My Lead Dog Was a Lesbian: Mushing Across Alaska in the Iditarod--The World's Most Grueling Race

by Brian Patrick O'donoghue

  Nap time was over. Lee got his team rolling to see if he could help. He found Moore rigging a tow line for Carpenter’s team.

  “You know, Gary,” said Lee, as he helped Moore fashion a connector that wouldn’t drag the trailing leaders by the neck, “he’ll be out of the race.”

  “I know, but he doesn’t see any way around it.”

  Carpenter stood on his sled, out of earshot, awaiting Moore’s cue. With the tow line in place, Moore’s dogs ambled forward. The Good Samaritan supported the line to Carpenter’s leaders in one hand.

  The incident was observed by the reporter, the photographer, as well as Carpenter’s wife and handler, who had just landed on the river in a ski plane. Lavrakas pulled out his camera and documented the rescue.

  “Too bad that Joe has to scratch,” Lee remarked to the musher’s wife as they watched the two teams depart.

  “Why would he have to scratch?” she asked.

  “He can’t accept help like that,” Lee explained. “It’s explicit in the rules.”

  Rule 26 stated that teams could only be tied together in an “emergency situation,” which had to be declared at the next checkpoint. Dogs quitting on a mild, sunny day was not likely to constitute an emergency in the eyes of the race marshal.

  “I don’t think he knows that,” Carpenter’s wife said.

  “I’ll tell him,” said Lee, whose dogs were anxious to chase anyhow.

  The tandem pair were barely creeping along. Moore was trying to cut Carpenter loose. But every time he relaxed the rope, Carpenter’s trailing leaders faltered. Lee quickly overtook them.

  “Joe, you know you’re going to be disqualified,” Lee shouted.

  Carpenter protested that his situation certainly amounted to an emergency. “I don’t have any food. I don’t have any fuel,” he cried.

  “OK,” Lee said, shrugging. A reformed alcoholic well versed in self-help litany, Barry recognized denial when he heard it. He’d tried. If Carpenter was too freaked out to accept the inevitable, so be it.

  The Coach hadn’t wanted me to even stop at Yentna Station, let alone stay six hours. I thought I was being prudent. In covering sled-dog races, I had seen a lot of people blow out their dogs the first day. I was still there when Carpenter finally made it to Yentna — showing no signs of grasping his predicament. He was talking about schedules. Talking about those supplies waiting in Skwentna. Lee and I shared uneasy feelings listening to Joe rant. It was like watching a driver babbling about scratches on a totaled car.

  I headed upstairs for a nap as Carpenter and Medred began arguing. The musher couldn’t understand what was so newsworthy about his little delay. Why would Medred want to write about this? Carpenter’s Iditarod was history, and he just didn’t see it. Lavrakas’s photo of the illegal tow was destined for page 1 of Alaska’s biggest newspaper. Medred was gathering details for the next day’s lead story: the first disqualification of this year’s race.

  Had anyone asked, I would have said I was traveling somewhere in the middle of the 74-team field. Like Carpenter, I was deluding myself. Lee better understood our plight. He knew there was no one left behind us.

  Joe Garnie led the first wave into Skwentna. The hard-driving Eskimo from Teller trotted into the floodlights set up on the river at 3:14 A.M. Sunday, March 3. Being first counted for more than bragging rights. Garnie had won the “Dodge Dash,” a special Iditarod promotion, and the prize was a $15,000 Dakota pickup. With the keys to his new truck in hand, Joe vowed to set fire to his old truck.

  Within 2 hours, 15 teams were camped on the river below postmaster Joe Delia’s cabin in Skwentna. This was the Iditarod’s elite. They fed their dogs and traded stories about the first day of the race, all the while eyeing each other warily, waiting to renew the chase.

  The shiny new truck was nice, but Garnie’s sights were set on the arch waiting 1,050 miles north. By half past noon, his sled was packed near the checkpoint tents at Finger Lake, 45 miles farther up the trail. Barve was again second, followed by Adkins, Swenson, Tim Osmar, and Jonrowe.

  Seventeen teams reached Finger Lake before Butcher. Everyone was camping when Susan arrived at 6:01 P.M. The Butch had other ideas. She dallied just 15 minutes before ordering her 18-dog team onward toward Rohn. Iditarod’s defending champion was leading for the first time in the race.

