Alaska Dogs and Iditarod Mushers

by Mike Dillingham

  And in the east, the entire sky is dominated by a northern lights display the likes of which I have never seen. I can see a huge section of the circumpolar arc of the aurora, its curvature clearly visible. It resembles nothing so much as a line of summer thunderstorms in eastern Oklahoma, continuously illuminated from within by lightning which rips through the cloud tops and dances behind the veils of rain. I can even follow individual swirls in the auroral arc as they spin along the shimmering curtains, touching off glowing cascades of green, red, and even purple as they pass from horizon to horizon.

  The celestial panorama is almost too much to absorb. I rig out the sled seat and simply sit and watch as the team pulls silently on, the only sound the swish of the runners over the packed snow. For two hours my magic carpet glides serenely across the lagoon. Every half hour or so I flash my headlamp back at Lisa, who is holding steady a mile behind, and then return to my musing.

  This is beyond perfect, the most extraordinary run I have ever experienced. It is a most sublime reward, and is an especially exquisite counterpoint to the bleak despair of watching Yankee disappear over the barrier dune not 72 hours ago. Everything has come full circle; the world is in harmony, at least from my perspective, and I see no reason it should not remain so until we pull under the arch in Nome tomorrow evening.

  I’m almost disappointed when I must break the spell and maneuver Socks into the White Mountain checkpoint. It’s a bit past midnight and we’ve been 10 hours since leaving Elim. This is bog-slow for a mere 46 miles, but we spent at least a couple of hours waiting for Andy and another two or more at Golovin. We have nothing to be ashamed of, especially since our main goal now is just to finish in good order tomorrow; the exact time is no longer of consequence.

  We have to take a mandatory eight-hour layover here, which means we can leave around 10 in the morning on the 77-mile jaunt into Nome. We break out the cookers for our last run-through of the now-automatic checkpoint routine. We have become so proficient over the past two weeks that the dogs are fed and asleep on their straw within 45 minutes.

  The author pauses while working on his team at the White Mountain checkpoint, 77 miles from Nome. Mushers must take at least an 8-hour layover here, although many would as soon push on to Nome.

  The checkpoint is in the municipal building just up the hill. We hang our outer gear in the boiler room to dry and then toss our sleeping bags in the back of the library. The building also houses the local National Guard armory and I notice a large-scale military map of the Norton Sound area on the wall. This is the first accurate chart I’ve seen since the race started and I try to trace our course from Unalakleet to Shaktoolik and on to here.

  Despite my best efforts I simply cannot pinpoint where we were for many stretches. I eventually fall asleep wondering where we crossed the Blueberry Hills, all the while realizing I will probably never know exactly, short of physically doing it all over again. Perhaps this is as it should be, always leaving enough uncertainty to preserve the mystery of the trail.

  March 18—The Iditarod: White Mountain to Safety (55 miles) Safety to Nome (22 miles)

  We’re up and running within an hour after our layover expires. Before we leave we get a great piece of news: Andy is moving again. He left Elim about 8:30 after almost 24 hours there. Knowing how fast he can move once he gets rolling, I expect he’ll be in here within six hours and then on into Nome sometime tomorrow morning. But the big thing is he’s on the trail; he hasn’t tossed in his cards. He’s still going to chase his ghost. We back-of-the-packers will prevail after all.

  By the time they reach the bleak expanse of the Bering Sea coast, teams can be down to barely half of their starting strength. In 1994, eighteen- year-old Aaron Burmeister, here making the long climb to Topkok after leaving White Mountain, had only seven dogs all the way from Kaltag to Nome. (Five dogs is the minimum number to finish.) Aaron was a top Junior Iditarod competitor.

  As Lisa and I move steadily toward Topkok in the bright morning sunlight, the only possible disruption to the positive energy flow is an ominous swirl of cirrus clouds slowly moving up from the southwest. This is the harbinger of the storm Bert warned us about.

  If it’s moving as fast as some of these monsters have been known to do, it could be close enough to Nome to trigger the Solomon blowhole just this side of Safety by the time we get there in four or five hours. And I’m worried about Andy; his margin will be much thinner than ours and he runs a real risk of getting caught in the same kind of tempest which robbed him of his dream last year.

