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

by Brian Patrick O'donoghue

  Suddenly Lee sensed a light over his shoulder. Stopping his team, he slowly turned, expecting to see the headlamp from an approaching musher. The light came from no earthly source. A corona reached across the heavens. Shimmering bands formed an arching circle in the sky, reminding the musher of a great circus tent. The lights were an intense, dynamic presence. And so beautiful. Barry divined a message in the display: God had staged this Northern Lights show to let him know everything was going to be OK.

  Anchoring his team with two snow hooks, Lee lay on his back in the snow, reveling in the glorious celestial fire. Tears again streamed down his face. This time, tears of joy. “Thank you, God,” whispered Barry Lee, staring up at the wondrous colors.

  He was still rejoicing when a real headlamp appeared from behind. It was John Ace, a thick-bearded, barrel-chested musher from Sutton making his sixth run to Nome.

  “How far in?” Lee asked.

  “Oh, not too far,” said Ace. “Two miles, maybe three.”

  Trailing the other musher through a thick stand of tall spruce, Lee sensed a change within himself. Whatever else happened, however grim the situation might get, he would never again feel so low. He had company on this, on any trail. His faith was confirmed. How could it be otherwise? At the moment of Barry Lee’s greatest need, a message had come.

  CHAPTER 5. Storm on the Mountain

  Leaving the campsite at Finger Lake, I mushed into an inky void. The Northern Lights had faded, and clouds must have rolled in, because there wasn’t a single star shining. Despite new batteries, my headlamp merely poked at the darkness with its narrow, ineffectual beam. Maybe my eyes were shot from staring at the bonfire, but the night was blacker than black. So it was that I had a blind man’s grip on the sled — when my dogs plunged over the edge of an invisible chasm.

  Worst hill I’d ever run with a dog team. Couldn’t see the bottom. Fresh from their rest, the dogs sprinted down the slope, while I teetered on one slippery runner, stabbing for the brake with my free foot. As unexpectedly as it began, the blind fall ended. The void leveled out, and I continued onward, feeling my terror give way to anger. Someone at the damn checkpoint could have mentioned the killer hill less than a mile ahead. Guess they didn’t want to spoil my fun.

  The torture of the unexpected was becoming a familiar theme. Entering the race, I thought my reporting background would more than compensate for my mushing inexperience. I could list Iditarod’s famous hazards: Rainy Pass, the descent into Dalzell Gorge, and the brutal Farewell Burn. I had a general idea of the geography from flying the route, something few other rookies could claim. But aerial observations made at 100 miles an hour were meaningless here on the ground. And writing secondhand stories was no substitute for real life.

  Uncertainties were in full swing early Tuesday morning, as I approached the infamous canyon at Happy River Valley.

  “Happy River’s got less than half the usual snow,” race manager Jack Niggemyer had warned us at the prerace musher’s meeting. “The steps are in pretty good shape, but they’re narrower than usual. Just be cautious. It’s not a death ride, but it won’t be as easy as last year.”

  Barry Lee had heard that he should unfasten the tug lines before attempting the steps, so the dogs couldn’t pull quite as hard on the downhill chutes. He had shared the tip while we camped at Finger Lake. It sounded like a good idea, but I had a feeling — mushing through tonight’s void — that I wouldn’t know I was close to Happy River until the team dragged me over the edge. So I ran all night with the tugs disconnected and a tight grip of my handlebar, expecting to whip into another dark hole any second.

  Light was breaking through the trees when I saw a handmade sign nailed to a tree. “SLOW!” it proclaimed, over a sketch of a dog team running down a 75-degree slope. “Hill next four steps.”

  If only I’d known the canyon was marked with a traffic hazard sign.

  Terhune took the plummet the afternoon before my own descent. The three steep drops, cut sideways into the canyon, were tricky, but he managed to steady himself, sliding on one heel, while holding his sled tilted toward the wall, as veterans had warned him to do. Indeed, Terhune wasn’t finding the canyon all that scary, and he relaxed as the team leveled out on what he assumed was the canyon floor. But this year Iditarod’s trailbreakers had tried to ease the descent into Happy River Valley with not three, but four sideways steps down the wall. The final switchback took the musher by complete surprise.

