With Andy safely home we can celebrate our collective victory, because Lisa and Andy and I have shared it in more ways than we ever anticipated. We each fought through our own problems and chased our own ghosts, but it took all of us to give each other the chance to do it.
Amazingly, we’re the fastest tail-end in the history of the race: Andy’s red-lantern time is 16 hours faster than the old record. Indeed, his trip of just under 16 days would have made him a contender little more than a decade ago.
After an afternoon to recuperate we assemble for the Red Lantern banquet. It’s completely sold out, with at least 200 people jammed into the Nome race headquarters. Several of the back-of-the-packers who finished ahead of us didn’t get to say much at the real banquet so they get their open mike tonight. It’s about as relaxed a party as I can remember and everybody has plenty of tales from the trail.
The last musher to make it to Nome always goes into the Iditarod record books as the winner of the fabled Red Lantern. The tail-end driver is given the symbolic lantern as he enters Front Street and carries it with him to the finish line. After he crosses under the burled arch at the finish, he extinguishes a similar lantern (called the Widow’s Lamp) that has been burning under the arch for the duration of the race, signifying that the Iditarod is finally over.
When Lisa takes the stage, she mentions she promised Socks a steak if he got us through the blizzard outside Unalakleet. Then she pulls a choice sirloin out of a bag and her mother brings up Socks, who has been hiding under a table at the back of the room. To the cheers of the crowd our real hero calmly devours his just reward. It’s only fitting: Socks gets his steak even before we do—and I fully intend to see he has a chance to earn lots more next year.
After the banquet I have a little time before Bert and I are to meet Lisa and her mother at the Board of Trade saloon for a quiet celebration. I wander the streets for awhile, the solid weight of my newly awarded finisher’s belt buckle tugging at my pocket. The burled arch and the chute leading to the finish line have been taken down and Front Street has reverted to its workaday self. The long-promised storm is starting to make its move and the wind is beginning to whip through the streets; another day and we’d have been facing its wrath out by Topkok. But we’re safe here in Nome; the storm can do its worst.
Without question these have been the most eventful two weeks of my life. I’ve ridden a physical and emotional roller coaster which soared to the summits and plunged to the depths and back again so many times, and in such a short period, I still don’t fully comprehend everything that’s happened and maybe never will. Driving a dog team to Nome may be a mundane matter for the professionals, but the first time for me has been beyond words.
The author stands under the burled arch at the finish line in Nome after completing the Iditarod. The arch is moved from its normal resting spot in front of the Nome City Hall to the middle of Front Street for two weeks every year during the Iditarod. (Note the Widow’s Lamp hanging from the right side of the crossbar.)
Preparing for the race and running it has changed my outlook on more things than I would have thought possible. My concept of time and space founded on years of flying and other motorized travel has been irrevocably altered. The world has become a startlingly large and three-dimensional place, full of alternate but perfectly valid realities. Having now actually traversed Alaska on the ground at a respectful pace, I have an appreciation for its vast size and many different faces I could have gained no other way.
And I have learned that even at the pace of the old sailing ships a huge world can be conquered with a little patience and determination. Indeed, my perspective of just about everything has been remolded over the past two years and fired in the furnace of the last two weeks. I know it’s trite to say I’ll probably never look at anything again the same way, but it’s true. Most of all, I regret the race is actually over; part of me wants it to go on and on, to find more new trails to explore. But that will have to wait for the future.
I end up in the dog lot at the foot of Front Street. My guys seem to know I’m coming and are watching me as I walk up. I stand for a moment to admire them. We’ve learned volumes about each other over the past couple of weeks. I walk back to dignified old Buck, indestructible Rocky, ever-forgiving Yankee, half-goofy Bear, and moody Wild Thing and give them all a hug.
I continue along the line, thanking each one: dapper Kisser, one-eyed Steel, stalwart Pullman, still-playful Silvertip, and crazy little Maybelline, whose bouncy attitude and wraithlike appearance, I now know, conceal cast-iron toughness. I wish Lucky, Bea, Batman, Panda, and Diablo could be here, too; they did their best and deserve just as much.
