Alaska Dogs and Iditarod Mushers

by Mike Dillingham

  We go perhaps 50 feet before I can find the snow hook and get the team stopped. Then I find the second hook and set it as well, and finally I tip the sled over on both hooks for good measure. There’s no question of trying to get the runaway team back to Skwentna; they’ll be fine where they are for the time being. We’re only a few miles out of the checkpoint and the hapless musher must be close ahead. In any case, I can certainly find someone with a snowmachine to come back if necessary.

  While all this has been going on, my team has been getting excited and is about to yank the hook. I make the fastest 50-foot dash on record back to my sled and swing onto it just as everyone rockets off toward Skwentna. The missing musher is about a mile up the trail; he looks like he’s been walking for several miles already and isn’t in the happiest of moods. He cheers up significantly when I stop to assure him his team is in good shape and not too far ahead. I know how he feels—I’ve already been through this back at Cow Lake. There’s nothing more frustrating than losing your team, especially when you know they’re likely to go 30 miles down the river without you.

  We pull into Skwentna a little before noon; I’ve already decided to keep the stop here as brief as possible so I can get back to Yentna Station. I much prefer to spend the night there to prepare for the final leg back to Big Lake, which will involve the worst sections of trail on the race, and for which I definitely want my wits about me.

  In my haste to get food ready for the dogs I make the water too hot for their soup; I pour it into the dry dog food anyway, but they won’t touch it. Normally I could cool it off with snow, but there isn’t any handy that’s clean enough to use. Finally I give up and throw them some frozen beef chunks. By the time we leave I’ve wasted more than two hours. I should have just checked in, tossed them some meat, and then checked out. I’m still learning.

  We’ve been here so long Lucky has a bad case of checkpoint-itis and won’t start the team. It’s my fault, and I can’t blame him; I know he’s probably tired from working in lead for two days and would love to stay here for awhile. I put Pullman up front and we move off under our own power. Once we’re away from the checkpoint things settle quickly into the normal trail routine. I’m mad at myself for letting the team down, but I’m glad to see Pullman leading so enthusiastically; she hasn’t been up front for a month because she’s been in heat. I have to remind myself one reason for running this race is to check out the leaders under realistic trail conditions, and so far it’s worked out well in that respect.

  About halfway down river to Yentna Station, as we come out of a back slough, Pullman takes a turn I don’t remember; she’s chosen what appears to be the main trail, but something doesn’t feel just right. I let the team go on across the river, and am relieved to see trail markers resembling Klondike 300 stakes. But after another couple of miles I realize we’re lost: we’re heading back up river and I’m not at all sure where we should be.

  I turn the team around and we backtrack. At every side trail we stop and I check for other sled tracks, but none is the trail I’m after. After half an hour of cautious probing in the fading late-afternoon light, we’re finally back to the last place where I was positive we were on the right trail. I turn everyone around again, and it becomes obvious what has happened. Coming up river, we turned into the back slough on one side of a big pile of driftwood; on the other side was another, bigger trail which looped back up the river to several lodges on the north bank.

  We never saw it on the way up. Not only that, the stakes on the false trail (probably put there by snowmachiners well before the race) looked enough like Klondike markers to fool anyone. Now I know how Ramey Smyth and a lot of others got lost here. One bonafide Klondike marker at the fork would have saved everyone a lot of hassle. I’m just glad I had a bit of daylight left; at night I’m not sure what I’d have done.

  As the team senses the shadows deepening, we accelerate to our normal nighttime cruising speed of 10 miles an hour. There’s no way to get lost from here on in because the river has only one channel between well-defined banks. As we roll smoothly along, I gaze to the southwest: the glowing first-quarter crescent moon is about to set, with the brilliant evening star close behind it. To the southeast, Orion is rising with his unmistakable belt of glittering diamonds and red Betelgeuse marking his shoulder. In the northern sky, the Big Dipper is beginning its stately swing around Polaris, and the aurora is already glowing a faint green on the far northeast horizon.

