Once I get the dogs fed and bedded down among the sheltering spruce trees I head over to the crowded cabin to dry out and catch a nap. The first thing I find out over a bowl of steaming soup is that the trail’s apparently random excursion back above the Gorge was to bypass a bull moose which stomped through Sven Engholm’s team earlier in the day, injuring three dogs. Barely five hours before I went through, the same monster roadblocked several other mushers for an hour until a passing snowmachiner put in the bypass.
After the harrowing trip through the Alaska Range, the Rohn checkpoint is a most welcome sight. Checker Jasper Bond has been the gracious host at the vintage trapper’s cabin for the past few races.
For all anyone knows, Bullwinkle is still there, obstinately defending his little piece of paradise. We must have blissfully zipped right around him in the dark. It’s just as well I didn’t know about him; I had my hands full with the sled and I doubt I’d have done anything with my old .44 magnum except spook the dogs.
As usual I spend too much time visiting with Jasper despite his repeated urging to get some rest. In addition to catching up on the last year or two, I know he and his crew have some good stories to tell about their two-week stint setting up the checkpoint here and guarding mushers’ food bags from the valley’s wolf population. At least two wolf packs roam this area and they long ago deduced this time of year means food at Rohn.
They’ll get all they can eat when Jasper’s bunch pulls out in a couple of days and leaves hundreds of pounds of leftover dog food for them. If nothing else, Iditarod means a respite for the local prey animals because the predators are stuffed on lamb, beef, chicken, and kibbles.
Nestled in the forest under the jagged peaks of the Alaska Range, the old cabin at Rohn is used by the Iditarod for a few weeks during late February and early March. This is easily one of the most picturesque locations on the
I guess it’s just the presence of a friendly face here in the middle of this incredibly beautiful nowhere, but I feel right at home and wish I could stay here for a couple of days. Eventually I stretch out on the plank floor underneath the table while my heavy gear dries out over the well-stoked wood stove. It’s a most pleasant rest, made all the better by the good company and spectacular surroundings. For the first time on the race, I drift off to sleep with carefully guarded optimism: I might actually make it to Nome this year.
March 6, 1996—The Iditarod: Rohn to Nikolai (94 miles)
I oversleep at Rohn and don’t hit the road until late morning. This will be the second longest stretch between checkpoints and I estimate it will take my slow freight train at least 12 hours to work across the Farewell Burn to Nikolai.
I’d hoped to be moving at dawn to have the cool of the morning for the 30-mile run down the South Fork of the Kuskokwim to Farewell Lakes and then up onto the Burn itself. It promises to be another hot day and I’d have preferred to shut down out in the Burn for awhile to spare the dogs another unwelcome day on the beach.
The old trapper’s cabin at Rohn is a relic of the early days of the century when the Iditarod Trail was still in daily use during the winter. Now maintained by the Bureau of Land Management, the cabin has served as a checkpoint for every Iditarod.
While everyone says there’s nothing ahead to match what we’ve come through, I’ve heard there’s tricky trail before we get to Farewell Lakes. The area where the Post River flows in from the south is reputed to have a lot of glare ice, and the so-called buffalo chutes are supposed to be at their usual worst.
The chutes include stretches where the trail crosses open tundra with little snow cover and then plunges into narrow paths through the scrub forest. Periodically the trail crosses small clearings where buffalo (yes, buffalo) congregate to browse. The buffalo were native to Alaska after the end of the last Ice Age but vanished, possibly from hunting by early humans arriving from Asia.
In the 1920s a number of bison from the Lower 48 were brought to the University of Alaska, and a dozen were eventually transplanted to the Farewell area. The now-wild herd now numbers in the hundreds and supports a limited annual hunt.
The shaggy herbivores have supposedly never bothered dog teams, but based on my experiences with moose, I’m a bit wary in the presence of unpredictable animals weighing a ton or more that can run like the wind. And I’m not sure what the 15 instinctive predators harnessed in front of my sled would contribute to an encounter with the normally placid creatures. All told, today promises to be interesting, at least in the sense of the old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.”