  We push on with all due haste, devouring the series of 300-foot ridges leading to the final push up Topkok. My superdogs don’t even break stride on the steep hills and by three in the afternoon we’re making the final assault on Topkok. We stop at the summit to admire the view out to Cape Nome. I am also scanning for any sign of a ground blizzard between us and Safety; even though winds are light up here, a 50-knot gale could easily be lashing the trail ahead.

  From an abandoned A-frame shelter cabin at the east foot of Topkok Head to the windswept summit is only a few miles, but they can be some of the most difficult and dangerous on the entire race when storms roaring in from the Aleutians strike the exposed promontory.

  Seeing nothing but clear sailing, we push on. We reach the shelter cabin at the west foot of Topkok by four o’clock and stop to feed the dogs. From here to Safety is a 25-mile run along the beach, with the last 12 along an unplowed state highway, part of a local network of roads radiating from Nome. As we head across the now-quiet Solomon blowhole, I remember what a fearful toll this natural wind tunnel has exacted from mushers over the years, and especially from tail-enders like us.

  In 1992 I was waiting in Nome to meet Bob Ernisse, a friend who was running with a group near the back of the pack. I had just flown over them on my way back to Nome after closing down the checkpoint at Unalakleet. Bob’s group was trapped by a hurricane-force ground blizzard in the exact area we’re now traversing. He almost died of hypothermia before fellow driver Bob Hickel, son of the former and then-current governor, found him and kept him from sinking further. I finally met Ernisse after he had been evacuated to the hospital in Nome; it had been a very close thing and he looked worse than a survivor of Stalingrad.

  In 1994 I watched tail-ender Beth Baker make the climb up Topkok from my plane. She was heading into a ferocious but highly localized blizzard with winds of 80 miles an hour I had personally clocked with the Global Positioning System in my airplane. She was being escorted by a snowmachiner but later got lost when her leader took the team onto the sea ice in a complete whiteout. She was within a few hundred yards of open water when she got stopped. A massive search failed to find her until the next morning. She had to scratch after spending most of the night on the ice in wind chills of minus 130 and badly freezing her hands.

  The Nome Kennel Club maintains a snug shelter cabin at the west foot of the rugged Topkok Hills. Located in the middle of one of the worst wind areas on the trail, this cabin has saved more than a few snowmachiners and mushers over the years.

  But today the blowhole is a toothless tiger and I have plenty of time to take in the scenery as we glide along the beach trail. After 12 miles we reach the Bonanza Ferry bridge and the Nome-Council Road. The history in this area is hard to miss; buildings and relics are everywhere. The remnants of the old city of Solomon, once a roaring boom town to rival Nome, are a mile inland. The bridge is flanked by the Last Train to Nowhere, the remains of three steam locomotives used during the early 1900s on the short-lived railroad from Solomon to Council.

  Council, 35 miles northeast of Solomon and 15 northwest of White Mountain, had its own gold rush a year before the discoveries at Nome. John Wayne’s “North to Alaska” was filmed partly on location at Council. The movie’s theme song by Johnny Horton celebrated the gold “beneath that old white mountain just a little southeast of Nome.” The mountain was supposed to be Cape Nome, but nobody’s ever worried much about his geographic license.<
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  From here to Nome the shoreline is strewn with old cabins now used as summer fish camps. The very beach over which we’re running was the magnet which drew thousands of miners to the area between 1898 and 1900. While gold abounded in placer deposits inland, mining it was expensive and difficult. When the precious metal was discovered in the sands of the beach itself, anyone who could wield a shovel and run a crude sluice box descended on Nome from around the world.

  Nome is much closer to Tokyo and many cities in Asia than to many points in the United States. This signpost is a standard stop on all tours of downtown Nome.

  This was what made Nome so different from other gold rushes: would-be miners could literally step from their ships onto the beach and look for their pay-streak with virtually no equipment or experience. Most went home broke in a few months, but a few made fortunes before the easy beach gold played out after a couple of years.

