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

by Brian Patrick O'donoghue

  The light was starting to go. Lavrakas roared to the bottom on his snowmachine. Alas, he was digging in his camera bag for the right lens when I crested the top of the hill.

  I mushed toward the pass with growing dread. The landscape was barren, completely inhospitable. The surrounding mountains were jagged and cruel, casting an ominous air over the basin I was ascending. As dusk settled in, I caught Ace crossing a windswept plain. He was having trouble with his leaders and waved me ahead.

  It grew darker and the wind picked up. Snow began falling. The trail was rising with no end in sight. I sensed that we’d lost our race with the storm, but there was no turning back.

  Seeking a spiritual boost, I popped a tape in my Walkman. The band was Los Lobos. I enjoyed the tune until I actually listened to the words: “There’s a deep dark hole, and it leads to nowhere….”

  Lavrakas reappeared on his snowmachine, shadowing my team. Several times he speeded ahead and positioned himself to get pictures of my dogs bursting through the flowing snow. His flashes added a surreal dimension to my predicament.

  I was warm enough, but the wind and snow were definitely getting worse. And I was mushing up into Rainy Pass, elevation 3,400, the highest point on the 1,150-mile Iditarod Trail. Redington once faced 100-below-zero conditions on this same stretch. I was thinking about that. And I was thinking about the warning from Ace.

  When I got the chance, I flagged down Lavrakas and asked him if he knew how far it was to the survival shelter. He raced back to confer with Ace, then zoomed ahead, vanishing in the storm. About 30 minutes later, the photographer returned.

  “I went quite a ways ahead and couldn’t find the shelter,” Jim said, looking grim.

  I was reluctant to part from my speedy messenger in the storm. Lavrakas’s face had taken on a guardian angel’s glow. I think we both suspected I wasn’t ready for this. But my dogs were straining to go. And the trail wasn’t getting any better.

  “I’m strapped to an engine with no reverse,” I shouted over the snowmachine’s throb. “Tell Ace I’m going ahead.”

  The shelter was supposed to be on the edge of a lake, near the top of the pass. In the tunnel vision created by my headlamp, I was lucky to glimpse the dogs, much less the landscape. Visibility was so poor, we could be within ten feet of the shelter and I might not see it. New snow was already piled a foot deep, and it was coming down hard.

  Rainy was in her element, acting strangely buoyant. She and Harley were leaping, leaping into the swirling soup, splashing through the flowing drifts. I was so tired I could hardly stand. The snowflakes streaking toward my goggles reminded me of the way stars appear when the starship Enterprise shifts into warp drive. Were we moving uphill or was it down? Did the trail really tilt sideways here? I felt so disoriented, I couldn’t tell.

  Rainy seemed to know where she was going.

  “Have you been here before little Rainy? Is this where you got your name?”

  Our records about the lesbian’s racing history were inconclusive. Coming from Knik, Redington’s Iditarod-crazed training grounds, it could be that she was drawing on memories of the Great Race. The sport’s history is full of such stories. Emmitt Peters, an Athabaskan musher from Ruby, had a revealing experience in his first Iditarod. His leader, Nugget, kept stopping the team in odd places along the trail. The musher didn’t know what to think when the lead dog ignored a village checkpoint and confidently steered the team to a stranger’s house. Then a local woman mentioned that the dog had slept in that same spot before, the year Nugget guided Carl Huntington’s team to victory. Peters realized that the leader’s puzzling pauses were nothing but familiar rest stops. With Nugget’s help, the rookie went on to win that Iditarod, a feat that earned Peters the nickname Yukon Fox.

  Then again, Rainy might be sniffing out a mountain-goat path, leading us toward a cliff. There was no way to know.

  This had to be Harley’s first trip. Minto, the big dog’s village, boasted champion sprint mushers, but no one that I knew of from the village had ever attempted this trail. Harley supplied the engine that night, but Rainy held the steering wheel. I wondered how far I dared trust the little lesbian.

  I was glad when Ace finally caught up. With my team leading, we continued for about another hour, until the veteran, too, had doubts.

  “We should have found that shelter by now,” he said.

