sore to continue. Team number 2, meanwhile, remained listed “in Knik.”
The Poodle Man passed Daily on the river, roughly ten miles from Skwentna.
“Give the devil his due,” Daily grumbled to himself, watching Suter pass. God, those poodles are clipping right along, looking good.
Tom couldn’t say the same about his own team. Both of his high-priced leaders were a bust. The seed of suspicion planted during the Klondike had blossomed into an ugly reality. These dogs needed better conditioning. He could only blame himself for that. Relocating to Alaska had burned up a lot of time, but it didn’t excuse the training deficiency. And Daily was haunted by the memory of his sponsors’ unconcealed disappointment. There goes the free ride.
Reality, as so often happens, had arrived with a vicious bite. Reaching Skwentna a full hour behind the damn Poodle Man, the musher gloomily declared his 24-hour layover. The dogs needed a breather.
Since the day he signed up, Daily, an old hippie, had been reveling in the prospects of celebrating his thirty-ninth birthday mushing the Iditarod Trail. That day had arrived, and he wondered what he’d done to deserve such karma.
The river was crisscrossed with trails. Each intersecting alternative appeared better to Chad, who kept dodging between them. The general direction was right, so I let Golden Dog pick his own way. He performed reasonably well until we caught up with the Anchorage Daily News snowmachines late Sunday afternoon. Jim Lavrakas and Craig Medred had parked a few yards off the trail. Chad made a beeline for them. He flopped at the journalists’ feet, bringing the team to a dead halt. I had to get off the sled and drag him back on course. From there, his confidence shrank with each step. Before long, I banished Chad to wheel, inserting Harley in single lead.
Intertwining trails didn’t faze the monster. Given a choice between trails, Harley never agonized. He barreled forward, flopping his ears up and down with each step.
Relieved of his pressure position, Chad pulled like a demon. Muscles rippled in his shoulders. His head bent downward; this time from joyous effort, not discouragement. Watching the transformation, I shook my head. What a basket case.
Nearing Skwentna, I put the White Rat up front with Harley for better control. The combination worked beautifully. The wafting scent of woodstoves was as good as a dinner bell to an old sled dog like the Rat. She blazed ahead, displaying energy she normally concealed. In training, the Rat always ran fast enough to keep pace, but not so hard that she might have to work. In that respect, the Rat was the least honest dog in the kennel, and her calculated deceit infuriated the Coach.
When you prodded her, the white dog’s tug line would tighten, but the effort only lasted until you stopped watching her. Like most leaders, she had an uncanny memory for trails. But given any chance, she’d strike out for home. It didn’t matter whether the team had just left the lot. Cutting corners was her goal in life. I didn’t care. The dog might be lazy, but she knew commands. And I enjoyed her games at mealtime.
Every day, without fail, she would stash her pan in the deepest possible corner of her house, which happened to be the longest house in our lot. Our game grew more demanding with the onset of blizzards in December. I had to lie on my belly to reach the pan through her tunnellike entrance. The Rat applauded my cooperation with frisky hops. Then she’d squat on her haunches, lifting both paws in a begging motion.
“The Rat, the Rat,” I’d sing, filling her pan. “Queen of All Dogs.”
The Coach commented on an unintended consequence of my affection. “Rat is getting fat, O’Donoghue. Quit giving her seconds!”
I loved the conniving White Rat, and she paid me back tonight, guiding Harley toward Skwentna’s sagging checkpoint banner. It was a few minutes before midnight. Made it by 12, only it was the wrong 12.
The postmaster appeared holding his clipboard. More than 20 hours had passed since Delia had first checked Garnie’s sled for required gear. He was groggy.
“How many teams are in, Joe?”
Delia shrugged. “Lost track,” he mumbled, handing me the clipboard for my signature. “C’mon up to the cabin when you get settled.”
Where does the time go? First I bedded the dogs in straw. Then I picked up my four-gallon pot and searched for water. Other mushers directed me to a hole chopped in the thick river ice. You had to reach way down to scoop the water out with a coffee can. Filling the pot took a little longer than I expected. That set the tone, I guess. Everything took longer than I expected. Four sacks of supplies were waiting for me. Fetching those 50-to 70-pound sacks required several trips. That took more time.
Sack number 1 contained my most pressing needs at Skwentna, and every other checkpoint: whitefish for the dogs; new batteries; dry gloves; and several toilet-paper rolls for the stove. I threw each dog a chunk of whitefish — starting with Harley, of course.