  It’s another moment out of time and space. I truly can’t imagine any place I’d rather be than gliding down the Yentna behind my dogs on this perfect evening, with a warm lodge a few miles ahead, in a race I now am confident we’ll finish in good order.

  In an hour or so the lights of Yentna Station hove into view like a lighthouse welcoming a sailor into harbor from the darkened sea. As we pull up to the checkpoint, I notice there aren’t any checkers to meet us. Another driver, Shawn Sidelinger, is just bedding his team down—the runaway team I stopped earlier in the day—and he says the checkers and vets took the last plane out a few hours earlier. We’re on our own; the winner, John Schandelmeier, crossed the finish line at Big Lake at nine this morning and all the trail help has headed home, leaving the lodge owner to cover everything.

  As I get my team settled down Shawn tells me he only pulled in half an hour ahead of me. I know he left Skwentna at least three hours before I did, so I’m curious what happened. He says he was lost on the river for several hours after making a wrong turn; it took him seven and a half hours to cover the 35 miles back from Skwentna. I ask him which wrong turn; as I expected, it was the one I missed, and we both get a good chuckle at falling into the same trap in broad daylight.

  We decide to run together on in to Big Lake because we’re not sure how well the trail will be marked; maybe two heads will be better than one. We also decide not to leave until a couple of hours before dawn next morning; we’ll use the predawn darkness to make good time on the river, but we want to hit the snowless overland stretch on the far side after sunup.

  After we get the dogs fed and they’re all sleeping soundly, we head up to the lodge for a sandwich. That’s one nice aspect of longer races: the checkpoints invariably offer something in the way of food and lodging, even it’s just a bowl of campfire soup and a place to toss a sleeping bag. More than that, they’re places to relax for awhile and catch up on what’s been happening along the trail.

  Even among the leaders on a high-pressure race like the Iditarod, there’s a sense of camaraderie not found in many other sporting events. Everyone is on the trail together for days on end, and what affects one affects all. To be sure, the front-runners will play mind-games with each other as the race closes in on the finish, but everyone knows it’s all too easy to get caught in a storm or wreck a sled, and the underlying sense of cooperation against the elements is always there.

  As we’re sitting in the lodge munching a quick burger, the television is on (powered by a chugging generator outside the window) and I catch the end of the 10 o’clock news on Channel Two from Anchorage. The blow-dried sportscaster casually says, “Well, another dog race is over. John Schandelmeier survived the 30-below cold to beat John Barron by 18 minutes to win the Klondike 300...” and that’s basically it for his coverage of the Klondike.

  Nothing about the cold, no mention of the abysmal trail, no word of the dozen drivers who have scratched or been injured—just a perfunctory 10-second blurb tossed off while trying to suppress a yawn. Then he moves on for a several-minute interview with Doug Swingley (last year’s Iditarod winner) down in Minnesota running the Beargrease.

  Maybe I’m too close to the subject or perhaps I’m just too tired, but I’m very disappointed by the brevity of the coverage of the only 300-mile race to be run so far this season in Alaska and by the cavalier assumption the race is “over” just because the winner has crossed the finish line. I’m tempted to get on the lodge’s radiophone and call Channel Two to ask them what I should do now that t
he race is over and I—and half the mushers remaining in the race—are still out here on the trail.

  No distance race is ever over until the last musher crosses the finish line. That’s why mushing is the only sport with a red lantern, a recognition the last finisher has struggled at least as hard as the winner. Moreover, most long races have several prizes for important aspects such as sportsmanship and best dog care, and sometimes these are awarded to mushers who don’t even finish.

  Luckily the Frontiersman, the twice-weekly local newspaper for the Mat-Su Valley, will have a good spread. And KMBQ-FM, the Valley radio station, is providing ongoing coverage and has promised to hang in there until the last musher is in. I suppose it’s expecting too much of the Anchorage media to treat dog mushing like Alaska’s official state sport and not just a seasonal curiosity.

  Tuesday—The Klondike 300: Yentna Station to Big Lake (75 miles)

  Four o’clock comes early. The lodge owner’s wife wakes Shawn and me and we fumble for our boots and heavy parkas. It’s minus 35 on the river bank and easily 40 below on the river. We take our time and have our teams ready to go by 5:30. There’s no moon and first light is three hours away, but the stark contrast provided by the snow cover lets us make out all the detail we need to keep oriented.

