Alaska Dogs and Iditarod Mushers

by Mike Dillingham

  The dogs pull resolutely up the interminable slope. Unlike the monster mountain on the Copper Basin 300, though, we’re up here exploring on our own volition and it’s a mutual enterprise. They want to see what’s up here as much as I do and are fully alert and intent, peering off to the side of the trail or up at the peaks. I think they really do appreciate the view; I know from driving Silvertip in my car and flying him in my plane that he thoroughly enjoys seeing the countryside. Other mushers have told me good long-distance sled dogs must be intelligent and curious enough to want to see what’s around the next bend. Otherwise they’d never be able to handle the hours on the trail in the bigger races without going sour and refusing to pull.

  This climb easily rivals our Copper Basin nemesis. Today, however, there is no hesitation, which is the underlying reason I brought the team up here. If I can get them to take every hill as if there’s something new and exciting at the top, they’ll be much less prone to balk even if they’re tired. And I know there are so many hills on the Iditarod the total climb would probably add up to several trips to the top of Denali.

  Mental preparation of this sort is just as important for the dogs as for the drivers. Indeed, top-flight drivers like Martin Buser send a second team of younger dogs on the Iditarod every year. These canine rookies aren’t pushed: the goal is to give them an easy trip to Nome so they will come to see the trail as a fun place to be. (And judging from the success of Martin and others using this strategy, it certainly seems to work.)

  Finally all I can see ahead is a thin stand of stunted trees and brush. As we pull past them, it’s like we’ve broken out onto the top of the world. The unbroken slope continues up perhaps another quarter mile to a lone snow-frosted boulder atop a knoll. The dogs can sense this is our goal and redouble their efforts, practically loping up the 15-percent grade.

  Abeam the great stone, I stop the team. We’re on a rise overlooking a vast expanse of tundra leading up to the rugged peaks. The snowmachine trail we’ve followed up from the lowlands splits into many tracks, each leading to its own mysterious destination behind a ridge or up a side couloir. We’re certainly not pioneers up here, since this is a popular weekend destination for motorized explorers, but I know we’re the first dog team to make it up here in some weeks. From our perspective it’s a whole new world.

  Behind us, the sun has just set and the clouds are aglow with vivid reds and golds over the Alaska Range far to the west. Far below, in the valley whence we’ve come, the lights along the Parks Highway are twinkling on as the late-winter darkness creeps in. There are so few lights they barely disturb the immensity of the silent forests and swamps and rivers. I know there are more than 5,000 people living in the Maryland-sized Susitna Valley, but their impact seems minimal from this lofty viewpoint.

  It’s taken us less than two hours to get up here from our dog lot, but we might as well have traveled to another world. As much as I’d like to push on to explore the high country, night is falling quickly and I have to get back to feed the other dogs. I hate to leave, but I know I’ll be back. Besides, the dogs are already screaming to go; the climb hasn’t even fazed them.

  I turn the team around and we start back down the trail. The dogs have apparently been anticipating the downhill run and immediately break into a lope. We barrel back down the trail and into the tree line like the Twentieth Century Limited. I ride the brake but there’s no way I can stop the dogs quickly when they’ve got the bit in their teeth like this. I suppose Captain Hazelwood had a similar feeling when he tried to stop the Exxon Valdez. The problem, I suddenly realize, is the hills. Several steep sections we trudged up earlier now become twisting carnival rides as I struggle to keep the sled upright and me on it. And there’s worse to come.

  I’ve come to classify really serious downhills in two categories: “yee-hahs” and “omigods.” The former is the kind of whistling descent with enough elements of fun and adventure and sufficient pumping adrenaline to overshadow the likelihood of imminent disaster. There is a reasonable chance of survival or at least a smiling demise. My mental behavior model for transiting these declivities is the late, lamented Slim Pickens in Doctor Strangelove astride his trusty H-bomb, wildly waving his Stetson on his drop to glory.

