The most shocking news is that one of Rick Swenson’s dogs died in the overflow back at Moose Creek. This is especially confounding given Rick’s spotless history: he has never had a casualty in 20 years of running the race. No one knows whether the dog, Ariel, drowned or died of shock or something less obvious, but now the musher with the most impeccable record of dog care in the history of the race stands to be thrown out by virtue of the nefarious Rule 18.
I sympathize with Race Marshal Bobby Lee, who must be under incredible pressure right now as a member of the three-person committee deciding Rick’s fate. An Iditarod veteran himself, he was the only member of the Rules Committee to oppose the expired dog rule, and now he is in the impossible position of probably having to eject one of the top contenders from the race because of it. If he lets Rick go on, there will inevitably be cries of favoritism; after all, what if it had been me or another unknown musher? Any of us lesser lights would have been dumped without so much as a thank you. If he pulls Rick, he’ll become the lightning rod for criticism from all quarters, or worse, he will be accused of carrying out some kind of imagined vendetta against Swenson.
It’s a no-win situation, but I’ve known Bobby for some time and I’m certain he will make an honorable and fair decision based on the rule as it is written, even though he makes no secret of his dislike for it. In the meantime, the race judges have allowed Rick to continue to Rainy Pass, where they will let him know their ruling. I can’t imagine how he must feel. Many of us agree he has the best team in the race and we know how much time and effort he’s put into it. To risk losing everything on what is basically a roll of the dice, an act of God over which he had no control, is not fair—but that’s the way the rule reads. It’s unfortunate, but maybe it will take withdrawing someone as illustrious as Swenson from the race to get the rule changed.
After I catch a few winks while my perspiration-soaked parka and heavy bib dry out, it’s mid-afternoon and time to go. I know the first couple of hours on the trail will be warmer than I’d like, but I have to get on to Finger Lake, 45 miles up the trail. I should get there late this evening and then I can wait a few hours so I can have some daylight for the always-harrowing run down to the un-aptly named Happy River.
I clean up around the sled, pack everything in (still too much), and start to bootie up the dogs. The temperature is so warm I don’t need to bootie everyone, only the ones with existing foot problems or historically vulnerable feet. Some mushers bootie every dog every step of the way but most are like me, only bootying as necessary. The process still takes half an hour, but I consider it time well spent because it keeps me close to the dogs on a one-on-one basis.
Once the booties are on, I stand up the dogs, hook up their tuglines, and line them out away from the straw. This is usually the point where the mind games begin. The dogs can be somewhat reluctant to leave their comfortable beds, but the veterans all know moving off the straw is the signal to get back to work. Most of my dogs have run the Iditarod more than once and they shake off the sleep and stretch themselves in preparation for moving out. Some of the younger ones take a few minutes and a bit of coaxing to get adjusted.
Just in case, I have one of the checkers guide my leaders through the maze of straw piles from departed teams; left to their own devices, the dogs would poke around in every interesting spot. Fifty yards later we have a clear shot at the outbound trail and I give Socks the “Okay!” to get moving. He doesn’t even hesitate as he pulls everyone forward; I’m only beginning to appreciate his capabilities. It’s too early to think about getting to Nome, but I start feeling better after coming through the first real checkpoint experience of the trip in good order.
The trail out of Skwentna is different from the one we took last year. It stays in the open as it crosses a vast snow-covered swamp, exposing the dogs to the hot sun more than I’d like. They slow down, but keep going. After a couple of hours we finally plod into the tree line about the same time as the afternoon wanes and the temperatures begin to cool.
Now we begin to climb into the Shell Hills. The dearth of snow has turned the trail into a twisting thread which snakes its way up sharp slopes and hairpins itself around huge trees and rocks. The dogs are having a difficult time maneuvering through the maze. They want to run but I can’t let them speed up for fear they’ll injure themselves. At one point the team is strung out across three near 90-degree corners around immovable objects; this is worse than difficult—it’s dangerous.
