It took me three hours to nurse my battered and windowless but still drivable vehicle back to town, with great clumps of moose hair and oceans of broken glass filling the seats and littering the floor. When I finally limped into my driveway I was so tired I just wanted to crawl under the covers and not come out for about a month.
Now I’m about to go to bed in hopes of even a short nap because I’ve got to be back in the classroom at eight. I suppose all of this will be good practice for the trail, where I’ll have to weather equally traumatic experiences. I guess it’s just been my turn to be tested, to make sure I can “take a licking and keep on ticking” just like the dogs.
Most sleds are of two types: toboggan and basket. This is a toboggan sled, consisting of a rigid piece of plastic firmly bolted to two sturdy runners, with a handlebar braced upright at the rear. Toboggans are strong and good for deep snow, but they tend to be heavier, less flexible, and less maneuverable than basket sleds. Many Iditarod mushers start the race with toboggans and run them until they are through the sled-battering trails of the Alaska Range.
December 15, 1994
Montana Creek, Alaska
My student teaching is finally completed and I’m living full-time at Montana Creek. I’m running the dogs every day and looking forward to the racing season, which begins day after tomorrow with the Sheep Creek Lodge Christmas Classic, just a few miles down the road.
I decide to take out my “A”-team of 12 dogs this afternoon. I want to give them 30 miles and rest them tomorrow before the back-to-back 40-mile heats in the Sheep Creek race this weekend. I’m not worried about the dogs handling runs of this length; we’re back on line with our training after the heavy snows and the team is in good shape.
In fact, they’re positively jumping to go somewhere today and I intend to oblige them. First I secure the sled’s quick-release to a telephone-pole-size post and set the snow hook for insurance—I’m still awed by the brute power of 12 dogs and am not anxious to let the team do something unplanned. Then I add a couple more sections to the gangline to accommodate all the dogs and lay the harnesses out.
Harnessing and hooking up goes surprisingly quickly. The dogs are quiet until they see me put on my windbreaker and gloves, then it’s like someone turned on a master switch. They have obviously zeroed in on my habits, which include not putting on all my outerwear until the last minute to avoid overheating while I run around hooking up. They also understand hooking up a bigger team usually means an interesting run.
As I pull the snow hook and get ready with the quick release, the dogs strain into their harnesses and set up a deafening chorus of barking, yipping, and whining. The dogs who aren’t going help drive the noise to rock-band levels. There must be a formula to explain why adding dogs to a team increases the noise geometrically. Hooking up an eight-or ten-dog team is noisy, but getting ready to go with 12 or more probably exceeds OSHA standards. People who live in musher country can tell you in a heartbeat when one of their neighbors is hooking up for a run, and likely how many dogs as well.
As I let go the quick release, I stomp on the brake. It’s like trying to stop a moving freight train by dragging a stick. About the best I can manage is to slow the team down enough to keep me from being flung from the sled as we thread our way out onto the main trail.
When we hit the wide, hard, manicured Montana Creek club trail, I turn them loose. It’s like mashing the accelerator on a Trans-Am. The dogs are in full frenzy and we tear around the mercifully gentle turns at 20 miles an hour or more. The first mile goes by in just a few minutes and suddenly I realize we’ve overshot our turnoff for the 20-mile trail.
I stand on the brake and yell to Socks to stop, but he’s gone 10 yards past the turn. Without thinking I tell him to haw and he and Weasel immediately jump into the waist-deep snow and start to flounder over to the correct branch of the Y. Unfortunately, the dogs behind them don’t have to go through the deep snow. The swing dogs win the race to the new trail, resulting in a dog-ball of epic proportions.
With a sigh I set the snow hook as best I can and move up to untangle everybody. After I get the first few deciphered, Socks decides it’s time to go again and jerks the team forward. I catch the gangline just in front of the sled and hang on, shouting between mouthfuls of snow for Socks to cease and desist.