  The other flavor of hill is the kind that, on a ski slope, you take one look at, break your own leg, and crawl away from on your hands and knees begging for mercy and a hot buttered rum, heavy on the rum. These plunges have no redeeming social value and seemingly offer a direct descent into the underworld. On a dog sled, however, there is no turning back, and in any case you’re already committed to the free fall sans parachute before you can do anything about it. After the shock of the initial surprise, as the enormity of the situation takes hold, the chief emotion is a strange type of Eastern fatalism, perhaps accompanied by a fleeting glimpse of the major events of your life and a passing regret at not updating your will.

  Of course, nothing bothers the dogs, who would probably enjoy hurtling off a sheer cliff face to see how thoroughly they can trash the sled and driver. This is the mode my team is in as we careen down the mountain in the gathering gloom. My feeble headlamp is virtually no help because I can only see the leaders about half the time as the blind turns come faster and faster.

  Shortly the inevitable happens as the dogs whip through a nasty triple switchback on a near-vertical drop between towering spruce sentinels. I overcompensate on the first 120-degree turn and both the sled and I depart the trail in grand style on the second, clearing most of the third while still airborne. In about three nanoseconds I find myself wrapped around a tree, face down in the snow, with my boot jammed through the brake framework on the overturned sled. Maybe Martin Buser could have gotten through this maniac luge run unscathed, but I’ve got a long way to go before I approach his sled-driving skills.

  I enjoy a snack of snow and spruce bark while I contemplate my shortcomings. The dogs, of course, are barking wildly (or perhaps they’re laughing?) to go on. I take inventory and find the sled is in one piece and I’m only mildly damaged. As I start to disengage my boot from the brake, the dogs take it as a signal to move on and drag me another 20 feet down the hill. I need 10 minutes to finally extract my impossibly large boot from the incredibly small aperture through which it’s been inserted, a process which isn’t abetted by the team’s impatient yanks on the gangline.

  The lowly doghouse is the sled dog’s castle. Most are little more than sturdy two-foot-square plywood boxes with holes cut in one side and straw stuffed inside. Anything fancier is wasted effort since the houses suffer many indignities from their occupants, including being chewed to pieces. Sled dogs love to spend an inordinate amount of time on top of their houses, and often prefer to sleep on them rather than in them.

  This was a classic “omigod” hill, complete with the belated realization of complete and utter disaster. But this time no harm is done and I have to chalk it up as just part of the game. Back on the trail, we scream down several more yee-hahs and another omigod or two, making it to the bottom of the mountain fully half an hour faster than we went up it. The dogs have enjoyed the downhill breather so much they keep running even after we hit the lowland sections.

  As we roar into the dog lot I marvel at their speed and endurance: we’ve gone at least 40 miles—including the long climb and several stops—in a little more than four hours. If they can do this on the Iditarod, we’re not going to have many problems. For now, though, it’s back up the mountain tomorrow with the other 10 dogs. Maybe I’ll wear my old baseball catcher’s shin guards and face mask for that one....

  February 10, 1995

  Montana Creek, Alaska

  Ron has had to drop out of the race. For a week or more he’s been hinting something might be coming up. Apparently a planned April trip to Minnesota to resolve a family matter must now be made during the race. I know he’s unhappy about not getting to go to Nome again, and it changes things rather substantially for me as well. I’d hoped to run with him unti
l I could get my sea legs and a good feel for the trail. Now he won’t be there and I’ll have to do the best I can. I hope I’ve learned enough to get me through the rough spots.

  Anyway, Ron still wants to help me get my stuff accumulated, and says he will sew booties and work with me to get my food drop together, which must be ready to go next week. Ron does say he wants to run in 1997, the 25th anniversary of the race. A number of the mushers who ran the first Iditarod are thinking about doing the ’97 race together, with their own old-timers’ pot of prize money for their race-within-a-race.

  The fact Ron will be 70 years old then—and some of the other drivers will be even older—doesn’t faze him a bit. I guess mushing is a lot like golf (and maybe another well-known pastime), in that you can apparently do it no matter how old you are. Joe Redington, Sr., commonly regarded as the father of the Iditarod, actually led the race into Cripple in 1988, when he was 71; Joe finished fifth, a remarkable accomplishment for anyone, much less a septagenarian.