  Terhune hung on as his sled tumbled down the side of the canyon, dragging the half-dozen dogs in the rear of his team. The sled rolled six times before slamming to a stop against small trees and bushes. Several dogs were pinned underneath. Terhune was scared to look.

  A television crew from ABC’s Wide World of Sports was strategically positioned at the bottom of the canyon. The cameraman recorded Terhune’s mishap, then rushed over to get a close-up of the musher’s reaction.

  Jon was sprawled on his back when the cameraman leaned over him.

  “How would you like that thing shoved up your ass,” cried the infuriated former paratrooper as he jumped to his feet.

  The cameraman hastily retreated. Footage of the spill showed up in the network’s Iditarod broadcast, minus Terhune’s commentary.

  The dogs were unscathed. Their master was the one hobbling out of the canyon. Terhune had twisted his back. His fingers began tingling and soon became numb. Before long, the gentlest of bumps sent pain shooting through his spine.

  Climbing a steep, bare riverbank on the far side of the canyon, Terhune’s sled became stuck. The crippled musher lacked the strength to free it. He wasted 30 minutes extending his gang line, hoping to improve the leverage of the dogs. But the sled remained wedged. He was struggling with the problem when the Hot Dog Man arrived on the scene. Munoz helped Terhune muscle the sled up the hill, and the pair mushed together into the Rainy Pass checkpoint late Monday afternoon.

  Spreading straw for the dogs, Terhune lay down in his sleeping bag next to his leaders. He placed his windup clock under his ear, with the alarm set for three hours. He figured the clock was broken when he awakened eight hours later, but there was nothing wrong. Bells had sounded until the spring ran down; Terhune had just never heard them.

  Dozens of teams had wiped out on the steps before I ventured into Happy River Valley. Their mishaps cut grooves in the snow, turning the short, steep drops into suicide chutes. My sled launched into the canyon on three of the four descents. Twice I stayed aboard and, leaning toward the wall, managed to keep my sled from rolling as it skidded downward, coming to rest against bushes and trees rooted on the side of the canyon. A few dogs were dragged over the edge with me, but most dug in, holding firm as they waited for new orders from the boss.

  “All right! All right. Go ahead!” My sled weighed at least 300 pounds. The total load had to be closer to 500 pounds with me added. Displaying the formidable power of 15 dogs, the team easily hauled sled and driver back on track.

  I thought my sled-handling was improving when I made it down the third step unscathed. Right. My sled went completely airborne on the fourth, and I let go. For the first time ever, I consciously let go of a dog team. The sled landed in a bushy tree about 15 feet down the canyon wall. The dogs in the front of the team crouched low, hugging the slope. Down below, Cyrus looked around frantically, acting more bewildered than hurt. His partner in wheel, Skidders, was already on his feet, calmly shaking himself off. Feeling guilty, I clambered down to retrieve my sled.

  “I wouldn’t do the dogs any good with a broken leg,” I told myself, but the words sounded false.

  “Denali” is an Athabaskan word meaning “great one,” or “high one.” Local Indians gave the peak towering over the Interior that honored title long before 1896, when prospector William Dickey stuck the name McKinley on North America’s tallest mountain. The traditional name is preferred by most Alaskans over Dickey’s tribute to an Ohio politician who never set foot in Alaska. Indeed, just about every musher ha
s a big dog named Denali, and I was no different.

  Wide-shouldered with peaked ears, weighing about 45 pounds, my Denali was muscled like a canine bodybuilder. The young male, a month shy of three years old, should have been coming into his prime on the Iditarod Trail. He and his litter-mate, Screech, shared a striking physical resemblance. But that was all they had in common. Whereas she was a hard-working sweetheart, he was surly and constantly growled at the other males. And he wasn’t keen on putting those rippling muscles to work. His tug line drooped whenever I looked away.

  Maybe the others were fed up with Denali’s laziness. Mushers talk about veteran dogs nipping young slackers in the ass. Perhaps the young male made a move for dominance within the team and was rebuffed. I heard a quick growl, then the other dogs turned on Denali as a group, fangs bared, and began tearing into him from every side. I’ve seen big males square off, but the curl in tiny Cricket’s lips as she sunk her teeth into Denali’s left haunch was more menacing. There was no mistaking her intent, or that of the other assailants. It was a pack judgment.