He finally slows down and I’m able to lever the sled over onto its side, which creates enough drag to convince the team to stop. I shove the hook into the too-yielding snow again and go forward to finish the untangling process.
After five minutes I’ve got everyone ready and am rather pleased with myself for restoring peace and harmony. At that exact instant the team shoots forward, popping the sled upright and ripping out the useless snow hook like a bent safety pin. Rank rookie that I am, I’m caught completely by surprise and miss the handlebar as the sled rockets by. I shout at Socks to whoa up but he’s not listening to me or anyone else. He and the team are heading down the trail like they’re supposed to, with or without their inconsequential human baggage.
This is the unthinkable thing I’ve always feared—I’ve lost the team. Dumbfounded, I stare after them for a minute or so. Then I start walking down the trail. There’s nothing else to do. I know Barrie is out on this trail somewhere and my best hope is she will see the runaway team and stop it, and maybe even hook it to her sled and lead it back.
Failing that, I know Socks will probably continue around the 20-mile loop and I can grab the team as he brings it back by in a couple of hours. Of course, there are also any number of less pleasant possibilities. He might make an impulsive wrong turn or chase a moose and wrap everyone around a tree. Even on the main trail, the sled could overrun the team on one of the steep hills and injure the wheel dogs.
There’s also one thing I don’t even want to think about. The trail is partly on the borough road system and there is a chance the team will meet a vehicle. Fortunately, the roads we use don’t see much traffic, and most of the locals are used to seeing dog teams. In fact, a concerned motorist might even stop the team and tie it off—it’s happened plenty of times before. Still, the thought of a vehicle running into my team is too frightening even to think about.
I trudge up the trail and onto the road. After a few hard miles and an hour or so I finally flag down the first vehicle I meet. The driver says he hasn’t seen the team; since he came up from the highway, I assume Socks has kept to the 20-mile trail and hasn’t turned down toward the heavier traffic.
I impose on my surprised Good Samaritan and ask him to run me up to the end of the plowed road to see if the team has made it that far. We race the three miles to the end of the road; my team isn’t there, but Barrie is just coming down off the back trail. She says she met my team almost an hour ago on the borough road only a couple of miles past my unscheduled debarkation point. She tried to grab the leaders as they shot by and missed them. Then she turned her team around and chased the runaway train back up the trail for several miles.
Because my team was only dragging the empty sled, she knew she didn’t have a prayer of catching them unless they tangled up. She says they stayed lined out and just kept moving, widening their lead. She finally turned around when it looked like they would make the whole loop before she could get back to cut them off on the lower road.
I decide to wait and see if my team reappears while Barrie takes hers back and picks up my van. If my team doesn’t show up by the time Barrie returns with the car, we’ll try to go find someone with a snowmachine to backtrack up the trail. As I stand there by myself in the overcast twilight I feel totally helpless and utterly stupid. I play the scene over and over in my mind—Why didn’t I realize Socks was going to go as soon as I finished untangling everyone? Why didn’t I let them continue 100 yards or so where I could have tied the team off on a swamp spruce alongside the trail? Why didn’t I see the turnoff coming in time to keep the tangle from happening in the first place? I promise myself and any deities who might be listening never to lo
se the team again if I ever get it back in one piece.
In the end, something like this is the musher’s fault and I know it. The dogs only do what they’re trained to do—run. A few mushers have the luxury of a leader who will stop and check to see if the driver is still aboard, but Socks doesn’t work that way. It’s strictly up to the musher to stay a step ahead of them and anticipate things like this. There is no excuse, and I call myself every name in the book and worry myself sick about my team as a light snow starts to fall.
All sleds have some kind of brake; usually, the musher steps on the brake bar to drive metal points into the snow or ice. Most also are equipped with a drag, a piece of old snowmachine track that can be dragged behind the brake when needed. The musher steps on the drag for varying amounts of braking action. The snow hook is used to anchor the team when the sled is stopped. Many mushers use two hooks for insurance, as well as a snub line with a quick-release snap that can be looped around a tree or rock.