  But Ron won’t be going this year, and I feel the race as a whole will be the worse off for it. I know his withdrawal has taken some of the wind out of my sails; I’d always assumed he’d be there with me on the trail, but now I’ll have to revise my plans a bit. Maybe in ’97....

  February 12, 1995

  Montana Creek, Alaska

  There are days when it doesn’t pay to get out of bed. Today is definitely one of them, and then some. In fact, if somebody had a video camera, we could sell the footage to the media.

  I’m walking in a perfectly ordinary manner from the dog lot into Ron’s cabin after feeding the dogs when I slip on the ice and do a classic movie pratfall. Unfortunately, I collapse backward like a toppling spruce onto a two-by-four sticking up out of the ice.

  It catches me squarely in the upper right side of my back and the pain is beyond almost anything I’ve ever experienced. The only thing I can do is roll around on the ice for 10 minutes in tears while Ron and Barrie look on in disbelief. After a while the pain diminishes sufficiently for me to get up and stagger inside, but I know something has been badly damaged. I can’t believe I’ve put myself in the position of possibly not running the Iditarod because of a fool accident like slipping on the ice.

  I decide I can drive my car and tell Ron I intend to head for the emergency room at Elmendorf ASAP. Ron says he’ll accompany me if I need help, but I think I can probably make it, if for no other reason than the pain will keep me awake all the way.

  The 100-mile drive to town is memorable, if only because I have to pull over several times to let particularly bad spasms pass. At the emergency room, the doctor looks at the x-rays and says I’ve probably cracked a rib, and I almost certainly have torn some muscles and other good stuff inside my rib cage. He gives me some heavy-duty painkillers and advises me to get home somehow before I start taking them.

  I manage to get back to Montana Creek, but I know I’m in trouble. I can barely breathe, and coughing is like getting kicked by a mule. I have to sneeze once and nearly pass out. I realize there’s no way I can run my dogs for at least a couple of weeks; I hope they can keep their edge until Kim starts running them in preparation for the Junior Iditarod.

  I’m really worried I won’t be back in working order before the Iditarod itself, not even three weeks away. I know rib injuries and deep tissue damage can take months to heal, and I will have to be very careful not to re-injure myself and set back the healing process over the next week or two. Is somebody up there trying to tell me something? Or maybe I’m just so inept I can’t maintain my own health during a critical period.

  Regardless, I’ll still be at the starting line on March 4th, even if I have to carry enough serious painkillers to require an escort from the Drug Enforcement Agency. At least I can take some comfort in knowing I won’t be the first musher to try the race with a busted something or other. I guess the worst part is I can’t blame my disability on something honorable, like a spectacular sled wreck. To have to ’fess up to slipping on the ice like some dumb cheechako is almost as painful as the cracked rib. And of course it hurts worst when I laugh.

  February 17, 1995

  Montana Creek and Anchorage, Alaska

  The one part of getting ready for the Iditarod which is guaranteed to drive the drivers to distraction is the food drop. Planning and executing it is like organizing a Himalayan expedition from scratch. A new musher like me can easily spend weeks putting everything together, not to mention a couple thousand dollars. Even veterans tend to pull their hair out as food drop approaches; sleepless nights and irritable dispositions are the norm while the process is underway.

  The rules are disarmingly brief, merely requiring every musher to ship a minimum amount of food out to each of the major checkpoints: this means at least five pounds of food for each dog at 14 locations, in addition to personal goodies and other gear. But it’s not as simple as it sounds.

  Lots of factors must be considered in assembling a ton or so of food and equipment for a trip of almost 1,200 miles. For instance, dogs get tired and cranky after several days on the trail and can become picky eaters, so a variety of food is required to tempt their palates. This means mushers must anticipate what their dogs might like and try to cover the waterfront with a selection of entrees like lamb, beef, chicken, turkey, liver, beaver, seal, fish, and a breathtaking array of off-the-wall homemade concoctions—all in addition to a basic fare of commercial dry dog food.