  I jumped into the fray as Harley circled back to get in on the action. Throwing myself over Denali as a shield, I elbowed and kicked his attackers away. Then I unclipped the victim from the team and tied him behind the sled.

  Blood oozed from bites on his nose and ears, but Denali didn’t appear seriously harmed. I was debating what to do with him when I saw Raven nervously watching from the woods nearby. The sight gave me a chill. Lose a dog and I’d be out of the race. At home, I wouldn’t have worried, since our escapees never strayed far. But I couldn’t take anything for granted with a spooked dog in strange surroundings.

  “Here Raven. C’mon little princess,” I said, gently coaxing her. The tone of my voice was all she needed. She dashed over with her tail between her legs, trembling, shaken by the violence.

  “That’s OK Raven,” I said, stroking my delicate black beauty. “Everything’s all right.”

  I placed Denali in wheel, where I could keep him under closer watch. If there were lingering animosities, they were soon forgotten. The dogs, including Denali, perked up their ears and leaped to their feet at the familiar rustling sound of the snack bag.

  The trail to Rainy Pass rolled and snaked through a forest of thin alders. When they set trail earlier in the winter, Iditarod volunteers had trimmed these fast-growing trees. Unfortunately, the snow pack dropped during a warm spell that followed, subjecting dog teams to a gauntlet of jagged sticks and stumps projecting eight inches or more from ground level.

  Plowing through mile after mile of the battering sticks, I kept wondering if we were on the right trail. But the markers were unmistakable. My sled was taking a beating. Sticks kept snagging the chains connecting a piece of snowmachine track between my runners, which I used as an extra brake. Sometimes the impediments stopped the team, throwing me against the handlebar — but only for an instant, until the stick, or whatever it was, gave way under pressure, launching my sled forward as if from a slingshot. On one sharp dip, I tasted utter disaster as a stump snagged my sled bow. Under pressure from the dogs, my sled bent in what seemed to be an impossibly tight arc. I braced myself, dreading the “crack” of runners snapping. Thankfully, the bow clamps burst first. My sled popped loose, sporting a busted nose, but sliding.

  I almost never drink hard liquor, but I had left Knik packing two bottles of Jack Daniel’s. It was Jack Studer’s idea. The larger quart-sized bottle of whiskey was strictly for trading purposes. Out in the villages, a bottle can buy you a freshly laid snowmachine trail, said Studer, who understood better than anyone the misery of plodding to Nome on snowshoes.

  I was also carrying a pint of Jack for personal use. Studer advised me to take a quick belt as I approached each checkpoint. He said it would soothe my transition from the serenity of the trail to the madhouse atmosphere of checkpoints.

  The seal on that pint of Jack remained unbroken through Eagle River, Wasilla, Knik, Skwentna, and Finger Lake. But I was ready for a sip as I neared Rainy Pass late Tuesday morning. The bottle felt light as I pulled it out. Hardly a drop remained inside. At first I was baffled, but then I noticed a tiny hole in the cap, where the booze had leaked out. A broken bottle I could understand — but what were the odds of this happening?

  Groping inside the sled bag to see if there were any other surprises, I pulled out a handful of plastic splinters: the remains of my spare headlamp reflector. That was no biggie. Though headlamp bulbs burned out fairly often, I had never, over the entire course of training, cracked a headlamp reflector. Those things were as tough as steel.

  Parking on a gentle snow-covered slope below Rainy Pass Lodge, I felt bruised and disoriented. Like a mugging victim, assaulted in a beautiful park. My hips and knees were sore from being dragged God knows how many times. Raising my right arm was extremely painful. It humbled me to think that Redington was mushing this trail in his seventies.

  And what about Colonel Vaughan? He was already 70 years old in 1975, the first time he attempted Redington’s Great Race. He didn’t make it to Nome that year. Or the year after, when he took a wrong turn in the Alaska Range and spent four days lost before being rescued. Friends and race officials tried to discourage the colonel from attempting the Iditarod again. Vaughan didn’t listen. He returned for the 1978 race, and that time he made it to Nome. Over the next 11 years, the colonel ran the Iditarod eight more times, notching his fourth official finish in the 1990 race at the ever-ready age of 84.