Despite my best efforts, the sled repeatedly bangs off trees and more than once jerks to a wrenching stop as protruding stumps snag the brake bar. Low-hanging branches wipe me off the sled a couple of times and once I narrowly miss being skewered by a stout branch jutting from the side of the trail like a punji stake. It’s an ugly trail and I wonder how the fast teams kept up their speed as they rolled through here this morning.
After two hours of work we finally pull onto five-mile-long Shell Lake. I’ve spilled the sled several times but everything seems still to be intact. However, Lucky is limping. I stop to check him out but can’t find anything. I leave him in the team, hoping it’s just a sore muscle and he’ll work it out. I’d hate to lose one of my key leaders before the race even gets going.
We move quickly past Shell Lake Lodge and onto the series of swamps leading up to Finger Lake. The trail is better here, consisting mostly of open snow meadows punctuated by short traverses through the trees to the next straightaway. Moreover, the cool of the early evening is beginning to firm up the trail, allowing us to accelerate by several miles an hour.
A couple of miles past Shell Lake, as we enter the area near my 40 wilderness acres on Red Creek, I meet a convoy of snowmachines growling down the trail. They courteously pull over and stop. As I draw abeam them I see it’s several friends from Montana Creek who have homesteaded next to my property at what we now call Red Bluff. They’ve been out to Finger Lake and are just returning.
Last year they waited for me out here for hours, but of course I never showed and they went home wondering what happened. We chat for a few minutes and I assure them things are off to rather a good start this year. We part company on a positive note: they back to Shell Lake and Montana Creek, I and my now-rested team to whatever lies around the next bend.
Shortly we pass the place where I had to camp last year after Slipper quit. I remember the trees, the trail, the view of the mountains—everything is the same, except we’re charging on by without even a second glance. I can now see we’re only a few miles from my land at Red Bluff. I never fully realized one of my major debacles last year actually occurred almost within sight of my own property. Silently I check off another demon on my list as we glide on.
We hardly notice the sun has gone down because the moon is so bright. I only turn on my headlamp when we plunge into the trees, and even then it’s not really necessary. We make fairly good time to the checkpoint, slipping down onto Finger Lake just before midnight.
I had hoped to be able to warm up for a little while and dry out some of my gear, but the checker advises us we cannot go into the lodge and must stay outside. Moreover, we must melt snow for water; apparently, water was available from the lodge during the day, but their well has gone dry. There are six or seven other drivers here and no one is happy about being left out in the cold with no water. Granted, the temperature has been in the 20s all day, but it’s now well below zero under the clear skies.
The worst news is Lucky: the vets look at him and pronounce his shoulder to be injured. At almost any other checkpoint I’d take several hours to work on him and see if he could recover enough to go on, as he has during training runs. Then I’d consider carrying him in the sled until he was well enough to go back on the gangline.
However, there’s no way I can keep him in the basket for the upcoming run to Rainy Pass; this promises to be some of the worst trail on the race and I’d be worried about injuring him further if I kept him in the sled. In any case, conditions here are so austere I don�
��t think I can take enough time to work on him properly. So I reluctantly drop him; I have a feeling I’ll wish I had him later on.
March 5, 1996—The Iditarod: Finger Lake to Rainy Pass (30 miles); Rainy Pass to Rohn Roadhouse (32 miles)
Those of us stopped at Finger Lake tend to our dogs as best we can and try to grab quick naps on top of our sled bags. Finally we all wake up about two o’clock, miserable and shivering. Without even talking to each other, we collectively decide to leave this decidedly inhospitable place as quickly as possible. Our stay here has been so unpleasant we’d rather face the treacherous Happy River Steps in the middle of the night.
I quickly throw the dogs some frozen beef, bootie up, hook up, and leave. I immediately feel better about being on the trail, even though I know I’m headed for a hazardous section without benefit of daylight. At least the moon is still up and we won’t be completely in the dark.
