I’m so mad I feel like chewing tree bark. However, I have a secret weapon for just such a development—my cellular phone. I fish it out of my parka pocket and call Ron’s place; to my frustration, he’s not there, but I leave a message to head the team off if he can. I have to assume Socks will take everybody back to the lot; he knows the way well enough. We’re only about five miles from home and my only worry is the sled will spill or overrun the wheel dogs on a hill, or there will be a tangle and a dog will be hurt. But for the meantime, there’s not much to do but hoof it.
Last year when I lost the team I was worried about them getting lost or heading out to the highway; this year that doesn’t bother me, but my own stupidity does. I knew better than to let go of the quick-release rope, which I wrap around my wrist as a safety line; I’ve always considered getting dragged behind the sled to be much preferable to losing the team. But I was getting irritated at myself and forgot some fundamental procedures. At the least, I could have set the snow hook, which would probably have prevented the team from pulling away so quickly.
It takes me an hour to walk back. As I near the lot, Ron meets me and says the team was waiting patiently in the driveway with only a minor tangle or two. As usual, Socks has brought everybody home in one piece, except for me. Ron even comments on how orderly the dogs are; just like last year, I have to pat myself on the back for training them well even as I kick myself in the rear for losing them in the first place. Ron just laughs and says any experienced dog driver who hasn’t walked home a few times is doing something wrong.
I go inside and stew for awhile, contemplating the possibility of hitching everybody up and going out again. But I know the dogs didn’t do anything wrong and I wouldn’t be proving a thing to take it out on them. So I decide to give myself a real present and hop in the car and run over to Steve Adkins’ place. He’s offered me a deal I can’t refuse on one of the best leaders in this part of the state.
I’ve temporarily got a decent bank balance because I’ve just sold my airplane. Of course, this is the same one I used to fly for the Iditarod and which was the vehicle to get me interested in running the race in the first place; O. Henry would have loved the whole affair, I think. Anyway, I happily write Steve a check for Lucky, whom Steve ran in the 1994 Iditarod; as I sign it I think this is infinitely better than shopping till I drop in one of the malls in Anchorage for stuff I’d just lose or put on a shelf after a few months.
I actually look at this as a blue-chip investment and I don’t blink an eye as I watch a grand change hands—proven lead dogs can easily bring $5,000 or more. In Lucky’s case, I already know he’s a super leader, and Steve has two even better leaders who are sure to put him in the money this year. If Lucky is even partly as good as Hank and Crystal (his other two prodigies) I’m going to be in good shape. After last year, I know I need the extra depth in leaders, and Lucky will be my third first-rate male front-ender. I look at it as stacking the deck in my favor. Besides, he’s not even five years old yet, and is just coming into his prime; there’s no question he’ll be with me for a long time, even after Socks and Buck are comfortably retired.
I stop by Ron’s on the way back for a bit of Christmas cheer. In a fitting turn of the wheel, Lucky is directly out of Ron’s best line of dogs, the ones with which he helped pioneer the early Iditarods and Yukon Quests. As the evening grows pleasantly late, Ron reminisces about some of the truly legendary dogs he’s had in that line and some of the incredible things they’ve done.
After I get back to my place I can hardly get to sleep; Santa has just stopped by and given me the best gift anyone could have wanted. I can’t wait to get up in the morning and put Lucky up front with Buck. I finally drift off to sleep with Iditarod dreams of glory dancing in my head. This will be the year—now I know it for sure.
Sometimes mushers will run together on isolated stretches of trail, both for the company and to help each other if needed.
December 30, 1995
Montana Creek, Alaska
Lucky has proven to be everything I expected and more. He and Buck were perfectly matched up front on Christmas Day, roaring around a 30-mile run at speeds up to 20 miles an hour, and averaging 12 or better. The next day I hooked Lucky up with Socks, with virtually the same result on a 40-miler. I was so pleased I could hardly contain myself: the team genuinely looked like Iditarod quality, much more so than last year.