After maybe 15 minutes I catch a glimpse of movement up on the hill that materializes into a team. In another few seconds I can see there is no driver, and I can make out Socks and Yankee and Silvertip and all my other misplaced puppies. They’re running as if nothing has happened, lined out smartly and making at least 15 miles an hour over the soft trail.
I’m so overjoyed I almost forget to catch the sled as it comes by. As the dogs slow a bit to go over the berm where the plowed road starts, I swing aboard the sled like a tourist grabbing a San Francisco cable car. As we continue down the road I see to my astonishment absolutely nothing is amiss. I’ve been incredibly lucky. (I find out later our neighbor John Barron and son Will were out with their teams and got mine turned around almost 10 miles up the trail.)
A few of the dogs casually look back to acknowledge my presence and immediately refocus on the run. For a minute I feel they could do everything without me. It’s a chilling realization. Then my gathering depression is replaced by a certain pride—I’ve apparently trained them well enough to function smoothly even when I’m not around to oversee their every move.
As we head back to the dog lot, I realize I’ve just learned an extremely valuable lesson for the long races which are rapidly approaching. The dogs will keep moving even if I get tired or disoriented or injured, and I can trust them to do so even if I’m not capable of controlling them. Their built-in autopilot will see the team—and me—through all manner of problems. After all is said and done, I understand we really are a team and the dogs are equal partners in this enterprise, even if it has taken a profound blow to my ego to drive home this fundamental fact.
December 17-18, 1994
Sheep Creek Lodge, Alaska
The Sheep Creek Christmas Classic
Today is my first real race as a reasonably serious dog driver. I’ve been looking forward to this—and dreading it—for weeks. In a manner of speaking, this is my semester exam, and if I can get through it in one piece I’ll consider myself to have passed with flying colors.
The Sheep Creek Christmas Classic is staged by the local lodge every year as a sort of prelude to the regular long-distance racing season in Southcentral Alaska. It’s not a lengthy race, only 40 miles or so on Saturday with another heat over the same trail the next day. However, it usually draws some of the top mushers in this part of the state and is a good opportunity to see how my dogs will react around other teams and lots of strange people.
Naturally I don’t expect to win anything. I know my dogs aren’t even remotely a match for some of the big names who usually enter, or even for most of the smaller names, for that matter. All I want to do is finish honorably, with the dogs all intact, and without taking so long as to require a search party. Hopefully I’ll learn something from watching the other mushers and from talking with them between heats.
Things aren’t starting auspiciously, however. We’ve had another big dump of snow within the past 48 hours and we got Ron’s big van—our main dog truck—stuck in his driveway trying to get it out last night. Since we couldn’t get any other vehicles back into the dog lot, we decided I would hitch four of my dogs to the sled and run them over to my place for the night, with Ron and Barrie bringing the remaining eight over in the morning.
I’m up by eight o’clock preparing soup (hot water flavored with dry dog food) for the team when Ron and Barrie show up with the rest of the dogs. Barrie’s truck is already at my place with Bert’s small eight-dog box precariously balanced on old tires in the back. We rope the sled onto the box, fill the box with dogs, strap down the box, and load the remaining four dogs into my replacement minivan. It’s not exactly a professional operation, but it’ll serve.
As we convoy the 10 miles down to the lodge for the 10 a.m. musher’s meeting, I ponder everything that can go wrong. After a few minutes of steadily increasing panic, I manage to reassure myself there’s no point in being pessimistic. I have to start somewhere to try to conquer the doubts. In all likelihood, the dogs will run just fine and all I’ll have to do is hold onto the sled until everything settles down. In any case, I’m committed, and besides, I don’t think I could get my $100 entry fee back.
As we pull in I see several other Iditarod rookies; I’ll be in good company. I also see some of the real heavyweights of Alaska dog mushing. Since this race is short enough for the sprint racers, there are several of them, including Roxy Wright-Champaine, the many-times-over world champion of the sprint circuit. Her dogs are blindingly fast and are trained to go 20 or 30 miles at top speed; they’d probably have a tough time doing this all the way to Nome, though.