  Then there’s race strategy to be considered. Some drivers like to “rabbit” and go as far and as fast as they can before stopping to take their mandatory 24-hour layover, while some like to get it out of the way early on. Regardless, extra food for dogs and driver must be allocated for one or more likely stopping points.

  Many mushers like to ship replacement sleds ahead (the race allows no more than two). Sleds break with alarming frequency, and sometimes they can’t be fixed well enough to hold up for the long haul to Nome. Many mushers count on changing sleds after crossing the Alaska Range, and some will switch to a lighter, faster sled out on the coast when they’re likely to have fewer dogs.

  All drivers also ship out several replacement sets of plastic runner bottoms; the dogs have a tough enough time of it without having to pull a sled with chewed-up bottoms. Booties for the dogs are another major item—most mushers send out more than 1,000 of them, along with dozens of various lines and snaps. The problem, of course, is deciding just where to ship these key items.

  Bags of dog food and supplies sent ahead by mushers await the teams at the Ophir checkpoint. Each musher pays the race organization to ship about a ton of food and other gear to more than 15 checkpoints.

  Every musher has to ship out personal food and consumables. For instance, headlamps go through four D-cell alkaline batteries every four to six hours of use, and the bulbs don’t last forever, either. Air-activated disposable charcoal hand warmers are another high-consumption item— some drivers use many dozens of them on the race. And there are other small necessities like dry socks and underwear and spare batteries for the inevitable Walkman, all of which have to be laid out ahead of time.

  Musher food is no small matter: Every driver must ensure he or she has enough calories and variety to sustain a grueling pace that can demand 5,000 calories a day. “People food” on the race runs the gamut from peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches with candy bars on the side to precooked multi-course gourmet dinners, vacuum-sealed and frozen for quick reheating. Even with the most appetizing bill of fare, however, most mushers lose weight on the race, usually because they simply forget to eat the delicacies they’ve so thoughtfully provided for themselves.

  Much of the food going into the bags for the dogs and for me is dependent on the so-called “cooker” I will carry in the sled all the way to Nome. This is actually an enclosed alcohol stove with a metal pot for heating water or melting snow; it isn’t actually used to cook. Of course, as the water heats, it’s perfect for thawing packages of frozen “people food” like bu
rritos or even entire dinners, so in a sense it actually is a cooker. On early Iditarods, mushers built wood fires to make and heat water; later, charcoal stoves were used, but alcohol cookers proved to be most efficient and are now the standard for mushers everywhere.

  The entire complicated inventory has to be sorted and packed into special pre-marked, color-coded bags for each checkpoint by two weeks before the race. Most mushers end up packing 40 or 50 bags totaling 2,000 pounds. The race organization collects and ships all the bags and charges the mushers a flat rate of about 25 cents a pound.

  Some drivers claim this is the hardest part of the race. Most will readily say actually running the dogs is anticlimactic and many consider the travails of the trail a positively pleasant counterpoint to the logistical nightmare of the food drop.

  As for me, I waited as long as I could because a lot of the meat I’m going to ship out comes frozen in 50-pound blocks and has to be sawed into dog-sized chunks. We’ve been in the throes of a midwinter thaw, with temperatures in Anchorage as high as 50 degrees. Since I have no frozen storage capability, the meat could have gone bad if I’d bought it and cut it too soon. If I had waited too long, I might not have gotten it cut in time, or I might not have found what I needed because of the dozens of other mushers with similar plans.

  Luckily, I timed it right, although it was closer than I liked. The weather cooled off over the past few days and we are almost below zero. I managed to get everything I wanted: 600 pounds of super-premium dry dog food, 300 pounds of lamb, 200 pounds of beef, 200 of horsemeat, 200 of chicken, 100 of turkey skins, and 200 of herring. It wasn’t cheap or easy, but the dogs will eat like kings.