Today I’m taking the dogs out on a 50-mile run. The weather is great and the trails are still good. I’m secretly pitying the poor mushers down south of here who are still rumbling around on four-wheelers in clouds of dust like the old 20-mule teams hauling borax through the Mojave Desert. Lucky and Buck are up front and we storm out of the lot early in the afternoon like we really know what we’re doing.
After half an hour I stop to clear up a minor tangle up front. Dangerous Dan, whom I’ve recently acquired from John Barron, is a greyhound-looking yearling who can go like the wind, but who does so with a great bounding, loping run which tends to enmesh him in the tugline of the dog ahead of him if I don’t set the rigging up right. When this happens, he also has a habit of chewing through whatever catches him, which has resulted in several quick tugline replacements in the past few runs. Whenever I see him snarled up I have to stop quickly and fix things to avoid a real mess. We’re working through it, but for the time being I’m still learning how he operates, and he’s still learning the ropes, so to speak.
As I return to the sled, my new rocket-powered team decides to go. My left foot is partly on the runner—with my full weight on it—and the lower part of my left leg does a violent half-twist as the sled jerks forward. I hear an ominous pop from the general vicinity of my left knee and collapse on the trail as the team roars up the hill and out of sight. As I try to get up to catch the team, I realize my left knee isn’t quite what it was a few moments ago. I’ve never had knee problems in my life, but now I feel like an NFL quarterback who’s enjoyed the loving attention of opposing linemen for too many seasons.
And then there’s the equally immediate problem of the team, which is merrily bounding up the outbound trail without the benefit of my enlightened guidance. In the adrenaline-driven urgency of the moment, I stand up and start hopping and walking after the team. There isn’t much pain, but I know I’ll pay later for what I’m about to do. I’m not as worried about the team as I might be because I know where they’re going—down a cul-de-sac to a turnaround, and I’ll catch them as they come out or find them at the end of it with the sled spilled. On the other hand, it’s more than three miles, and I have no choice but to stomp up the trail like Captain Ahab grimly pursuing his white whale.
After half an hour the team doesn’t reappear and it becomes obvious they didn’t make the turnaround. This probably means a tangle of some kind, plus an extra mile and a half walk back into the cul-de-sac. As I push into the dead-end trail, I hear frantic barking far ahead; this definitely means the team is stopped and snarled. I hope they haven’t chased a moose off into the woods, in which case I’ll be all night getting things straightened out, provided nobody’s hurt.
I finally reach the end of the road but the team isn’t there. It takes me a minute to realize what they’ve done. Leading from the cul-de-sac is a disused tractor trail, which they’ve somehow found. This trail leads about 100 yards through the trees and then drops off the edge of the world down a nearly sheer 30-foot embankment into a creek bottom. I don’t even want to think what might have happened as I stumble up to the edge of the precipice, looming like a vengeful god over the suddenly quiet team spread out below.
Beneath my feet is a scene of canine confusion that is bad, but miraculously not as gruesome as I expected. Buck and Lucky apparently went over the bank and down the 60-degree slope with everybody else in hot pursuit. The sled hung up on a stump about halfway down, preventing it from overrunning the dogs. Only the front few dogs are tangled across a fallen tree at the bottom of the hill, and those not badly. Dangerous Dan has
chewed through the leaders’ tug lines, but they have stayed put even though they could have kept going, for which I am endlessly grateful.
Somebody once told me dog mushing is really just a never-ending series of problem-solving exercises ranging from trivial to cosmic. This is one of the bigger ones, easily comparable to my little cliff-side derailment on the Copper Basin 300 last season. I can’t go forward because the cat trail degenerates into a morass of fallen trees; this leaves only the option of getting the sled turned around and back up the cliff. Hanging onto a tree on the impossibly steep slope, I try to lever it around just to see if I can, but my newly mangled knee quickly informs me this isn’t a viable option.