  As the front-runners maneuvered for position, Mowry burned up phone lines from his hotel in Dawson City, Yukon Territory. According to race headquarters, I had checked into Knik at 6:02 P.M. Saturday and I’d never left. Mowry knew that was probably misinformation. But what if I’d lost a dog? What if the team was sick? What if … It was maddening.

  The Coach’s strategy called for me to reach Skwentna by noon on Sunday. Forty-nine mushers managed to do that; I wasn’t among them. Mowry called every few hours. New teams kept showing up on the river below Delia’s cabin. More than 60 teams had registered at Skwentna by 7 P.M. on Sunday. The checker’s log also showed one scratch: Englishman Roy Monk. His dogs’ feet were too sore to continue. Team number 2, meanwhile, remained listed “in Knik.”

  The Poodle Man passed Daily on the river, roughly ten miles from Skwentna.

  “Give the devil his due,” Daily grumbled to himself, watching Suter pass. God, those poodles are clipping right along, looking good.

  Tom couldn’t say the same about his own team. Both of his high-priced leaders were a bust. The seed of suspicion planted during the Klondike had blossomed into an ugly reality. These dogs needed better conditioning. He could only blame himself for that. Relocating to Alaska had burned up a lot of time, but it didn’t excuse the training deficiency. And Daily was haunted by the memory of his sponsors’ unconcealed disappointment. There goes the free ride.

  Reality, as so often happens, had arrived with a vicious bite. Reaching Skwentna a full hour behind the damn Poodle Man, the musher gloomily declared his 24-hour layover. The dogs needed a breather.

  Since the day he signed up, Daily, an old hippie, had been reveling in the prospects of celebrating his thirty-ninth birthday mushing the Iditarod Trail. That day had arrived, and he wondered what he’d done to deserve such karma.

  The river was crisscrossed with trails. Each intersecting alternative appeared better to Chad, who kept dodging between them. The general direction was right, so I let Golden Dog pick his own way. He performed reasonably well until we caught up with the Anchorage Daily News snowmachines late Sunday afternoon. Jim Lavrakas and Craig Medred had parked a few yards off the trail. Chad made a beeline for them. He flopped at the journalists’ feet, bringing the team to a dead halt. I had to get off the sled and drag him back on course. From there, his confidence shrank with each step. Before long, I banished Chad to wheel, inserting Harley in single lead.

  Intertwining trails didn’t faze the monster. Given a choice between trails, Harley never agonized. He barreled forward, flopping his ears up and down with each step.

  Relieved of his pressure position, Chad pulled like a demon. Muscles rippled in his shoulders. His head bent downward; this time from joyous effort, not discouragement. Watching the transformation, I shook my head. What a basket case.

  Nearing Skwentna, I put the White Rat up front with Harley for better control. The combination worked beautifully. The wafting scent of woodstoves was as good as a dinner bell to an old sled dog like the Rat. She blazed ahead, displaying energy she normally concealed. In training, the Rat always ran fast enough to keep pace, but not so hard that she might have to work. In that respect, the Rat was the least honest dog in the kennel, and her calculated deceit infuriated the Coach.

  When you prodded her, the white dog’s tug line would tighten, but the effort only lasted until you stopped watching her. Like most leaders, she had an uncanny memory for trails. But given any chance, she’d strike out for home. It didn’t matter whether the team had just left the lot. Cutting corners was her goal in life. I didn’t care. The dog might be lazy, but she knew commands. And I enjoyed her games at mealtime.
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br />   Every day, without fail, she would stash her pan in the deepest possible corner of her house, which happened to be the longest house in our lot. Our game grew more demanding with the onset of blizzards in December. I had to lie on my belly to reach the pan through her tunnellike entrance. The Rat applauded my cooperation with frisky hops. Then she’d squat on her haunches, lifting both paws in a begging motion.

  “The Rat, the Rat,” I’d sing, filling her pan. “Queen of All Dogs.”

  The Coach commented on an unintended consequence of my affection. “Rat is getting fat, O’Donoghue. Quit giving her seconds!”

  I loved the conniving White Rat, and she paid me back tonight, guiding Harley toward Skwentna’s sagging checkpoint banner. It was a few minutes before midnight. Made it by 12, only it was the wrong 12.