  Both our teams move smoothly in the darkness; I’m following and drop back to maybe a quarter-mile spacing. This is a comfortable distance to keep my guys from overrunning. Any team following closely behind another (we call it “chasing“) will tend to run faster than normal and will inevitably wind up literally on the lead driver’s heels—just like my team did with Martin Buser for the first mile or so out of the starting gate on this race. However, chasing requires too much use of the brake, and I don’t think the frequent reminders to slow down help the team’s spirit for the long haul.

  We settle into an easy 10-mile-an-hour nighttime pace. I leave my headlight on so Shawn can see I’m still back here; we agreed to keep an eye on each other at least until daybreak, and I’m keeping my end of the bargain. Still, my light seems out of place, and my team could easily follow the bobbing pinpoint in front of us with no trouble.

  I plan to do a good deal of my Iditarod running at night, especially since we’ll have a full moon for the first several days of the race. The dogs love to run under any kind of a bright moon (the old-timers’ “running moon”, and there is usually more than enough light to allow the driver to keep the headlight off. The net effect is magical, as I’ve experienced on other races. I feel the full moon will be a good omen for the Iditarod this year, and I intend to use it to help me get a solid start on the long haul to Nome.

  This morning, even though there is no moon at all, the trip down to the mouth of the Yentna goes very quickly and we have no difficulty staying on the trail. One checker at Skwentna said the race marshal sent out a special snowmachine team to beef up the markings on the inbound leg from Yentna Station to Big Lake and they appear to have done a good job.

  The only potential problem is the temperature, which has been steadily dropping ever since we left Yentna Station. I’m starting to feel a bit too cool even inside my expedition-quality outfit. I check my little zipper thermometer: it’s off-scale low, which means it’s below minus 50. I don’t know how much below, but I think it’s all academic once it’s this frigid.

  This is the coldest I’ve ever run a dog team, but the soul-numbing temperature doesn’t seem to bother the dogs, who cruise obliviously on. I remind myself this isn’t nearly as bad as it can get up here: John Barron and Ron Aldrich have both told me how they ran various Yukon Quests with temperatures hovering between 60 and 70 below. I can’t really say I’m cold, but there do seem to be some unexpected minor leaks in my layered, heavily insulated armor. I think it’s mainly the thought of getting stranded without proper protection in this kind of deep freeze that makes me shiver.

  To reassure myself, I extract a few fresh charcoal hand warmer packets from my inside pocket and rip them open; I’ll keep one inside my fleece inner jacket and put the other ones in the improvised glove I’m using to replace the mitten I lost back at Cow Lake. These things make a huge difference; the ability to keep my fingers warm seems to do much to bolster my overall resistance to the cold. It’s certainly mostly psychological, but it seems to work—and who am I to change something that works, especially when it’s 50 below.

  We turn into the five-mile slough cutting over to the Susitna River just before dawn. Then, just as the light brightens to a dull gray, the team stops. I’m sure there’s nothing physically wrong, and the dogs can’t be tired, since we’ve come barely 25 miles. Moreover, the problem seems to be focused on Batman, the co-leader, who seems not to want to go. Pullman, the main leader, seems ready enough to move but won’t go when Batman holds his place.

  It could be Batman has gotten a bit cold running up front and is tired of acting as a windbreak for the rest of the team. After all, a 10 mile-an-hour wind at 50 below makes for a chill factor somewhere down near minus 100. It’s just as likely he’s only bored and wants a breather.

  So, as the sun’s first rays gild the top of Mount Susitna to the southwest I play the old switcheroo game up in the wheelhouse. After several permutations of the lead and swing dogs which yield a mile of halting progress, I find a combination that clicks: the same pair that stopped in the first place. It seems we just needed to wait for the light to brighten a bit, or for Batman to shake off his chill, or perhaps the extra distraction involved in my swapping dogs around recaptured their interest.

