by Sue Henry
From the far corner of the lodge he could hear the quiet voice of the ham operator and the distorted response from the radio, still full of static, but better than it had been earlier. The storm was weakening and he hoped it would clear by morning.
He took his empty coffee mug back to the table and headed down the hill toward the lake with its silent population. Passing the dead musher’s campsite, he thought of Smith. What a way to die.
As he walked, the cold, which had intensified since he went inside, reached in around the neck of his heavy parka with icy fingers. At least it helped open his sleepy eyes. He knew he would keep close track of Jessie in the next few days, and the knowledge made him vaguely uneasy. It was a feeling he had closed out of his life since his move to Alaska. He doubted he would act on it, but the interest was there. He kicked a lump of snow in the trail, defensively, feeling ridiculously like a teenager.
9
Date: Monday, March 4
Race Day: Three
Place: Rohn Roadhouse checkpoint
Weather: Overcast with snow flurries, clearing and lowering temperatures predicted for Tuesday
Temperature: High 5°F, low –4°F
Time: Late evening
Almost fifty miles north of Rainy Pass stood an old log cabin, the Rohn Roadhouse checkpoint. Inside, a group of six men and one woman listened incredulously as the news of the three deaths and the conditions established for continuing the race came in over the radio from Rainy Pass. The checkpoint official, a vet from Soldotna, stood beside the operator and glanced at his clipboard to see checkout times of the two mushers still on the trail between the two points. He estimated they should reach Rohn within the next six hours, unless they elected to overnight somewhere below Dalzell Gorge. That was unlikely. Most drivers tried to make the run without major stops. Overnighting would only be the choice of a musher completely worn out from struggling through the unusually heavy new snow.
On clear nights the run through the Alaska Range between these two checkpoints is one of the most beautiful of the trip. Coming through the pass, a musher is flanked by deep blue shadows in the folds of snow-covered mountains, slopes rising into the clouds that cover the summits. Northern lights weave across the sky in sweeps and pulses of pale green, red, and blue, swaying like curtains blown by atmospheric winds. At times they’re so bright a musher and his team cast shadows on the snow.
Following a branch of Pass Fork, the trail winds its way sharply around rocks and holes in the ice. Finally, it runs into Dalzell Creek, snaking through the narrow canyon of the same name, until the creek empties into the Tatina River.
Here, and on the South Fork of the Kuskokwim, some of the worst overflow on the Iditarod Trail can be found. In the heart of the Alaskan winter, a river may freeze all the way to its bed. In early March, Iditarod time, snow begins to melt and water trickles, flowing over the top of the old ice, creating wide, shallow ponds that freeze to sled runners and dogs’ and mushers’ feet. At times the ponds conceal holes deep enough to swallow a whole sled.
The overflow often refreezes, forming perfectly smooth glare ice, which is quickly swept clean of falling snow by the wind that whistles through the gorge. With little traction, dogs and mushers scramble for footing, slithering along. The scratch of toenails and scrape of runners can be heard down the canyon, as can the tense commands and profanities of the drivers.
Turning off the river ice into deep woods, a musher hears the sound of dogs barking among the trees as he heads toward the Rohn checkpoint.
Though maintained as necessary, the small checkpoint cabin at Rohn is uninhabited during the rest of the year. Its shallow, pitched roof is protected by fivegallon gasoline cans, flattened and nailed down. Over the door is a rack of moose antlers. A supply of dry firewood is always available.
Just before each race a vet, a checker, and a radio operator are flown in, to remain until the last Iditarod musher has passed through. Everything is then packed up and the cabin closed. From a narrow airstrip hacked out of thick forest, unused dog food, the radio, and other necessary items are flown out, leaving the cabin ready for next year. The long narrow checkpoint cabin and another nearby, probably the original Rohn Roadhouse from the days when the trail from the Kenai Peninsula to Nome was used regularly to haul freight and mail, remain deserted and waiting.
This checkpoint has an atmosphere different from any other. The relief of successfully negotiating the pass makes exhausted mushers a little giddy, while the prospect of crossing the Farewell Burn, the longest stretch in the race, looms before them. There is a feeling among some that if they have made it this far they can make it anywhere. A sense of camaraderie develops in the small cramped cabin. Songs are sung around campfires and special snacks broken out for the dogs. Everyone sleeps better.
Sometime during the race, each musher is required to take a mandatory twenty-four-hour layover at a checkpoint. Many veterans take it at Rohn. The pass and the following stretch of Farewell Burn are the longest, most physically demanding sections of the trail. Rest between the two makes sense and works well for those who stop there annually.
This year most of the front-runners were staying in Rohn, although two mushers had checked out for Nikolai without declaring a layover.
Dale Schuller, who had reached Rohn early in the evening, was among those gathered around the radio. He sat on an upended wooden crate near the stove and listened as talk flowed around him after the transmission from Rainy. In the light of a Coleman lantern, clothing and harness hung to dry cast dark shadows. The generator for the radio had been shut down to conserve fuel.
After a time, the others either moved out to their sleds for the night or settled down in the cabin, still discussing the unbelievable situation. Schuller, deep in thought, stayed out of the conversation.