  The first time I met him, Vaughan was stretched out on the ice at a checkpoint, crawling from dog to dog, inspecting each paw, rubbing in ointment and placing on booties. He used the belly-down approach to compensate for his bad knees. The colonel wasn’t about to let a slight physical disability force him into retirement. Not Norman Vaughan, the only U.S. airman to earn battlefield honors by dog team, by retrieving a top secret instrument from a downed plane in Greenland during World War II. Sixty years after dropping out of Harvard to handle dogs on Admiral Robert Byrd’s expedition to the South Pole, Vaughan was Alaska’s ageless adventurer.

  Contemplating my bruised thirty-five-year-old body, I knew the colonel was tougher than I’d ever be.

  I was strongly inclined to take my 24-hour layover at Rainy Pass, a scenic horse ranch overlooking a lake high in the Alaska Range. But the lodge was closed to mushers this year, and the checker wasn’t encouraging.

  “This really isn’t a good place to stay,” he said. “There are no facilities. Not even a tent. Yesterday it snowed and rained on the mushers.”

  It was day 4 of the race. I’d slept a total of about six hours since leaving Anchorage, and I wasn’t thinking clearly. I badly needed a nap. Climbing a mountain pass in this foggy state sounded crazy. Yet I couldn’t rest. There was talk of a storm on its way. I didn’t want to get caught on the wrong side of the range. Rainy Pass might stay blocked for days, and my race would be over right here.

  I packed and repacked, agonizing over whether to move on. Medred came over to interview me. It was so bright out that I had to squint to bring the reporter into focus. Finding his questions difficult to follow, I answered with grunts.

  Ace was camped nearby. The veteran said he was going to try to beat the storm over the pass. That sealed my decision. We agreed to rest our dogs a few hours, then pull out about 6 P.M.

  Mushing the Iditarod Trail, it was tempting to think that the dogs and I had cut all ties to our lives back in town. But the mundane world hadn’t forgotten me. A personal check for $145, written in payment for Dr. Leach’s veterinary services, arrived Tuesday at National Bank of Alaska. Last-minute supplies and unexpected expenses, like the vet bill from Rat’s fight with Daphne, had pushed the total cost of my participation in the Iditarod over $16,000. My personal account was already overdrawn by $3.56. All my bank accounts, including the special Iditarod account, were tapped out. The check written to Dr. Leach was returned unpaid. An overdraft notice was mailed to Deadline Dog Farm.

  Ace came ov
er to talk while I was getting ready to break camp.

  “I don’t want to scare you,” he said, stroking his thick beard, “but take a little extra food, a little extra fuel, and prepare yourself in case we don’t make it.”

  Ace spoke from experience. His first race he had weathered a long night in the pass, trapped mere yards from a shelter tent that had been rendered invisible by the storm.

  I had 15 dogs, which meant that I had 60 paws to prepare. The situation was not helped when Rat and Cyrus pulled their booties off. Ace mushed out of the checkpoint. It took me an additional 45 minutes to get ready. Several veterinarians came over and helped guide my team out of the checkpoint. The dogs looked good, including Denali, who had been treated for his bites. I sensed that the vets were more concerned about my own haggard condition and blatant incompetence.

  Despite the rumored storm, it was bright out, with hardly a cloud in the sky and a calm, warm 20 above zero. Trail markers led us to a steep hill, perhaps 150 feet high. Rainy and Harley tried to climb it, but slipped right back down. Bathed by the evening sun, the snow was too slick for their new booties.

  Damned if I was going to strip off those booties. Not after the hassle of putting them on. I ran up front, grabbed my leaders by the neck line, and began pulling them up the slope, kicking steps in the soft snow with my bunny boots. The dogs seemed amused to see the boss working on the front end of the gang line. Together we crept up the slippery hill.

  Looking virtually straight down at my 64-foot-long string of dogs, I wondered what the hell was going to happen if the sled tipped, or I lost my footing. But the sled remained upright, incredibly enough. One step at a time, the team and I neared the top.

  Lavrakas spotted us climbing the hill. It reminded him of a scene from the gold-rush days: a miner making a superhuman effort as he hauled supplies toward an unknown camp. The incline was so steep, however, that the photographer rather doubted I was on the right trail.