  Bowing to the elements, we hastily made camp. The dogs immediately pawed cozy niches in the snow. I staggered up the gang line, plowing through waist-deep powder, and tossed each dog a chunk of beef and a six-inch piece of Kobuk sausage fat. Not much of a meal, but it was too windy to fire up the cooker, and the dogs needed something. Right now, navigation was the problem. There was no telling what this storm might bring. Or how long this forced shutdown might last.

  I flipped my sled on its side, dumping the contents. I’d packed everything in stuff bags with just this sort of emergency in mind. Placing the sled upright, I stripped off my snowmachine suit, shook it off, and stretched it across the bottom of the toboggan for insulation. Next, I unpacked my sleeping bag — a Tangerine Dream expedition-quality bag from North Face, supposedly warm to 40 below zero — and laid it across the suit. Kicking off my bunny boots, I slipped into the sleeping bag. Sitting with my back to the stanchions supporting the handlebar, I took off my headlamp and clipped it to an inside pocket, angling the beam to light the sled’s interior. Almost done now, I grabbed the open flap of the sled bag and pulled it overhead. Then I pressed the Velcro strips together and sealed myself inside. My sled bag had become a survival cocoon.

  Wedged inside the tight shelter, I congratulated myself for buying sledmaker Tim White’s extra-long-model Iditarod toboggan. The situation would be far, far worse, I told myself, if I had skimped and bought White’s standard sled, which was six inches shorter. Focusing on the small triumph was more comforting than dwelling on the big picture.

  At the beginning of the race, two scenarios scared me: falling through ice into open water on a cold night, or getting nailed by a storm in an exposed section of the trail. I wasn’t even a quarter of the way to Nome and already I felt like a lamb tied to the dark gods’ altar.

  Living on the Lower East Side, the biggest threat from the environment had been being mugged. I always left the cab garage on Ninth Avenue with a camera bag slung over my shoulder, and $75 to $100 cash tucked in my right sock. I worked too hard to stuff $8 in another cabbie’s pocket. Instead I caught the subway at Times Square, which was still a lively place at five o’clock in the morning.

  Over time, I grew careless. Trains were few, and long delays were common at that time of the morning. I began to stray farther and farther from the protected area near the token booth, seeking more comfortable places to sit, with better light for reading the newspaper. My favorite spot became the fourth or fifth step of an unused staircase at the far end of the lower subway platform. The staircase led to a closed section of the station. The top of the stairs was sealed by a fence.

  One morning, a voice intruded on my reading.

  “You know it’s not very safe here,” said a young black man, standing so close I could have reached out and touched the gold chains around his neck. He smiled, introduced himself as “The King,” and welcomed me to his dominion.

  Two of his friends quietly approached from opposite sides of the platform as the King and I bantered. I calmly stood up and stretched, taking stock of the situation. The platform ahead of me was empty. Standing on the staircase I had the advantage of height. But I was also cornered by the hand rails and the fence behind me.

  “What’s in the bag?” The King said, pointing at my camera bag. The bag contained three Olympus 35-mm camera bodies, several lenses, and a powerful flash — my entire life, or so it seemed at the time.

  Instead of answering the King, I smiled. Not because I saw a way out. I smiled because I was an idiot, because my back was to the wall in the confrontation every city dweller fears, because there was no avoiding
any fate, and because, mainly because, surrender wasn’t an option.

  The King and his friends sauntered away.

  My breath was loud inside the sled bag. So was the ticking of my watch. The wind was a divine fist, rocking my sled with each blow. Each gust sent tiny jets of snow through gaps in the Velcro. Illuminated by my headlamp, snow crystals rained down on my sleeping bag in shimmering streams. I pried the Velcro strips apart and squeezed them together more carefully, shoring up my defenses.

  Madden had talked me into buying a dozen packets of processed salmon. He swore that it would taste like candy on the trail. And the salmon is so oily that it remains soft enough to eat, regardless of the temperature.

  Two packets of the salmon were stowed in the sled bag’s inside pocket. I dug one out and cut it open with my folding Buck knife. The fish was cold and stiff, but it crumbled easily into bite-sized bits. I chewed slowly, savoring the intense flavor. Then I licked the greasy wrapper clean. Madman knew what he was talking about.