The first few miles out of Rohn thread across the wind-scoured ice and rock-studded sandbars of the braided South Fork. Soon we duck into the trees on the south bank and begin to climb up onto a wooded plateau paralleling the river. The trail is in excellent shape and we’re making good time, at least for my plodders.
After a few minutes I notice the dogs looking around and then I hear snowmachines; two of them shortly pull up behind us. I stop to let them by and chat with the riders. They’re from the Anchorage Daily News: outdoors editor Craig Medred and photographer Jim Jager. They say they’re going all the way through to Nikolai.
I tell them I think the trail is supposed to be pretty good on across the Burn. They look at each other before allowing as how that’s generally true but there might be a few bad stretches. They tell me to watch for their snowmachines up ahead. While I try to figure out this last cryptic remark they roar off up the hill and out of sight.
Half an hour later the team comes off a steep hill onto a 100-yard stretch of glare ice. The sled yaws wildly as we hit the slippery surface and by the time I get it stabilized, riding the brake to keep the gangline taut, I see the snowmachines parked up ahead. The newsies are snapping pictures as we draw abeam. I nod and they wave back. Before we reach the next tree line they’ve zipped ahead of us again.
A couple of miles on we skitter onto another particularly treacherous patch of ice. As I work overtime to keep the sled pointed up the trail, once more I see the snowmachines off to the side, their occupants documenting my unsteady passage. Once again they zoom ahead. Now I’m starting to get the picture, so to speak. When I crest another ridge a mile up the trail and see them waiting on the other side of the intervening ravine, I wonder “What now!?” and stomp on the brake.
This time it’s a real winner: the Post River glacier. It’s not really a glacier, just a slanting sheet of ice where countless repeated overflows have created the skating rink from Hell (which must finally have frozen over). The snowmachines area quarter-mile farther on where a tributary stream has created its own steeply sloping mini-glacier, up which we must find a way after somehow surviving the wicked 200-yard stretch just ahead.
Many mushers say the twenty miles of trail between Rohn and Farewell Lakes is the most difficult of the entire race. This is the South Fork of the Kuskokwim just west of Rohn; the trail runs for several miles across the bare gravel bars and shallow braided channels.
After we careen down the hill and start gingerly across the void I notice a lone tree trunk sticking out maybe 20 feet downstream of the trail. Halfway across, the sled starts to slip slowly down the gently inclined ice.
With the sudden insight of one about to undergo a calamity, I see what’s coming and there’s not a thing I can do: the sled is going to hit the four-inch-thick snag, and hard. I dare not get off the runners because I can’t even stand up on the water-greased dance floor. I don’t want to try to slow the dogs, who are barely finding enough traction to keep moving, or I’ll have a tangled, and potentially dangerous, mess sliding across the ice, and probably wrapped around the snag as a bonus.
Like a truck in a slow-motion freeway crash, the sled slips inexorably toward the snag, which looms like a concrete bridge abutment. My brake is completely useless on the case-hardened ice. I have only one real choice: I can try to turn the sled over and take the impact on the runners, or I can leave it upright and let the superstructure absorb the shock.
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br /> I instantly decide I can’t risk breaking the runners; I could be immobilized out here in the middle of the wilderness. So I leave the sled upright and simply hang on and ride it out. I know intimately how the captain of the Titanic must have felt as his doomed ship bore down on the waiting iceberg.
Ten feet, five feet, two feet, CRUNCH! I know immediately I’ve broken something, but the sled still seems to be mainly intact. It literally bounces off the snag and the dogs pull it on to the edge of the ice, where I stop to survey the damage. The whole episode has taken less than a minute, but the mind’s remarkable time-slowing ability has stretched it into about two days.
Miraculously the runners are unbroken, but the good news ends there. The heavy-duty carbon-composite brush bow that could fend off a whole forest of trees is broken at its right-hand anchor; it was never designed for broadside impacts and its severed end now juts a foot out from the side of the sled. The front right stanchion is splintered and both of the rear stanchions supporting the handlebar are cracked at the bottom where the crosspieces are joined.