With a sigh I go to Plan B, which means unhooking the sled, tying it off, untangling the dogs, leading them back up the hill, rearranging the sled, and letting the team pull it back to reality. This takes about an hour, punctuated by sudden discourses of colorful language on my part as I discover the limits of my newly reduced mobility. Finally the team pulls the sled over the edge onto the level ground on top. The sled is amazingly undamaged, despite its high-velocity head-on with the stump; I’ve got to thank the builder (Keith Poppert, a real old-time craftsman down in Wasilla) for putting together a seriously tough piece of equipment. In this case, I can definitely say they still make them like they used to.
After a few more minutes sorting out the remaining tangles and looking for injuries (none I can find, thanks to the sled checking up before it could plow into the team), we’re off again. I find I can stand on the runner without much trouble, but anything more strenuous gets my attention instantly. I decide to go ahead and finish the run since the dogs are now rested and raring to go; I also figure this will be good practice for the Iditarod, where I’m certain to bang myself up and have to live with the consequences.
Fifty-plus miles later we pull into the yard at a lope. It’s been our longest run of the season, and the dogs have once again proven they are practically bulletproof. The team has averaged a steady 10 to 11 miles an hour for five hours, which is exactly what I want them to do—and what I’ll need to get to Nome.
What’s more, we’ve recovered from a near-catastrophe and pushed on in good order. I feel my training program has been vindicated; this team may not be top-20 quality, but it’s strong and solid, and unquestionably ready for bigger things. All we need now is enough snow for races like the Knik 200 and the Klondike 300.
In the meantime, I totter inside the house to put some dog liniment on my now-screaming knee—the doctors may not approve of it, but I’ll bet it works. If it’s good enough for my team, it’ll certainly be good enough for me.
January 1, 1996
Montana Creek, Alaska
The New Year is upon us—which means it’s less than 60 days until the Iditarod. Last year about this time everything was starting to happen in a rush: I had just spent New Year’s Eve at Skwentna on the Knik 200 and was frantically getting ready for the Copper Basin 300. This season the pace is decidedly more measured and I’m still in the same old pre-Christmas routine, thanks to our miserly snowfall which has postponed the mid-distance races. Nonetheless, the dogs are in great shape and I have no doubt I could go run the Iditarod with them tomorrow if I had to (although I’d have to take it easy for a few days until they got their real long-distance legs). Tonight, though, I’m going to harness up some puppy power.
I’ve been putting off trying out the pups until they were eight or nine months old and I had some spare time. Both of these conditions have now been met and I have no excuse for waiting any longer. I’ve been anticipating this and dreading it at the same time. In a perfect world, all of the pups would pull the first time I hooked them up and all I’d have to do would be to get them in shape for next year’s race. Unfortunately, things never work out so smoothly, and I’ll probably be lucky to get two or three naturals out of my eight candidates.
The top mushers raise 30 or 40 or even 100 pups a season and have the luxury of keeping only the very best. Pups that don’t pull right away get new homes quickly. People like me who have only a few pups have to try to work with the entire spectrum, which requires a lot more effort to try to bring the less promising ones to their full potential.
Iditarod sled dogs are often of no specific breed, and can range from 30-pound Maybelline to 65-pound Buck. In between can be anything from Silvertip, who is two-thirds wolf to pure-white Weasel to Lucky to Kisser. The one common attribute of all good Iditarod dogs is a good attitude and the willingness to keep going under even the most abominable conditions.
I start off with Big Mac and Shorty, two of the four pups who survived the parvo epidemic. They’re now eight months old and are robust, bouncing bundles of energy. First I put Socks, Weasel, and Rocky on the gangline to act as “mentors” for the pups; these three are the most stable and reliable adults on the lot as far as training pups is concerned. But when I literally have to haul both of the pups out to the sled, I get a sinking feeling; this is not good.
Sure enough, both of them lie down and drag as soon as we start. I don’t even try to go any farther; the pups need more exposure to adult dogs in general and to the process of hooking up and leaving the yard specifically. I rearrange the housing assignments to make room for the reticent youngsters right next to the hookup area; I’ll give them a few weeks of watching the adult dogs get harnessed up and generally getting into the let’s-go-running frenzy. Sooner or later they’ll get the picture and we can pick up where we left off.