  Carefully opening the sled bag, I checked the dogs. Those I could see were curled in tight balls, mostly covered with blankets of snow. Resealing the cocoon, I dug my toes into the sleeping bag and wiggled inside. Then I switched off the headlamp and huddled in the dark, listening to the wind.

  Strange to say, I felt peaceful stuck on top of Rainy Pass. There was no escape. I was again cornered. So what? I wasn’t beaten. And I wasn’t close to surrendering. This was a delay. Nothing more. For the first time in weeks, there were no decisions to make, and no schedules to keep. The storm had me in its grip, and all I could do was ride it out.

  Iditarod’s leader was furious.

  Instead of taking his 24-hour layover in Rohn, Nikolai, or McGrath, where the other front-runners halted, Terry Adkins kept his dogs on the march, gambling on his mountain-conditioned dogs’ ability to grab an insurmountable lead. The veteran’s strategy hinged on two factors, both of which were beyond his control. To delay the pursuit, he needed a storm, preferably on the 90-mile trail to Iditarod, the ghost town that gave the race its name. He also needed the support of Iditarod’s trailbreakers, the volunteer snowmachiners who open the lead musher’s trail. The timing of their work was crucial. If the snowmachines got too far in front, their work could vanish in drifts. If they weren’t far enough ahead, the trail might not “set,” or harden, in time for the lead musher’s passage.

  Adkins got his storm, but the trailbreakers were running too far ahead. He battled drifts in the final miles leading to Ophir. Continuing on alone was out of the question. He filed an official protest with race officials. He angrily told reporters that he might even scratch. The mushing Montanan, with more Iditarods under his belt than anyone else, vowed to make this race his last.

  “It’s like living with a woman for 17 years and finding out she’s unfaithful,” Adkins told the Anchorage Daily News.

  The complaints and threats were meaningless. Adkins knew it. Words weren’t going to part the white sea blocking the race leader’s trail.

  When I poked my head out of the dark cocoon, the sky was clear, and the terrain was nothing like I expected. Ace and I were not, as I had thought, camped on a downward slope. Our teams rested in a flat, exposed bowl.

  Ace could hardly believe his eyes. The survival shelter stood a few hundred yards away. I was more surprised when I looked at my watch. Nine hours had passed!

  The dogs, and the gear I’d tossed out, were cemented around the sled in white mounds. There was no trace of a trail. But the route ahead was clearly defined by a line of fluorescent orange strips waving from bushes in the gentle breeze. I looked up the line of markers to the notch at the end of the bowl, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. The pass.

  I turned to Rainy. “You knew right where we were last night. Didn’t you girl?”

  She yawned, leisurely stretching and sunning her tight white belly.

  A thin skin of snow clung to the rocks at the top of the pass. Watching Rainy and Harley scrambled over them, I braced for a wild drop. But the slope was gentle, and I could see my whole team cresting the ridge. It was too cloudy to see much of the valley beyond. Dalzell Gorge was saving her secrets.

  It was a grand morning on the Iditarod Trail. A hundred yards from the pass, I stopped the team, throwing my sled on its side for an anchor. Pulling out the pocket camera I wore around my neck, I shot pictures of Ace descending the mountain.

  The gorge was nothing like the icy roller coaster I was warned to expect. The storm had dumped over two feet of new snow. Rainy was swimming in powder deeper than she was tall. Harley’s head wasn’t covered, but he was swimming just the same. Repeatedly he looked back at me, eyes crying out for a rescue. Tough going. The team kept bunching up, tangling every few feet, and breaking through the soft crust into concealed pools of water.

  “Those dogs do like to tangle,” said Ace, chuckling as he watched from behind.

  Struggling though the deep soup, I thought back to something Mowry had told me on our final test run. We were crossing an open field. Tiny six-inch drifts were on the march, riding the rising wind.

  “This is probably worse than anything you’ll see the whole way to Nome,” the Coach shouted. He gestured at jets of snow raking sideweays across the back of his legs. “Compared to this trail, Iditarod is a highway.” In two trips up the Iditarod Trail and one Quest, representing over 3,000 miles of long-distance mushing, Mowry liked to brag that he had never even unpacked his snowshoes. I shook my head as I reached for mine.