The huge dog lot at the west end of Front Street in Nome is the end of the trail for hundreds of weary dogs after their 1,200-mile treks from Anchorage. From here, teams are trucked to the airport for their rides home.
My team has become more than a family to me. We’ve shared adventures I couldn’t have imagined even a month ago. My dogs have shown everyone they can run the toughest race on earth. They have demonstrated incredible strength, indomitable courage, and total loyalty. They have done everything I’ve asked of them and more. I don’t know of anything I can do to reward them sufficiently. This hasn’t been my triumph, but theirs.
Finally I stop in front of Socks. He casually yawns, stretches, and puts on his best world-weary-traveler expression as if to say, “Been there, done that. So what else is new?” At the end of it all, it’s the old master who brings me back down to earth. He’s done this more times than I probably ever will and he’s not swayed by anything we’ve been through. Indeed, it’s as if he’s reminding me we haven’t really gone through anything worse than most of the mushers and teams that finally make it to Nome.
At that moment, gazing into Socks’ wise eyes, all the abysmal trails, broken hands, sleepless nights, windswept tundra, freezing fingers, treacherous overflow, and endless little frustrations—all the things which drove me to distraction and led me to the brink of tossing everything away—are swept into the insignificance they so richly deserve. It really was fun. We’ve got to do this again!
I plop down beside Socks and we wrestle in the straw as he tries to lick my face. If anyone is watching at this late hour, I’m sure they think I’m quite mad. And you know, they just might be right.
Don Bowers and Socks.
Epilogue
Kim Hanson did indeed make it to Nome in the 1998 Iditarod, with Pullman leading the way up Front Street. Socks helped lead most of the way but Kim had to drop him at Elim because his age was finally starting to slow him down as the remainder of the team began the final push for Nome. However, the Iditarod Air Force gave him a free flight to Nome and the Big Dog Lot one more time, where he was waiting in Nome for Kim and his teammates. He is now a comfortably retired couch potato at Bert’s house in Anchorage and is always glad to tell his tales of the trail to anyone who will toss him a dog biscuit.
Linda Joy finally made it to Nome in 1998—on her third try. It’s hard to imagine anyone who worked harder for a ride up Front Street and a stop under the burled arch. I wasn’t as fortunate in my own 1998 run. Maybelline injured her foot and my other main leader, Polar Bear (who went to Nome with Ron in 1994) developed a bad internal infection. Moreover, I was sick most of the time. Everything finally reached the breaking point and I finally had to scratch at Nulato. As it turned out, I had walking pneumonia and wasn’t able to shake it for three miserable months.
For the 1999 Iditarod, I put together a very strong team designed specifically to get me to Nome no matter how badly I screwed up. Maybelline went again, along with Polar Bear and my new main leader, Cutter, whom I bought from John Barron in the summer of 1998. I even leased a backup leader, Harley, from Lynwood Fiedler. Behind them was a tough crew including Iditapups Bonnie, Clyde, and Squeaky. Iron Dog, from my 1997 team and arguably one of the best sled dogs I’ve ever seen, was the team’s elder statesman at almost 9 years old.
The 1999 race turned out to be the hardest race I have ever run. Even Jeff King said it was the toughest he’d seen in more than a decade. We began with minus-100 chill factors heading up to Rainy Pass, and continued with open water and slick ice coming out of Rohn, followed by bitter 50-below temperatures that forced one musher to scratch at McGrath with severe frostbite. We ran into more 50- to 60-below cold on the way to Iditarod, and then punched through a storm on the way to Shageluk.
After a blizzard heading out of Kaltag, the temperature dropped to 50 below again at Old Woman. Then things really got interesting out on the coast, with howling ground blizzards and bone-numbing cold. Our small group of tail-enders got into a particularly bad storm on the way from Shaktoolik to Koyuk, with 60-mph winds directly in our teeth the whole way, accompanied by near-zero visibility out on the sea ice.
We had to rope teams together to keep them from wandering off the trail. It was the worst situation I’ve ever been in, and potentially lethal. But Dr. Jim Lanier, a pathologist from Anchorage and a seasoned Iditarod veteran, worked his leader flawlessly through the storm and led us all to safety. It took us 18 hours to go 45 miles.