However, the sled is still runnable; absent any more catastrophes I should be able to nurse it into Nikolai for repairs. In the meantime I slap a couple of hose clamps on the front stanchion to keep it from shattering further. I cinch another hose clamp on one of the two rear stanchions and wrap the other one as best I can in duct tape. Finally I stretch a bungee cord around the protruding brush bow to bring it back into a semblance of alignment.
Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise would understand my tactical situation: we’ve got hull damage and the front shields are down. We can’t take another phaser hit, but we can make it to Starbase Nikolai if we can stay away from the Klingons. I signal the engine room for full impulse power and we edge out of the sled-eating nebula—right into its evil twin.
In the urgency of the moment I’ve forgotten about the ice ramp stretching up the floor of the ravine in front of us. I feel like Robert Falcon Scott staring at the icefall blocking the way to the South Pole: What in all that makes any sense in this world am I doing here? Even as I ponder, the dogs are already scrabbling up the slope and I can see they’re going to cut close around a rock outcropping on the right bank. The sled will be dragged into the rock wall in a replay of the episode with the snag a few moments ago.
Once again I have the option to leave the sled upright and bash the upper works, or lay it over and absorb the impact on the runners. We’re going more slowly for this encounter, so I opt for the runners. I fall down a couple of times trying to get leverage on the slick ice but I get the sled flipped a few feet before the crunch point. With me dragging prone on the ice as a human sea anchor, the slick plastic runner bottoms kiss the stone and glance off with no damage; thank heavens for small favors.
Around the outcropping I see yet another disaster looming. The ice field ends in about 50 yards and the trail resumes over a bed of jagged grapefruit-sized rocks with absolutely no snow cover. The dogs are just reaching better footing and are starting to accelerate. If I can’t get the sled upright or the dogs stopped before the end of the ice, the rocks will probably rip every stanchion out of the still-undamaged left side.
The runway at Rohn is in the foreground and valley of the South Fork of the Kuskokwim River stretches away to the west toward the Farewell Burn.
I frantically scream at Socks to stop, which he does, reluctantly, barely 10 feet from the beginning of the rock garden. Face down on the ice, I hold on to the now-stopped sled and gather my wits. When I look up, I see the Daily Newspersons snapping away. I must have presented quite a sight coming up the ravine, hanging on for dear life and shouting for the team to cease and desist.
With as much dignity as I can muster I politely ask if there is any more of this. I can’t stand another photo session like this one. Trying not to grin, Medred admits this is the end of the bad stretch. I hope he’s right. Bernie Willis builds good sleds, but nothing short of the battleship New Jersey can take more pounding like this without disintegrating.
The news crew stays behind to gather up their gear and I press ahead. There are some bad spots, and the buffalo chutes are nothing but bare tundra and ice in places, but we don’t encounter anything more of the magnitude of the Post River icefall. Rather, as we work our way up behind Egypt Mountain on our way to Farewell Lakes and the Burn, our main adversaries become the glaring sun and increasing heat.
I’d hoped to rest during the afternoon, but we’re behind schedule and I need to keep the dogs going, even if slowly. I make frequent short stops and give them snacks of frozen fish and meat; this seems to keep them from melting down and we chug inexorably on across the Farewell Lakes and up toward the Burn.
About the only distractions are great piles of buffalo droppings in some of the open meadows which the dogs simply must investigate before we can proceed. We don’t see any of the shaggy beasts, but I know they’re all around us, probably demonstrating their superior intelligence by sheltering from the sun among the trees.
At one point we pass a group of long-abandoned log cabins which obviously date back to the early part of the century. This must be the old Pioneer Roadhouse I’ve heard about. It was one of the stops on the original Iditarod trail, just like the old roadhouses at Skwentna and Rohn. I give the dogs a brief rest while I look quickly around. One of the caved-in cabins would have been the old dog barn, another the bunkhouse where exhausted mushers rested or waited out storms.