  I broke trail for an hour or two, gaining perhaps half a mile as I wallowed in powder and sweat. Progress was steady, albeit at a snail’s pace. It was sweet finally hearing the whine of engines echoing from the ridge. It was Medred and Lavrakas. The journalists were traveling to Rohn by snowmachine. Like cavalry to the rescue, they flew past Ace and me, leaving a new trail in their wake.

  Two teams, driven by Mark Williams and Tom Cooley, came loping down the gorge behind the snowmachines. My dogs were in snow-plow mode, and a traffic jam developed. Waving Ace and the others by, I stopped my dogs for a snack break.

  Our subsequent run through the gorge was exquisite. The new trail provided footing for the dogs yet remained soft as a cushion. Team and sled glided through thickening trees, skirting pools of open water. I was enjoying life when I spied Medred and Lavrakas up ahead, suspiciously perched on a rock. Rounding a curve I confronted the photo opportunity: a narrow icy bridge over an open creek.

  There was no dodging this. As my sled skidded sideways on the ice, I flipped it on one runner and steered it by the open water, trotting alongside like a pro.

  “You’re the first one to make it,” Medred called out, sounding surprised.

  Lee came through an hour later. His sled whipped into the creek, becoming wedged under the bridge. Lavrakas got a shot of Lee grimacing as he stood in the frigid water.

  Could have been me. Would have been me if I hadn’t spotted the media stake out.

  Covering the race for the Frontiersman, I hadn’t dared visit Rohn. Access to the remote checkpoint, near the junction of the Tatina and South Fork Kuskokwim Rivers, was mostly limited to charter flights, which I couldn’t afford on our budget. If the weather closed in, a person could get trapped for days waiting for a flight out. And that just wouldn’t do at all, because Rohn didn’t even have a phone from which to feed stories back to the office.

  In the gold-rush days, miners traveling the Iditarod Trail found a roadhouse waiting in Rohn. Now the only structure standing was a small 1930s-era cabin, maintained by the Bureau of Land Management. It was reserved for race officials and veterinarians. There was a wall tent, equipped with a stove, where mushers could sleep; that was it for services. Rohn’s drawing card was solitude. Off in the spruce forest, away from most reporters and the excitement present in most villages, sled dogs got more rest.

  Perhaps a dozen teams were camped at Rohn when I checked in at the cabin at 3:20 P.M. on Wednesday. I immediately declared my 24-hour layover. Over
the next few hours, Lee, Daily, Alan Garth, Bill Peele, and, shortly after 8 P.M., Sepp Herrman, mushed into camp. No one remained on the trail behind us.

  The mushers tending dog teams bedded in the sheltering spruce here represented Iditarod’s broad spectrum. We had experienced dog drivers such as Ace, Daily, and Herrman — three men who had shared their lives with sled dogs. And we had mushing adventurers like Peele, a 55-year-old pharmaceutical company employee from North Carolina, and Garth, a social worker from England. They were each driving dog teams leased from Old Joe’s huge kennel 90 days or less before the race.

  Fetching water from the river with the help of a rickety camp ladder, I served my dogs three hearty meals during our leisurely stay in Rohn. I amassed a huge pile of surplus booties from the camp refuse heap. The checkers also allowed me and the other stragglers to dry personal gear over the cabin’s wood-stove.

  On the advice of veterinarian Bob Sept, I gave each dog a foot massage, rubbing ointment into every paw. After 275 miles on the trail, three of my dogs had troublesome cuts or splits in their pads. My sore-footed trio — Screech, Cyrus, and the White Rat — had possessed iron paws during training. Therein lay the cause. They weren’t used to wearing booties and, Cyrus especially, kept pulling them off.

  I was really worried about Cyrus. The young dog had stopped pulling on the final miles up to the checkpoint, and he seemed listless, quiet even. It was possible I might have to drop Rattles’s poor puppy.

  “Could sore paws alone account for such a personality change?”

  You bet, said the vet, who gave me a small vial of ointment for the cuts. I dabbed the goo on those sore paws every few hours, placing booties on afterward to keep the dogs from licking their toes clean.