Next I try Little Pal, Squeaky, and Bull-winkle, three more Iditapups who were at Bert’s house in town during the summer and escaped the virus. Squeaky and Little Pal drag piteously but Bullwinkle looks as if he might be interested in running. I put the first two in the sled and keep going. Slowly but surely Bullwinkle starts to figure it out. He keeps running, trying to drag only when the speed gets too fast. Whenever he does this I step on the brake to keep Socks down to an acceptable pace. We go half a mile and turn around; by the time we get back Bullwinkle seems to be holding his own. He needs more confidence-building work, but he’s most of the way there.
For the grand finale I hook up Josephine’s three remaining pups, now nine months old. Kim has already harness-broken Napoleon—somehow nicknamed Nepo—while she had him in town (where he missed the parvo outbreak), so I’m not too worried about him. I’ve worked a bit with Bonnie and Clyde, harnessing them up and jogging with them down the borough road for a few hundred yards.
I have no trouble getting them out to the sled, a very good sign. When I pull the hook and we head out of the driveway, Nepo is keeping up with Socks and little Bonnie is bouncing around like a well-hit handball next to Weasel, but she shows no fear of running. Lumbering Clyde is almost as big as Rocky, who resembles a main battle tank. Clyde is a bit timid at first but slowly seems to warm to the idea and starts to move ever faster like a freight locomotive gradually picking up speed.
After half a mile or so things are going so smoothly I decide to try a three-miler. By the time we reach the turnaround, everyone has settled down and we’re moving quite well. On the way back we steadily pick up speed until we’re cruising at an astonishing 14 or 15 miles an hour. Nepo is pulling so hard he’s outrunning the old veteran Socks up front and big Clyde is doing a highly workmanlike job of bringing up the rear.
We steam into the yard as fast as my mainline team. This is beyond my best hopes—these three pups are 24-karat keepers, and I consider the evening’s work a major success. After I get everyone put away I go over and spend some quality time with Josephine, their mother. I wish I still had the rest of the litter, the ones who were the first to succumb to parvo back in the bleak days of July.
I think Josephine may have another chance or two to help out my long-range team-building plans. Even though she’s not an Iditarod-quality performer herself, she’ll make an even bigger contribution over the next year or two by giving me more pups like the three who showed such incredible promise tonight.
January 20-23, 1996
The Klondike 300
The Knik 200 has finally been cancelled: no snow. The Copper Basin 300 started on time last weekend on marginal trails, but was stopped after the teams got 70 miles because of 65-below zero cold. Now it’s time for the Klondike 300, the only remaining 300-mile race in Southcentral Alaska. I’ve planned to run it all along; I don’t need it to qualify for the Iditarod, but I want to see how the team (and I) will do in a serious race.
And this promises to be a serious race indeed. The decision has already been made to hold it regardless of conditions. Teams have been limited to 12 dogs instead of the normal 16 because even the veterans don’t think they could control a big team on the thin trails. And the trail itself has been drastically rerouted—indeed, it changed almost daily up until a few days before the race.
John Barron, who won the race last year and is on the Board of Directors, warned me the trail might not be so good in places; coming from him, that means it’ll be a near-disaster for drivers like me. We’re also worried about the cold: it’s been 20 to 40 below from Big Lake to Talkeetna for the past several weeks, and everybody is a little gun-shy about staging a repeat of the aborted Copper Basin race.
Saturday—The Klondike 300: Big Lake to Sheep Creek (80 miles)
As usual, I’ve been up all night getting everything ready after returning from the mushers’ meeting. I doubt I’ll ever get a good night’s sleep within a week of a race. This time, everything is complicated by the minor inconvenience of my dog truck having a cracked engine block; I’ve borrowed a friend’s pickup and lashed my dog boxes to the back. After a restful two hours’ sleep, I load up my 12 A-string dogs and bounce 50 miles down the road to Big Lake.
Alaska Dogs and Iditarod Mushers Page 27