This must have been a bustling place back in the trail’s heyday, from about 1910 through the 1920s. From November through March, teams would have been arriving every day carrying supplies and mail to isolated mining camps with names like Ophir, Flat, Iditarod, Poorman, Long, Council, Solomon, and of course, Nome. Some of the returning sleds would have been carrying out the season’s cleanup of gold; one series of teams in 1916 brought more than a ton and a half of the precious metal back to tidewater at Knik.
It’s a strange feeling to know I’m really following in the footsteps of the old mail and freight drivers who were Alaska’s unsung heroes. Probably only a handful of people outside of Iditarod mushers have seen these cabins since the wilderness and hard winters began to reclaim them more than three quarters of a century ago. I get the dogs up and moving with a renewed sense of perspective; we’re only the latest in a long and honored procession of teams to struggle over this trail.
By now the warmth is at its peak but the dogs seem willing to keep going. Unlike some of the high-powered teams, I’m not worried about overheating because we just don’t go fast enough for the dogs to work that hard, and I make lots of short stops just in case. This seems to be the way I’ll run the rest of the race: keep chugging on while everybody else is resting. It’s the only way I can compensate for having what is apparently one of the slowest teams in the field.
By mid-afternoon we start up an endless series of rolling hills to the Farewell Burn. As we crest one last ridge we’re suddenly swallowed up in the Burn itself. The biggest forest fire in Alaska history roared through here in the summer of 1978, burning more than a million acres. The smoke was so thick it darkened skies in Anchorage enough to cause street lights to turn on in some parts of town.
The trail across the Burn to Nikolai can drift in within hours when winds come up. Sometimes the trail is all but obliterated and the driver and dogs must fight their way through on instinct and luck.
I was flying C-130s at Elmendorf at the time and we were pressed into service to fly fuel and supplies out to the fire fighting crews. We made a number of trips to McGrath and the old Federal Aviation Administration strip at Farewell Station, about 10 miles south of Farewell Lakes.
At the time I never dreamed I’d be running dogs through this blighted expanse of charred snags. From the trail it is so all-encompassing it leaves no room in the mind for even a memory of living forests. The only words to describe it are bleak and desolate, on an apocalyptic scale. Even though the fire was almost two decades ago, there is little second growth,
at least in this part of the affected area.
Still, from flying over this part of the Burn I know it is a veritable Serengeti with hundreds of moose, caribou, buffalo and even Dall sheep sharing the frozen range. They take advantage of the usually light snow cover in this area to forage on the abundant grass which took the place of the forest. Roaming between the open areas of the Burn and the lush tree line of the Farewell Lakes, they mingle in numbers I’ve not seen elsewhere in Alaska. The thriving population of grazing animals also supports several wolf packs, which I’ve seen in the past from the air. We see none of the residents, although their tracks are everywhere.
The dogs trot unconcernedly on, gazing around at their surroundings and apparently enjoying the trip through a new environment. With no standing trees, our visibility at the crest of every ridge is excellent. However, the Burn is so vast the only vistas are of devastation and of the clean white line of the trail piercing the jumbled wasteland. Atop one ridge I can see at least 20 miles of the trail, arrowing toward the distant hills forming the western horizon beyond the Kuskokwim River.
In a way the Burn has a stark beauty of its own, representing a kind of renewal-in-progress. Fires are part of the natural cycle of regeneration; a century from now this will be a healthy mix of forest and rangeland. It’s difficult for humans to grasp the time scale on which this grand plan plays out, but here and there I can see the signs of new growth which prove Nature is proceeding at her normal pace despite our worries.
The trail is in excellent shape and as the afternoon heat wanes we pick up a bit of speed. I pass two other mushers who left Rohn before me and who have been resting their teams during the day. I come on Lisa Moore in a sheltered hollow and we decide to run together into Nikolai. Our teams are well matched and we run almost nose-to-tail, making good time as we whittle away the 40 miles remaining to Nikolai.
Alaska Dogs and Iditarod Mushers Page 36