The author’s long-suffering volunteer handlers pose before the restart of the 1996 race. Left to right are Julie and Mike Pannone, Doug Grilliot, Don Bowers, Jeannette Keida, Lindsey Hanson, Kim Hanson, and Misty Hammond. Kim Hanson will be the youngest woman to run the Iditarod when she heads to Nome in 1998.
The rest of the way to Nome was mostly through screaming wind and drifted trails, with rarely a sight of a trail marker. The Solomon blowhole was roaring full throttle when I got to it, as a sort of a final insult from the Trail God. However, Cutter turned out to be a worthy successor to Socks, plowing through drifts and finding markers every bit as well as the Old Master. Maybelline did her usual bulletproof job, and Iditapups Squeaky and Clyde matured into solid Iditarod leaders.
By the time we got to Nome, all of us back of the packers and our dogs were more than ready for a rest. In spite of the sometimes unimaginable conditions I still ran my fastest race, finishing in 44th place in barely thirteen and a half days.
Old Iron Dog ran in wheel without a complaint every step of the way, pulling hard and even barking to go faster on the way up Front Street. In his own way, he was every bit Socks’ equal. However, he was just too old to take the long way to Nome again and I decided to give him and seven other older dogs, including Pullman and Lucky and Bear and Ben and Maggie and May, to a friend in Fairbanks as a ready-to-go recreational team. At last report they are enjoying all the fun runs they want and are receiving more attention and affection than any fifty dogs. (And I still get to visit them whenever I want.) As happy as I am for them, it was hard to see them go, along with other older dogs I’ve given to friends over the past year. But it was the only fair thing to do. They still want to run and I’ve got to move on and bring in new dogs. I’ve got plenty of youngsters who deserve their chance, including four two-year-olds from Socks and Josephine, and three of Squeaky’s grandkids (which makes them Socks’ great-grandpups). And most recently, I finally got three fine pups from Maybelline, born last summer. Little Screamer, Taffy, and Earless may well get a chance to run to Nome with their mother in a couple of years.
I signed up for the 2000 Iditarod, but received an offer to go on the Serum Run with Colonel Norman Vaughan and a dozen other mushers instead. It’s only 700 miles to Nome by the 1925 relay-team route, and the longest daily run is only 60 miles. Every night is spent in a village or cabin and there’s plenty of time to meet people and look around. It’s a chance to travel across Alaska by dog team in the grand old manner—and is a lot less expensive than the Iditarod. Besides, who could pass up the opportunity to go on an 18-day mushing adventure with a living legend?
I may or may not be able to put everything together for the Serum Run, but I do plan to be back in the 2001 Iditarod—and with a well trained, competitive team. I’ve finally got some good dogs and enough young ones coming up to keep the team sharp for the next five or six years. Now the team’s limiting factor is me. There’s no question the back of the pack is fun, but I want to see if I can move up a bit and maybe even break the top 20. And after that, well, there’s always the Yukon Quest....
Appendix
Iditarod Background
Booms and Busts
Gold rushes were a major part of Alaska history beginning in the 1880s. Strikes near Juneau in 1880, Klondike in 1896, Nome in 1898, and Fairbanks in 1902 helped define Alaska’s very nature and directly resulted in the founding of three of the state’s largest cities (Fairbanks, Juneau, and Nome).
These bonanzas were only the best known of more than 30 serious gold rushes in Alaska from 1880 to 1914. In fact, the last full-scale, old-fashioned, frontier-style gold rush in the United States roared into life in 1909 at Iditarod, 275 air miles west of the future site of Anchorage and almost halfway to Nome. By the next year, Iditarod eclipsed Nome and Fairbanks to briefly become the largest city in Alaska with 10,000 inhabitants. It boasted several banks and hotels, electric power, telephones, and even a newspaper, all supplied by regular stern-wheeler service up the Innoko and Iditarod Rivers, tributaries of the Yukon.