Iditarod provisioned each checkpoint with dozens of cases of bottled Blazo alcohol fuel, or a similarly flammable equivalent. I collected my share of fuel bottles and carried them back to the team. Placing a roll of toilet paper in the cooker’s bottom pan, I dowsed it with fuel. A flick of a Bic lighter sent blue flame jetting from the toilet paper, which served as the wick for the fuel pooled in the pan. Next, I inserted the pot, suspended several inches above the roaring torch.
Boiling four gallons of frigid water took a good half hour. While waiting, I chopped meat and mixed it with dry food in two 16-gallon coolers. After pouring in the hot water, I resealed the coolers and let the meaty stew soak.
After feeding the dogs, I checked their feet and dabbed ointment on any that looked sore. Rainy’s feet were unblemished, but I wrapped her sensitive wrist in a special rubberized wrap to keep the joint warm and loose. Foot care alone probably consumed 45 minutes to an hour, a routine that would be repeated at almost every stop on the trail to Nome.
I was tired but pleased as I climbed the hill to Delia’s cabin. Hadn’t been that many years since I had climbed this same hill to interview others. This time this adventure was mine. Inside the warm cabin, I grabbed a bowl of chili and sat down with Delia and Iditarod photographers Jim Brown and Jeff Schultz.
Brown, a graying Iditarod mainstay, greeted me with a twinkle in his eye. “I’m tired of chasing the crybabies in front,” he declared. “This year I’m going to follow the teams in the rear. That’s where the good stories are.”
The bodies of sleeping mushers and race officials were scattered across the cabin’s floor. The man responsible for all of this was snoozing in a chair: Joe Redington — a slightly shrunken 73-year-old grandfather, with rumpled clothes and a gray day-old beard.
I remembered interviewing Redington in 1988, down on the river below this cabin. People had been saying that he ought to give it up. That the race was too tough for a man of his age. For three years running, Redington hadn’t been able to prove them wrong. Twice in a row he had scratched with injuries. The year before Old Joe had finished, but thirty-third place was quite a comedown for a three-time fifth-place finisher, and the man said to own the best racing dogs in the world.
Redington looked terrible that day. He was leaning on his sled, sipping hot Tang with a sour expression. It wasn’t the juice — he swore by that sugary powder. It was his head. “’Fraid I’m coming down with a bad case of the flu,” rasped Old Joe, who didn’t believe in fooling with aspirin and those other pills.
The front-runners, indeed, most of the field, had cleared out of Skwentna hours earlier, postponing their required 24-hour layovers for another 100 or 200 miles, and eliminating the risk of a storm sealing off Rainy Pass. Redington was left nearly alone on the Skwentna River with Herbie Nayokpuk, another aging legend. Both men were taking their extended break here, out of necessity: Old Joe, hoping to recover from the virus; Herbie, praying that his coastal dogs would bounce back after wilting in the first day’s heat.
I spent a long time talking to Redington. I figured the chances were good that he wouldn’t make it much farther up the trail, and I had a lot to learn about the Last Great Race and its founder.
Tonight I was ready to discard another illusion. Getting all of my dogs to Nome was a fantasy I couldn’t afford. Not if I wanted to make it more than a mile between tangles. I filled out the paperwork required for dropping Gnat and Daphne from the team.
Written explanations were required for each dropped dog. Mushers were supposed to note any medical problems or special instructions about handling, such as “This dog bites strangers.” I provided a detailed account of Gnat’s mishap with the tree in Anchorage, the comments from vets, and his whimpering behavior after Knik.
My explanation for dropping Daphne was not so sympathetic. “Queen of tangles, never pulls, chews harnesses by the box.”
Reading the form, the Skwentna veterinarian chuckled. “So why did you bring her?”
“Been asking myself that question for a hundred miles.”
During my 12-hour stay in Skwentna, I napped just two hours. Sunrise found me on the river, changing my runner plastic and repacking. Four hours later I was busying myself with the sled. My dogs were getting anxious. Raven and Spook were barking. Digger was leaping in place. I had my back to the sled when the team jerked the hook free and bolted. The team dragged my empty sled about a hundred yards before Redington and two other guys caught the dogs.
“I don’t think they need more rest,” Old Joe said.
Barry Lee had been warned: Expect a long 45 miles from Skwentna to Finger Lake. “It doesn’t look like it, but it’s all uphill,” Bobby told him. “You’re rising toward Rainy Pass.”