Martin Buser is here, as are Vern Halter and Diana Moroney, both top-20 finishers in the last Iditarod. Many of the dogs in my team came from Vern’s kennel, and like all mushers he’ll certainly recognize his former proteges when he sees them. Diana, whom I’ve known for years, gave me several of my dogs, so I’m glad she’ll see them running. Her husband Bruce, a longtime Iditarod pilot like me, is also here; he ran to Nome last year using many of the dogs I’m now using. It seems most of my dogs are better known than I am.
At the musher’s meeting we find out there are 23 teams in all, a very good turnout for this relatively minor race. Everyone is in good spirits and there is a real feeling of “cooperate and graduate.” Of course, everyone can pretty well predict who the top finishers will be. That being all but settled, the rest of us will perform our function as the Greek chorus and get a good training run out of it, which is really why we’re here.
I draw the number three starting position, which I don’t want. This just means I’ll be passed by faster teams, which is practically everybody behind me. Barrie and Ron and I linger over coffee and then go out to prepare for the 11 o’clock start. The parking lot is now full of dog trucks of all descriptions, from humble, rusted pickups with homemade dog boxes thrown on the back—like Barrie’s—to the heavy-duty rolling palaces of some of the professional dog drivers.
We get the dogs unlimbered and harnessed up and immediately have a fight on our hands. Doc and Rocky, normally best friends and running partners, are apparently stressed out by the race atmosphere and have a brief go at each other, fortunately with no damage. We do some fast rearranging and restore order, at least until the first team moves up to the starting line. Then the entire parking lot erupts in a crescendo of howls, barks, whines, and general bedlam.
This is one of the phenomena I want my team to experience so I can see how they react. Sled dogs have a sixth sense that alerts them when something important is going to happen. Race starts are always incredibly frantic events and the dogs are in a state of terminal excitement to get moving. My dogs seem to be average, which means it takes half a dozen people to hold them back as we move up to the starting line even while I’m riding the brake as hard as I can.
Sprint mushers usually hold races every weekend at their local track (in this case, at Montana Creek). They run dogs for distances of up to 10 or 20 miles in 4-dog, 6-dog, 8-dog, and open classes. Distance mushers will ofte
n run their dogs in these races for fun and to expose younger dogs to the frenzied race atmosphere. Sprint teams pull lightweight sleds with no loads and can easily average better than 20 miles an hour for up to 20 or 25 miles. This is usually enough to leave distance teams far behind.
In the starting chute, some of the more volatile dogs jump around and get tangled, which Ron and Barrie get straightened out with maybe 30 seconds to spare. Then the starter counts down the last five seconds and we’re off—the first real race of the season for the dogs, and my first serious mushing competition ever.
Socks is leading and he explodes up the trail with the team in a full run. I’m riding the brake as hard as I can to keep the speed down because I don’t know this trail and I’ve heard there are some bad moguls on it. I keep the team down to five miles an hour for the first mile, by which time I realize the trail isn’t as bad as I’d heard. I let up on the brake and we speed up, the dogs running in the pure ecstasy of a new trail and a real race.
We scream along for another mile along the beautiful spruce-lined trail, which eventually opens out into a flat swamp as it approaches the powerline right-of-way along which most of the race route is laid out. As we pull off the swamp and over a small rise studded with clumps of willow, we hit the first series of moguls. At full speed, the leaders sail over the crest of the first one and almost disappear down the other side. Before I can get on the brake they are up and over another and yet another. In a sort of delayed reaction I see coming and can’t do anything about, the sled crests the first mogul and crashes almost three feet straight down. Then the suddenly-slack gangline pops taut as the speeding team yanks it taunt, slamming the sled into and over the next mini-mountain.
Alaska Dogs and Iditarod Mushers Page 11