Many gold districts in Alaska could be served by steamboats plying the many rivers lacing the Alaska interior. Nome, on the coast, had regular oceangoing steamship service. However, there was virtually no way to travel to any of these places when freeze-up stopped river and ocean traffic from October to May. By 1910, the need for year-round mail and freight service to miners in western Alaska led the Federal government to survey and construct a 900-mile winter trail from Seward to Nome for use by dog sled teams.
The original Iditarod Trail started at Seward, or more properly, about 50 miles north at the end of the under-construction Alaska Central Railroad, which later became the Alaska Railroad. From the end of track, the trail wound along Turnagain Arm through what is now Girdwood, over Crow Pass, and down the uninhabited Eagle River Valley to Knik Arm and the tiny trading post of Knik, largest settlement on Upper Cook Inlet until the railroad town of Anchorage was founded in 1915. The Iditarod Trail never actually passed through Anchorage, since the beginning of the trail was moved to Knik when Alaska Railroad reached the area.
From Knik, the trail arrowed west through the wooded valleys of the Susitna and Yentna Rivers and climbed tortuously over Rainy Pass through the massive Alaska Range. West of the Range, the trail drifted across the vast Kuskokwim Valley to the hills west of McGrath and the town of Takotna, supply point for the Innoko River mining district and its chief settlement of Ophir, another classic boom town already ebbing from its glory days of 1907.
From Takotna, the trail rolled southwest through the ridge-and-valley country of the Kuskokwim Mountains to the bustling towns of Flat and Iditarod. Swinging northwest from Iditarod, the trail pushed across the trackless swampy wilderness of the lower Innoko River valley to the mile-wide, frozen expanse of the Yukon River and the Koyukon Athabaskan village of Kaltag. At Kaltag, the trail angled back southwest along the 90-mile Kaltag Portage, known for centuries to Eskimos and Indians as a shortcut through the low coastal mountains to Norton Sound and the Bering Sea. The western end of the portage was anchored by the ancient Yup’ik Eskimo village of Unalakleet, whose name means “place where the east wind blows.”
From Unalakleet, the trail swept north and then west around the rugged shore of the Seward Peninsula, passing old Inupiat villages with names like Shaktoolik, Elim, and Golovin. Fifty miles before Nome, the trail dropped down onto the beaches which had caused the rush to Nome a decade before. After almost 1,000 miles, the Iditarod Trail opened onto Front Street in Nome, the site of northern North America’s most notorious saloon row, whose proprietors at one time included such notables as Wyatt Earp.
Travelers on the Iditarod ranged from individuals with light sleds and a handful of dogs to freight drivers with a score of strong huskies pulling as many as three sleds laden with a ton or more of everything from gol
d dust to passengers. All of these mushers followed in the ancient tradition of Alaska Natives, who mastered the fine art of using dogs for winter transportation many centuries ago.
When Russians and eventually Americans arrived in the North Country, they quickly discovered dog teams were the only way to reliably move across long distances in Alaska when rivers were frozen. Dogs have always been ideally suited for winter travel for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that pound for pound, the sled dog is the most powerful draft animal on earth.
In fact, the old freight mushers calculated their cargos based on 150 pounds per dog, or well over a ton for a team of 16 or 20. As a matter of interest, single dogs have pulled more than half a ton in the canine equivalent of a tractor pull. As late as the 1960s, Yup’ik Eskimos of Nelson Island moved much of their town—including entire houses—to a new site two dozen miles away with 100-dog teams.
The boom town of Iditarod was the largest in Alaska in 1910, with more than 10,000 people. It has been deserted for half a century except for the occasional trapper and, more recently, the biennial influx of mushers and race support people. Today only a few old buildings remain standing.
Dogs can easily keep up with horses over the long haul; even the old freight teams could average several miles an hour, and lighter teams could go considerably faster. Dogs require virtually no shelter and can easily withstand conditions which would kill horses or oxen. Even better, dogs can be fed from the land with moose, fish, or caribou in winter, while horses require expensive hay or grain. Perhaps most important, heavy draft animals simply cannot use the snow packed winter trails which lace much of the north country.
Alaska Dogs and Iditarod Mushers Page 47