  The postmaster appeared holding his clipboard. More than 20 hours had passed since Delia had first checked Garnie’s sled for required gear. He was groggy.

  “How many teams are in, Joe?”

  Delia shrugged. “Lost track,” he mumbled, handing me the clipboard for my signature. “C’mon up to the cabin when you get settled.”

  Where does the time go? First I bedded the dogs in straw. Then I picked up my four-gallon pot and searched for water. Other mushers directed me to a hole chopped in the thick river ice. You had to reach way down to scoop the water out with a coffee can. Filling the pot took a little longer than I expected. That set the tone, I guess. Everything took longer than I expected. Four sacks of supplies were waiting for me. Fetching those 50-to 70-pound sacks required several trips. That took more time.

  Sack number 1 contained my most pressing needs at Skwentna, and every other checkpoint: whitefish for the dogs; new batteries; dry gloves; and several toilet-paper rolls for the stove. I threw each dog a chunk of whitefish — starting with Harley, of course.

  Iditarod provisioned each checkpoint with dozens of cases of bottled Blazo alcohol fuel, or a similarly flammable equivalent. I collected my share of fuel bottles and carried them back to the team. Placing a roll of toilet paper in the cooker’s bottom pan, I dowsed it with fuel. A flick of a Bic lighter sent blue flame jetting from the toilet paper, which served as the wick for the fuel pooled in the pan. Next, I inserted the pot, suspended several inches above the roaring torch.

  Boiling four gallons of frigid water took a good half hour. While waiting, I chopped meat and mixed it with dry food in two 16-gallon coolers. After pouring in the hot water, I resealed the coolers and let the meaty stew soak.

  After feeding the dogs, I checked their feet and dabbed ointment on any that looked sore. Rainy’s feet were unblemished, but I wrapped her sensitive wrist in a special rubberized wrap to keep the joint warm and loose. Foot care alone probably consumed 45 minutes to an hour, a routine that would be repeated at almost every stop on the trail to Nome.

  I was tired but pleased as I climbed the hill to Delia’s cabin. Hadn’t been that many years since I had climbed this same hill to interview others. This time this adventure was mine. Inside the warm cabin, I grabbed a bowl of chili and sat down with Delia and Iditarod photographers Jim Brown and Jeff Schultz.

  Brown, a graying Iditarod mainstay, greeted me with a twinkle in his eye. “I’m tired of chasing the crybabies in front,” he declared. “This year I’m going to follow the teams in the rear. That’s where the good stories are.”

  The bodies of sleeping mushers and race officials were scattered across the cabin’s floor. The man responsible for all of this was snoozing in a chair: Joe Redington — a slightly shrunken 73-year-old grandfather, with rumpled clothes and a gray day-old beard.

  I remembered interviewing Redington in 1988, down on the river below this cabin. People had been saying that he ought to give it up. That the race was too tough for a man of his age. For three years running, Redington hadn’t been able to prove them wrong. Twice in a row he had scratched with injuries. The year before Old Joe had finished, but thirty-third place was quite a comedown for a three-time fifth-place finisher, and the man said to own the best racing dogs in the world.

  Redington looked terrible that day. He was leaning on his sled, sipping hot Tang with a sour expression. It wasn’t the juice — he swore by that sugary powder. It was his head. “’Fraid I’m coming down with a bad case of the flu,” rasped Old Joe, who didn’t believe in fooling with aspirin and those other pills.

  The front-runners, indeed, most of the field, had cleared out of Skwentna hours earlier, postponing their required 24-hour layovers for another 100 or 200 miles, and eliminating the risk of a storm sealing off Rainy Pass. Redington was left nearly alone on the Skwentna River with Herbie Nayokpuk, another aging legend. Both men were taking their extended break here, out of necessity: Old Joe, hoping to recover from the virus; Herbie, praying that his coastal dogs would bounce back after wilting in the first day’s heat.

  I spent a long time talking to Redington. I figured the chances were good that he wouldn’t make it much farther up the trail, and I had a lot to learn about the Last Great Race and its founder.

  Tonight I was ready to discard another illusion. Getting all of my dogs to Nome was a fantasy I couldn’t afford. Not if I wanted to make it more than a mile between tangles. I filled out the paperwork required for dropping Gnat and Daphne from the team.