After eight or nine miles of relatively easy going the trail starts to drop down a series of heavily forested benches to the final “steps” into the gorge. The last couple of miles leading to the steps are simply beyond belief. The lack of snow has worked its evil here and the trail is a duplicate of the one coming up to Shell Lake, only worse because of the sharp, twisting downhills.
In one place, the trail swings suddenly 20 feet up the right side of a ravine in which we’ve been traveling and then drops just as suddenly down again. I can see in the headlamp the entire stretch is a sidehill pitch worn smooth by 50 teams in front of us. There is no way the sled will stay upright all the way through this roller-coaster. The team pulls up and onto the slope smoothly enough, but the sled starts to slide sideways even before we reach the apex. I wrench the handlebar to try to lay it over on the uphill side to keep it from plunging down into the brush below, but I lose my footing. With no further ado the sled flips inverted and shoots down the hill, with me hanging on for dear life and shouting “Whoa!” at the top of my lungs. I zoom past the wheel dogs who look over at me and the sled in what I assume is surprise. All I can do is hang on and try to spit out mouthfuls of snow so I can keep shouting for the team to stop.
The sled eventually comes to rest upside-down, wedged against a clump of willow shrubs at the base of the hill. It has almost completely swapped ends and its path is marked by a string of uprooted dogs still attached to the gangline. I’m only slightly banged up and the dogs don’t seem to be in any trouble, so I set about straightening everything out. Twenty minutes later we’re ready to go, this time with my foot planted firmly on the brake.
Half a mile further the trail plunges unexpectedly down a 50-foot ravine, with a sharp right turn before the bottom. My brake is totally ineffective and the dogs flip the sled almost instantly. Once again I’m yelling “Whoa!” at the top of what’s left of my voice while bouncing behind the supine sled. To make matters worse, Socks misses the turn and goes on to the floor of the ravine, following a trail blazed by an equally unfortunate driver just ahead of me.
As I right the sled at the bottom and assess the situation, the loud silence is rent by a cry just ahead of me: “Whoa! Whoa!” And then from behind: “For crying out loud, WHOA!” A couple of minutes later comes an answering shout from back up the hill: “Whoa! STOP, DAMMIT!”
Indeed, as I work to get the team unsnarled and back on the trail, I notice we Finger Lake exiles all seem to have hit this stretch of misery about the same time. Judging from the periodic cries echoing through the moonlit darkness, we’re all having about the same luck negotiating the impossible trail. It seems the trademark cry-in-the-night of the tail-enders at Happy River this year is a plaintive “Whoa! (Insert expletive here)!”
Knowing others are out here sharing this wholesome outdoor adventure doesn’t make the trail any easier, but it does relieve some of the tension. A few minutes later I catch up to a couple of my cohorts who have been encountering about the same fortunes as I have. We take a break in the moonlight and commiserate about the horrific trail and shake our heads at the insanity of it all. We ask ourselves if we’re having fun yet and decide to hold our decision until about July.
We stagger on in a loose convoy to the Happy River steps. This year they’re narrow, icy ramps glued to the side of a near-perpendicular slope. Jack Niggemyer said it took several days to build them from scratch and they should be almost as good as last year. This somehow isn’t as comforting as it should be to those of us staring at them up close and personal on this fine moon-washed morning, especially after 50 or so teams before us—and who knows how many snowmachines—have pounded them into near-rubble.
There is one change this year, however. The steps are announced by a special sign the Iditarod has made up: a reflective black-and-yellow diamond-shaped hazard sign like you’d see on a highway, with a logo of a dog team and the warning “Watch Your Ass!” I’ve heard about the sign, but I still have to laugh out loud; I suppose gallows humor in a situation like this is better than no humor at all.
As I see the team ahead of me go over the lip and down the first step, I lean on the brake to bring my guys to a complete halt and wait for a couple of minutes. When I don’t hear anything resembling splintering wood, cries of agony, or Anglo-Saxon invective, I assume the way is clear one way or another and gently urge Socks over the brink.