  I suppose I could just as well have stood up front and waved my arms and done a dance—anything to break the combination of indistinct light and relentless cold and the monotonous trail down the wide river channels. But most importantly, we don’t stay immobilized like we did on the Iditarod last year; this time we’re moving—and I intend to obey Newton’s laws of motion and stay that way until we get to Big Lake.

  In another couple of hours we come to the hill leading up from the river. The dogs charge up the steep 100-foot slope as if they had just started the race, then continue at a good pace along the wooded upland track. Soon enough we come to the land of abominable trails; we’re not doing more than four or five miles an hour through the grabbing brush and protruding roots, and that’s plenty fast for me. It’s all I can do to keep the sled upright and generally pointed in the right direction. As we carom from stump to root to rock, I’m thoroughly convinced I made the right decision to do this during daylight.

  As we come off North Rolly Lake and start up the infamous hill that claimed so many sleds and bodies on the first day, I have time to examine it more closely. It is even steeper and narrower than I remember, and so tightly hemmed in by unyielding trees I don’t see how anyone made it down. The uphill sides of several of the trunks look as if they’ve been skinned by chain saws; I can only imagine the carnage here and be glad I was lucky enough to have dodged this particular bullet. I think it’s a reasonable assumption there won’t be any more dog races down this monster for the foreseeable future.

  After another unspeakable stretch of trail including the pinball slough,

  which is just as bad from this direction, we come out onto Red Shirt Lake. By now the sun is well up and is glaring directly in the dogs’ faces. The three-mile-long lake looks even more like a river than the Yentna, and the endless expanse of white starts to work on the dogs as soon as we move away from the shore. They go slower and slower until finally one just sits down, followed by the whole team. I know exactly what the problem is: they think they’re back on the river and what’s more, they’re starting to overheat from the sun beating on their dark fur.

  This is precisely what happened on the Iditarod last year after we steamed up the Happy River hill in bright sun and 40-degree temperatures. However, this time none of the females are in heat and I can use my ace in the hole: Socks. I quickly put Old Reliable up front and stick the ringleader of the sit-down strike in the sled bag to let her cool off. Then wit
h a quick “Okay” we march off across the snow desert of the lake.

  As usual with Socks, we’re not going very fast, but we are most assuredly moving and show every indication of continuing. If so many of the ladies hadn’t been so seductive on the Iditarod last year, turning Socks into a slobbering basket case like all the other males on the team, I could have simply put him up front and kept moving when the female leaders faded out. I’d certainly have been into Rainy Pass a day or two earlier. Oh, well—I’ll have another chance a month and half from now to make good.

  With Mister Automatic up front we move steadily across the chain of lakes down to Cow Lake, where I lost the team on the outbound leg. The hill coming down onto the lake looks just as bad as it did when I got flipped off the sled, with absolutely no snow. I take a quick look for my missing mitten but it’s not to be found; I’d hoped to pick it up if I could because it’ll cost 70 or 80 bucks to replace it.

  After Cow Lake the inbound race trail takes a shortcut back to Big Lake we didn’t use coming out. Like many other trails in Alaska, the cutoff follows a seismic survey line. Cleared of trees years ago by petroleum survey crews, such avenues through the forest become de facto winter highways once the uneven ground has been covered with snow—only there hasn’t been enough snow to cover up the stuff that’s supposed to be covered up.

  What I thought was going to be a reasonably easy 12 miles to the finish suddenly turns into the worst stretch of trail I’ve seen so far. Entire trees are down across the trail, which is also strewn liberally with stumps, rocks, and all manner of brush and other obstructions. Still, I can see where other sleds have made it through, so I swallow another handful of Tums and hold on tightly.

  For the next five miles I do more serious sled handling than I’ve done in my short but (by now) very eventful mushing career. The swath through the trees—I can’t dignify it by calling it a trail—runs like a Roman road straight through the forest, directly up and down whatever happens to be in its path. There have been no attempts to find easier ways down through gullies or up over the short, sharp hills. I think the Roman engineers would’ve laughed themselves silly looking at this barbarian imitation of their work.