  The harder-to-get placer gold was abundant, however, and the area is still a gold-mining center. One of the biggest mines in Alaska operates in a huge pit a mile north of downtown, just off the end of the airport’s main runway. In the summer dozens of small mines are reopened and hundreds of latter-day stampeders work claims from the beach to the mountainous backbone of the Seward Peninsula. There’s still lots of gold here; its lure has not dimmed over the years.

  Nome has an aura unlike any other city in Alaska, or in the country, for that matter. It boasted more than 20,000 people in 1900 and was the largest city in Alaska. The town was wide-open 24 hours a day and sported the most notorious saloon row north of San Francisco; the legendary Wyatt Earp ran one of these establishments. In fact, the City of the Golden Beaches was probably the last hurrah of the Old West and was populated with many other refugees from the vanishing frontier down south.

  In many ways the 1900s never ended out here. The town has an omnipresent look and feel of living with one foot in the past, combined with a civic outlook on life which can best be described as different if not downright zany at times. It’s likely there’s not another town in Alaska that collectively enjoys a good joke as much as Nome. This slightly warped sense of humor manifests itself all year in a series of goings-on which sometimes befuddle visitors who don’t understand it takes special people to live here, and a good laugh is one of the strongest weapons to fight off the wind, weather, and isolation.

  Rookie Sonny King emerges from a relatively mild 50-mph ground blizzard between Topkok and Solomon in the 1997 race. The poles are trail markers. The Solomon blowhole has nearly killed mushers in past races, almost within sight of Nome. A natural wind tunnel, it can hurl 80-mph winds and blinding whiteouts.

  Nome is the perfect place to finish the Iditarod, an ideal foil for too-urban, self-conscious, often-pretentious Anchorage. Nome is the Last Frontier’s last frontier town. As the dogs trot past the cabins lining the snowy road to Safety I realize the Iditarod is really the ultimate flight from modern civilization, requiring a complete break with many of the premises and assumptions which govern life in a nine-to-five world of cable television and home pizza delivery.

  It’s nearly sunset as I approach the Safety Roadhouse standing by itself alongside the bridge across the frozen entrance to Safety Sound. As I pull into the drifted parking lot alongside a handful of snowmachines I know this is the beginning of the end of the journey. Nome is barely 20 miles up the road and the weather is perfect. Besides, I’ve been listening to KNOM radio on my Walkman and I know we’re expected.

  Lisa arrives in a few minutes; her mother, Barb, whom I’ve met before, has been waiting anxiously. When Lisa finishes in a few hours they will be the first mother and daughter to have completed the race. I’m glad to have been part of it. I throw my dogs some well-earned chunks of beef and head inside for a steaming bowl of chicken soup and hot coffee. Most drivers don’t spend more than a minute or two here, but we’re in no hurry. Nome isn’t going anywhere. Besides, I’ve become so enmeshed with the dogs and the trail I want to enjoy every minute I have remaining.

  The theme song of John Wayne’s North to Alaska celebrated the gold “beneath that old white mountain just a little southeast of Nome.” The mountain was really Cape Nome, between Safety Roadhouse and the city of Nome. A muskox herd forages atop the headland during the winter.

  When we leave an hour later Lisa and I agree she will go first down Front Street. For her it’s a homecoming; for me it doesn’t matter where I finish—just getting here has been my only goal. I take the lead as we head to Cape Nome; we’ll swap when we get closer to town. Inevitably a couple of lines from the last verse of Hobo Jim’s Iditarod anthem roll through my mind: “Just pulled out of Safety, on the trail all alone....” Maybe I don’t fit his scenario exactly, what with Lisa on the road a half-mile behind, but it’s close enough for me.

  Watching the dogs pulling smoothly and powerfully in front the sled, I almost wish we could go another few hundred miles. Unlike the front-runners who have no choice but to push their dogs, my guys are only now peaking. I’d give anything if I could start the race next year with these same dogs in exactly the condition they’re in right now.

  For the last few miles into Nome, the trail runs along the shore of the Bering Sea before climbing the seawall to Front Street.