Socks, of course, considers this all great fun and needs no urging. It’s all I can do to keep the brake jammed into the rut worn by previous teams, and this only restrains the team to a fast trot down the steep ramp. At the bottom the trail levels out and switchbacks sharply to the right. I lose my balance in the turn and spill the sled; this provides me with a scary look down a 50-foot cliff lurking just off the trail, but I get everything upright in time for the next downhill pitch.
We ease down the second step with no problem. The last ramp down to the floor of the gorge is the narrowest, with a 30-foot sheer drop on the left. It cannot be more than two feet wide and is plainly the worse for wear; I ride the brake and tell the dogs “Easy, easy!” as gently as I can. I also find myself involuntarily leaning as far as I can into the comforting cliff on my right.
About 10 feet from the bottom the sled starts to slip off the left side. I lean hard to the right and balance up on the right runner until we hit level ground. Then we’re down one last short drop and out onto the open river. I shout in triumph: we’ve come down the infamous Happy River hill in the middle of the night without a catastrophe.
The driver ahead of me, Ralph Ray, has stopped; we rest for a few minutes and celebrate our small victory with half-thawed packets of juice. Shortly another team comes shooting off the bottom of the hill. I congratulate the driver as he goes by, but he just shakes his head and makes a nervous comment about the steps not being as bad as he’d expected. Considering he probably expected to be wrapped around a tree somewhere back up the slope, I have to interpret “not as bad as expected” in a relative way.
Anyway, we’re still in one piece. Although I know the trail isn’t much nicer from here on to the Rainy Pass checkpoint, we’re just that many miles closer to Nome. I remind myself I couldn’t scratch here if I wanted to: no mortal could go back up the trail we’ve just come down. And there’s no way to airlift the team and sled out of here, so I have no choice but to go on. I have a feeling I’ll be using this rationale often as I push on toward Nome.
After a decent interval we forge on up the long steep hill climbing out of the river valley back onto the plateau. At the top of the hill we pass the kink in the trail where my gangline snapped last year and almost cost me a dog; Yankee, the canine in question, doesn’t seem to notice as we power quickly by.
Eventually Ralph stops and I pull ahead. We cross Long Lake, scene of my final debacle last year; its profile is forever ingrained in my mind. I am able to pinpoint the exact place I spent the longest, most depressing night of my life.
This year we cruise purposefully on in the moonlight as dawn streaks the sky behind us. I strike an especially evil creature from last year’s bestiary
, one which destroyed my very will to go on. I feel like St. George on his horse doing his thing with the dragons, except my trusty steed has four paws and a big wet tongue and is named Socks.
Past Long Lake the trail goes through a number of particularly bad stretches, usually involving (but not limited to) side hills on steep slopes, glaciered patches with no footing, abrupt descents terminated by right-angled turns, and of course the customary menagerie of stumps, sticks, stones, clods, ruts, and various other impedimenta.
But we work our way through it and finally pull onto the disused, snow-covered runway at Rainy Pass Lodge at mid-morning. I am acutely aware of the last time I was here: I was about to terminate my first Iditarod for what eventually turned out to be no real reason at all. We roll down onto the ice of Puntilla Lake and into the checkpoint. A couple of the people waiting at the checkpoint were here last year; they understand what this means to me and I am grateful for their congratulations. I assure them I’m in this one for the duration, and mean every word.
“Watch Your Ass!” shouts one of the race’s special warning signs advising of hazardous trail ahead. These signs always get mushers’ immediate and undivided attention.
Nome is still 1,000 miles away, but I’ve effectively exorcised my biggest demon and I feel upbeat. I don’t know what Socks and the team think about all of this, but I’d like to think they’re ready to tackle the outbound trail later this afternoon. Of course, I think they’ll be a little more ready after I get some food into them and let them have a quality siesta.
I get the checkpoint routine done within an hour and let the dogs rest; they look particularly contented in the warm midday sun. The back-of-the-pack crowd is all here or due to arrive shortly; other drivers have stretched out on their sleds in the warmth or even sprawled in the straw next to their dogs.
Alaska Dogs and Iditarod Mushers Page 34