When the group around the radio had thinned to the two officials, he crossed the room and put a hand on the checker’s shoulder.
“Harv,” he said, frowning, “they said something was put into the food for Smith’s dogs. Right?”
“Unofficially, yeah. They think so.”
“Do they know what it was?”
“No. The dogs have to be checked in Anchorage at some lab, and they won’t get a plane until morning. Why?”
“Wait a second. I’ll be right back.”
Outside, he went directly to his team, removed his mittens, and dug into the bag on the back of his sled until he found what he was looking for. Carefully he lifted it out, holding it by the top, between thumb and first finger. Pulling a clean bandana from his personal gear, he wrapped the object loosely before returning to the cabin.
He displayed the bundle on the palm of his hand to the checker and unfolded it. On the bandana lay a clear plastic pill bottle from a pharmacy. There were no pills, but it contained traces of white powder.
“I don’t like trash left on the trail,” he said. “Sometimes I pick it up if it’s not too bulky. I found this when I stopped to snack the dogs. Somebody else had stopped there before me.”
Harv examined it closely. “No label,” he said, reaching to turn it over.
Schuller pulled it back before he could touch it.
“I know fingerprints sound ridiculous, and it may not have anything to do with this at all, but I think I’d better talk to that trooper in Rainy, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I guess we’d better find a safe place to keep that thing for the time being.” The checker shook his head. “Damn. I can’t believe this is happening.”
10
Date: Tuesday, March 5
Race Day: Four
Place: Between Rainy Pass and Rohn Roadhouse checkpoints (forty-eight miles)
Weather: Clear, light wind
Temperature: High 1°F, low –10°F
Time: Early morning
Before it was light on Tuesday, mushers were ready to leave Rainy Pass. S
now had stopped falling and the sky was clear, promising a morning filled with sunshine, although the temperature remained below zero. Pearly light brightened the snow-covered peaks that towered above the broad bowl of the pass.
Everyone not in the process of repacking sleds or feeding and harnessing dogs was finding their own breakfast. Racers took turns going for water or returning to the lodge, where food and coffee were available. They didn’t leave their cookers unattended.
Two trailbreakers pulled away from Puntilla Lake and, snow-machine engines whining, headed for the north pass and the Dalzell Gorge beyond it. Immediately teams began to swing in, one behind the other, leaving little space between.
Jensen stood by a lodge window nursing a third cup of steaming coffee while he watched them go.
Headed across the flat saddle of the pass toward the Dalzell Gorge, Jessie kept her team moving with the others in the long line of sleds and dogs. They went slowly as they followed the snow machines, giving them time to break through the new snow. But the sky was clear, and at least they were moving.
The sweep of slopes and broad curve of the pass reminded her of pictures she had seen of the mountains of Afghanistan, so massive it was hard to believe them real. They commanded the landscape, dwarfing everything in sight.
The drop into the canyon would be five miles of a wild roller-coaster ride. The other forty-two should be easier though wrestling the sled around holes and overflow along the Dalzell Creek was always a struggle. In some narrow sections the only way to cross the gorge was to tilt the sled onto one runner. Ice bridges would fall, hopefully behind the team, but sometimes right under the dogs, slamming the sled into the opposite bank, stopping the team with a jerk. The musher then had to lift and work it loose, up and over, back onto the trail.
This early in the morning, colder temperatures would keep the trail through the Dalzell and the Tatina River overflow more solidly frozen. Once on the river the group would spread but and make better time into Rohn.
Comfortable with the rhythm of her sled, Jessie let her thoughts wander. After her conversation with Alex the night before, she had gone back to her team to find Jim Ryan awake and watchful. Bomber snored in his sled. Dogs and gear were grouped close together, and Ryan sat on a pile of straw near the fire, drinking hot water—silver tea.
Mushers are always drinking something. Dehydration is a threat to humans as well as dogs. Humans lose moisture faster, having their whole body surface through which to perspire. Dogs only sweat through the pads of their feet and their noses and lose water through the air they exhale.
At temperatures below freezing, moisture freezes from the air, drying it. The colder it gets, the faster it freezes and dries. Though breathing cold air doesn’t damage throat and lung tissue, because it is warmed and moisturized by the body before it reaches these sensitive areas, it is uncomfortably drying to the skin.
The night before, Jessie had been applying Chap Stick liberally to her lips and nose when she caught sight of Jensen going down the trail to the lake. He had lifted his face to the falling snow, then shrugged his coat up around his neck and hurried on, looking tired, concerned, and strangely vulnerable. She had intended to mull over their conversations a bit, but when she got into her down sleeping bag, spread on the sled over an insulated pad, she had dropped into sleep like a stone tossed into a still pool.
Now, as she rode the runners, automatically calling signals to the dogs, she thought of Jensen and smiled to herself. He was interesting. She wondered what it would feel like to be kissed by a man with such a mustache. She had not been kissed lately, except for sloppy licks from her dogs. Alex was definitely more appealing. It had been a long time since a stranger had attracted her. Too long.