With his brother’s comments in mind, Barry tried to ignore his team’s plodding pace, but disappointment was gnawing at him. Though his dogs acted happy, the team was just crawling.
I caught Lee right after he finished changing booties. Aware that my dogs were faster, he ordered his team over to a parallel snowmachine path, clearing the way for me to pass.
Behind me, Lee’s dogs broke through the crusty side trail. While he struggled to pull the team back to the packed snow, many of his dogs took advantage of the distraction to kick or pull off the booties that had just been placed on their feet with painstaking care. Politeness had just cost Barry another 20 minutes of work.
Early Monday afternoon Joe Redington, Sr. completed his required 24-hour layover in Skwentna. I had my dogs off to the side and was tossing out snacks when the old racer barreled past.
“Go get ’em, Joe!”
He flashed a familiar weathered smile.
Sparks shot upward from a roaring log. Heat had melted a circular wall, six feet high, in a surrounding snow drift. Dewey Halverson, his face lit by flames reflecting off the glassy walls, had the other Finger Lake volunteers in hysterics with his impressions of other mushers.
The checkpoint consisted of a cluster of tents in a clearing between tall spruce trees. Accommodations for mushers were sparse. We had a floorless tent, heated by a small sheet-metal stove. Spruce boughs served as bedding.
After tending my dogs, I headed for the tent carrying a fat ice wad of used booties. Most were castoffs from other teams, which I’d snagged en route. My own booty situation was approaching a crisis. The icy trail had already shredded several hundred, wiping out my reserves. Examining my frozen assortment in the mushers’ tent, I picked out several dozen booties in good shape and burned the rest.
Alan Garth, Chase, and I talked by the stove, which hissed with drying gloves and booties. Mark Williams was sleeping soundly nearby.
Chase mentioned that he had never, in all his Iditarods, drawn a decent starting position.
“Yeah,” I said, “I got lucky, but I didn’t know what to do with it.”
Herrman was off in the woods by himself. He couldn’t bear for others to witness his distress. First it had been the heat. Now his dogs were sick. Only 11 dogs left, and 9, NINE, had bloody diarrhea. It looked to Sepp like they had swollen tonsils as well. The German had a theory about the cause. Living at his remote cabin in the Brooks Range, his dogs hadn’t been exposed to the viruses common in populated areas. They had never had a chance to build immunity to the diseases carried by the other teams. Up north, the trapper depended on no one but himself. He didn’t need or want any help now. Those nosy Iditarod officials could just mind their own business.
For 36 hours Sepp kept the fire going under his cook pot as he camped near Finger Lake. Using snow melted by the gallon, the trapper nursed and hand-fed his poor sick puppies.
Despair was overwhelming Barry Lee. Twelve hours had passed since he had set out from Skwentna on the 45-mile run to Finger Lake. He wasn’t absolutely sure, but he doubted anyone was behind him. Every team in this race was faster, and nobody was wasting as much time. What was I thinking of taking so many naps? he asked himself. Yet he felt tired even now. Bone weary. Oh, what was he going to do? This wasn’t just wilderness; it was an emotional wasteland. Tears ran down the musher’s cheeks.
Suddenly Lee sensed a light over his shoulder. Stopping his team, he slowly turned, expecting to see the headlamp from an approaching musher. The light came from no earthly source. A corona reached across the heavens. Shimmering bands formed an arching circle in the sky, reminding the musher of a great circus tent. The lights were an intense, dynamic presence. And so beautiful. Barry divined a message in the display: God had staged this Northern Lights show to let him know everything was going to be OK.
Anchoring his team with two snow hooks, Lee lay on his back in the snow, reveling in the glorious celestial fire. Tears again streamed down his face. This time, tears of joy. “Thank you, God,” whispered Barry Lee, staring up at the wondrous colors.
He was still rejoicing when a real headlamp appeared from behind. It was John Ace, a thick-bearded, barrel-chested musher from Sutton making his sixth run to Nome.
“How far in?” Lee asked.
“Oh, not too far,” said Ace. “Two miles, maybe three.”
Trailing the other musher through a thick stand of tall spruce, Lee sensed a change within himself. Whatever else happened, however grim the situation might get, he would never again feel so low. He had company on this, on any trail. His faith was confirmed. How could it be otherwise? At the moment of Barry Lee’s greatest need, a message had come.