  Now I understand how Ron Aldrich and Del Allison could run their teams on up to Barrow after they finished the Iditarod in 1979. For them it was just a continuation of the trail and I almost wish I could do something like it. Ron says he wants to run again next year for the big 25th Anniversary race and maybe we’ll do just that.

  As we climb around Cape Nome the wind starts to blow, as it always does here, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. I stop and wait for Lisa, who shortly pulls up. There’s been some confusion about how the trail is marked through a construction project up ahead and we proceed carefully past a six-foot excavation in the middle of the road. The road is plowed beyond this point and we can’t run on the icy gravel surface, so we look for alternate trails.

  I work my way for a couple hundred yards up the shoulder to the point where the marked trail departs the road and heads down to the beach. When I look back I don’t see any sign of Lisa. I take my team down the trail for a quarter mile, thinking she’s taken a shortcut, but I can’t see her headlight anywhere. I stop the team and walk back up to the road, where I hail a passing motorist to help me search in the 30-mile-an-hour wind and blowing snow.

  Eventually I find tracks heading down to the beach; Lisa has obviously moved on ahead. A couple of miles on up the trail I catch her. Her headlight burned out as she skipped the gravel and headed for the beach, so she couldn’t signal me. We’ve lost 45 minutes while I looked for her and she groped along the moonless trail. I loan her my spare light and we both get a good laugh. The trail god had to throw us one last curve ball to remind us not to get complacent.

  The end of the trail is in sight at last at the far end of Front Street, Nome’s main avenue. (This is the author’s team at the finish of the 1997 race.)

  For several miles we run within sight of the road, accompanied by a steady stream of cars. We’re listening to KNOM on our Walkmen; the radio station has a spotter car out looking for us just like big-city stations have traffic reporters. We stick to our plan to have Lisa go in first, which means I have to periodically stop my by-now-faster team to let her pull ahead. When I’m running close behind her I also turn off my headlight to avoid distracting her dogs. This apparently causes no end of confusion to the watchers on the road, and the radio reporter never does figure out exactly who is who or where we are.

  Finally we pull up a steep bank onto Front Street, where our police escort is waiting with lights flashing. The finish line is 10 blocks ahead. As we work up the legendary thoroughfare in a tight two-team convoy we’re swamped with shouts and honking horns. I’m amazed at the number of people out here even though it’s past midnight and we’re not exactly Jeff and DeeDee.

  As we near the arch I stop to let Lisa go the last c
ouple of hundred yards by herself. After a minute or so I give Socks his final “Okay!” of the race and he charges up the last block in a blaze of speed I wish he’d shown back on the trail. As we pull into the chute Jack Niggemyer gives me a high-five and Bert and Bobby Lee and Joanne Potts and Lois Harter and Steve Adkins and most everyone else I’ve worked with on the race over the years are waiting under the arch. I only wish Ron could have been here, but he couldn’t make it; I know he’s here in spirit, though, and that’s good enough.

  Once we stop I run up and hug Socks. This has been his race at least as much as mine, and I don’t know how I—or Lisa or Andy, for that matter—could have made it without him. Amid the shower of congratulations and hugs and handshakes (each of which reminds me my hand is still broken) and the traditional radio interview, I slowly start to register it’s really over. I’m actually here under the arch after two interminable years. It’s been a long wait, but it’s been everything I’d hoped and a universe more besides.

  As much as I’d like to stay here all night and celebrate, the accumulated fatigue of two weeks won’t be denied and I almost nod off while I’m talking to someone. We have to get the dogs settled in the dog lot and then I’m going to go get something to eat. And then I’m going to go to sleep for the first time in a fortnight without having to worry about getting up in a few hours to get out of the checkpoint.

  March 19—The Iditarod: Nome

  After sleeping the sleep of the near-dead in a real bed in my hostess’ house (her name is Holly Aldrich, but no relation to Ron, we’ve discovered) I get up to meet Andy. As I expected, once he got moving he made bullet-train time from Elim to White Mountain and on into Nome. He pulls in just before 10, in 49th place with red lantern in hand. Quite a crowd is waiting for him under the arch, including Slim and the trail sweeps, who have finally finished their own eventful trips from Anchorage.