  Written explanations were required for each dropped dog. Mushers were supposed to note any medical problems or special instructions about handling, such as “This dog bites strangers.” I provided a detailed account of Gnat’s mishap with the tree in Anchorage, the comments from vets, and his whimpering behavior after Knik.

  My explanation for dropping Daphne was not so sympathetic. “Queen of tangles, never pulls, chews harnesses by the box.”

  Reading the form, the Skwentna veterinarian chuckled. “So why did you bring her?”

  “Been asking myself that question for a hundred miles.”

  During my 12-hour stay in Skwentna, I napped just two hours. Sunrise found me on the river, changing my runner plastic and repacking. Four hours later I was busying myself with the sled. My dogs were getting anxious. Raven and Spook were barking. Digger was leaping in place. I had my back to the sled when the team jerked the hook free and bolted. The team dragged my empty sled about a hundred yards before Redington and two other guys caught the dogs.

  “I don’t think they need more rest,” Old Joe said.

  Barry Lee had been warned: Expect a long 45 miles from Skwentna to Finger Lake. “It doesn’t look like it, but it’s all uphill,” Bobby told him. “You’re rising toward Rainy Pass.”

  With his brother’s comments in mind, Barry tried to ignore his team’s plodding pace, but disappointment was gnawing at him. Though his dogs acted happy, the team was just crawling.

  I caught Lee right after he finished changing booties. Aware that my dogs were faster, he ordered his team over to a parallel snowmachine path, clearing the way for me to pass.

  Behind me, Lee’s dogs broke through the crusty side trail. While he struggled to pull the team back to the packed snow, many of his dogs took advantage of the distraction to kick or pull off the booties that had just been placed on their feet with painstaking care. Politeness had just cost Barry another 20 minutes of work.

  Early Monday afternoon Joe Redington, Sr. completed his required 24-hour layover in Skwentna. I had my dogs off to the side and was tossing out snacks when the old racer barreled past.

  “Go get ’em, Joe!”

  He flashed a familiar weathered smile.

  Sparks shot upward from a roaring log. Heat had melted a circular wall, six feet high, in a surrounding snow drift. Dewey Halverson, his face lit by flames reflecting off the glassy walls, had the other Finger Lake volunteers in hysterics with his impressions of other mushers.

  The checkpoint consisted of a cluster of tents in a clearing between tall spruce trees. Accommodations for mushers were sparse. We had a floorless tent, heated by a small sheet-metal stove. Spruce boughs served as bedding.
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  After tending my dogs, I headed for the tent carrying a fat ice wad of used booties. Most were castoffs from other teams, which I’d snagged en route. My own booty situation was approaching a crisis. The icy trail had already shredded several hundred, wiping out my reserves. Examining my frozen assortment in the mushers’ tent, I picked out several dozen booties in good shape and burned the rest.

  Alan Garth, Chase, and I talked by the stove, which hissed with drying gloves and booties. Mark Williams was sleeping soundly nearby.

  Chase mentioned that he had never, in all his Iditarods, drawn a decent starting position.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I got lucky, but I didn’t know what to do with it.”

  Herrman was off in the woods by himself. He couldn’t bear for others to witness his distress. First it had been the heat. Now his dogs were sick. Only 11 dogs left, and 9, NINE, had bloody diarrhea. It looked to Sepp like they had swollen tonsils as well. The German had a theory about the cause. Living at his remote cabin in the Brooks Range, his dogs hadn’t been exposed to the viruses common in populated areas. They had never had a chance to build immunity to the diseases carried by the other teams. Up north, the trapper depended on no one but himself. He didn’t need or want any help now. Those nosy Iditarod officials could just mind their own business.

  For 36 hours Sepp kept the fire going under his cook pot as he camped near Finger Lake. Using snow melted by the gallon, the trapper nursed and hand-fed his poor sick puppies.

  Despair was overwhelming Barry Lee. Twelve hours had passed since he had set out from Skwentna on the 45-mile run to Finger Lake. He wasn’t absolutely sure, but he doubted anyone was behind him. Every team in this race was faster, and nobody was wasting as much time. What was I thinking of taking so many naps? he asked himself. Yet he felt tired even now. Bone weary. Oh, what was he going to do? This wasn’t just wilderness; it was an emotional wasteland. Tears ran down the musher’s cheeks.