The last two years had been satisfying. She liked breeding dogs, training them, establishing her own kennel, and doing well in competition. Doing it alone had been a relief after the struggle to maintain a personal and professional relationship with a man whose ideas on training dogs had turned out to be remarkably similar to his views of women. He had manipulated both with frustrating swings from affection to rejection, offering rewards only when things went his way.
Meeting Alex Jensen had caught her off guard. His attention was flattering and—
Abruptly, her reverie was interrupted as the ice chute of the gorge opened in front of them. With his rebel yell echoing from the canyon walls, Bomber plunged over the first downward slope. Quickly checking her dogs, she followed, foot ready on the brake, hoping Jim wasn’t too close behind her.
11
Date: Tuesday, March 5
Race Day: Four
Place: Between Rainy Pass and Rohn Roadhouse checkpoints (forty-eight miles)
Weather: Clear, light wind
Temperature: High 1°F, low –10°F
Time: Midmorning
The glare of sunlight on snow drew Jensen’s eyes into a squint as the small plane gathered speed and lifted away from the ice of Puntilla Lake. Glancing to his left at the tinted glasses worn by the pilot, Trooper Ben Caswell, he wished he hadn’t left his own in his pack.
His stomach lurched as the plane wobbled slightly in a mild wind shear. Rainy Pass was the point of confluence for the gusts flowing from the mountains around it.
As they gained altitude, the brightness diffused until he could look down without discomfort at the ridges, deep valleys, and canyons of the rugged terrain. Peaks of the Alaska and Teocalli mountains rose enormous around them. Caswell dipped the left wing to swing their course a bit more to the west, following the Dalzell Gorge. Watching it unfold, Jensen was glad he was not among those threading their way out of the pass at ground level.
Just after nine o’clock a plane had arrived from Anchorage. Half an hour later, they had been loading the black plastic bags and their grisly contents when Caswell landed his Maule M-4 and taxied across the ice. Headquarters had agreed they needed their own transportation. Jensen and Becker loaded their gear and headed for Rohn and their interview with Schuller. The evidence plane would also make a quick stop in Rohn to pick up the plastic pill container.
At Alex’s request, Caswell flew fairly low over the gorge toward the Tatina River. It was easy to see teams coming through; one behind the other. From the air, the lines of dogs stretched out in front of the sleds like centipedes. Most had come through the steep parts of the canyon and were beginning to space themselves out. Traveling quickly over trail still solid from the night’s lower temperature, several of the leaders had pulled away and were nearing the halfway point. Alex looked carefully as they passed over the eight or ten mushers at the head of the pack but couldn’t locate Jessie Arnold’s bright red parka.
“Take it around once more, would you, Ben?” he asked.
On the second run he used the binoculars and spotted Jessie, Bomber, and Ryan not too far from the river, with about a dozen teams between them and the leader. They had stopped for a break beside the trail, and all three waved at the plane as it flew over. Satisfied, he directed Caswell to go on to Rohn.
The landing strip at Rohn is a narrow swath cut between stands of spruce. It is often plagued with crosswinds, which make incoming pilots pay white-knuckled attention, and passengers hold their breath and brace their feet. Though the air was comparatively still that day, all three troopers were relieved to climb out of the plane after it jounced to a stop on the uneven ground.
“Any real wind and I would have punched a hole in the floor,” Jensen told Caswell as they tied the plane securely between trees.
“Yeah. This one’s always a shot of adrenaline. I’ve landed here on probably a dozen occasions, and I swear those trees get closer every time. Once I did three touch-and-go’s before I finally made it.”
After getting directions from the checker, Jensen found Schuller a short distance from the cabin, replacing the battered plastic runners on his sled.
Schuller had removed the
old strips, worn from contact with rocks and ice, and was inserting new ones into the tracks on the runners of his overturned sled. He shook hands with Jensen through a thin working glove.
“Glad you could get down here before I had to take off,” he said. “Do you mind if I finish this? It will only be ten minutes or so.”
“Hell no, go ahead. Need help?”
“No thanks. Appreciate the offer, but they’d throw me out of the race if you did. No direct help allowed. It’s okay. I’ve got this down, so it won’t take long.”
“Then I’ll watch and ask a few questions. I haven’t seen this before. Then you can show me that container you picked up.”
“No sweat. We stashed it, and no one’s handled it but me, and whoever had it before me, of course.”
He turned back to the sled and, with the heel of an ax, continued to drive in a runner. “I knew about George, of course, but what’s the story on Ginny and Steve? How’s Turner doing?”
“I haven’t heard since we left Finger Lake, but he was holding his own there.”
Schuller looked up and frowned. “Think I’ll get the ham to call Anchorage and check. Sure hope it doesn’t screw up his racing. George expected a lot from him.”
“Jessie Arnold said about the same thing.”
“Well, she’d know. She’s pretty damn good at it herself.”
“Yeah?”
“We ran part of the Kusko together this year. She’s a good friend and a quality handler.”
Alex found himself wondering if the other man meant more than he said.
With a last whack, the runners slid into place. Schuller drove in the screws, flipped over the sled, and the job was complete. Carefully, he repacked his tools and the gear he had piled around.