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

by Brian Patrick O'donoghue

  Barry Lee was warned before he left Grayling, where he had refueled the team during a four-hour stop. “There’s decent trail for about ten miles, after that — nothing,” said the checker, who’d surveyed the river on a snowmachine earlier that morning.

  “Well, I got the snowshoes, and I gotta go,” said Lee, feeling well rested and determined.

  Two hours later, his confidence was ebbing. The trail ahead was swamped under two feet or more of loose snow. Lee strapped on his snowshoes. They were borrowed, of course, and he’d never tried them on. The homemade bindings were incorrectly attached. Each time he applied weight, the shoes nosed downward. Lee wore himself out trying to use them. After struggling for several hours, he returned to Grayling to regroup before trying again.

  Daylight was going. Tom suggested we start looking for a sheltered camp. Doc wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted to reach Blackburn’s cabin, an unofficial rest cabin, which couldn’t be more than ten miles ahead.

  We were out in the middle of the river when the sky rapidly darkened. Gusts of wind slapped at my sled bag. Cooley ordered his wolves toward a bluff that would offer some slight protection. Joining him, we all decided to wait this one out, using the delay to feed our dogs. With any luck, the evening squall would skip past before we were done.

  It got colder, and the wind steadily increased. It was 14 below the first time Cooley checked his thermometer. When he checked again, minutes later, the reading was 20 below zero and falling. “Watch your ass,” he yelled.

  Conditions felt deadly by the time I had water boiling in my cook pot. Standing with my back to the wind and my face shielded by the parka’s thick ruff, I carefully poured the hot water inside the cooler. Next, I lined the pans out. Then I sat on the cooler with my back to the wind, letting the food soak.

  “Thirty below, boys,” Cooley shouted, chuckling.

  Moving stiffly, I carried pans to the dogs, two at a time. The snow was soft, and I stumbled, splashing my gloves with the wet food. I felt my fingers burning, but it wasn’t from heat. In the brief time it took to fill a pan with steaming food and carry it to a dog, a skin of ice had formed across the surface of the pan. My wet fingertips burned from the extreme cold.

  As soon as the dogs finished eating, I collected the empty pans so they wouldn’t lick them and freeze their tongues to the metal. Then I climbed inside the sled.

  My hands were reduced to the functioning level of pincers as I pulled the sled-bag flap overhead. Yanking my gloves off with my teeth, I surveyed the damage. Seven fingertips were bloodless white. That was better than I had dared hope, nothing more than mild frostnip. Huddling, I breathed on my hands until they throbbed with renewed life. I shucked the parka and unpacked my sleeping bag. Sealing myself inside the cocoon, I ate another packet of salmon, chewed on a carton of frozen juice, then fell asleep, feeling confident about my hard-earned survival skills.

  As he had been for 1,000 miles, Barve, the burly 45-year-old printer, remained in the hunt, leaving Elim Wednesday night. Not that you could tell anything in the blizzard. Visibility was limited to about ten feet when Lavon halted his team to search for markers on foot. His frightened dogs yanked the snow hook. When the musher returned, they were gone. He didn’t panic. He could find the damn dogs tomorrow. Survival came first, and it was goddamn cold. Lavon started walking toward Golovin.

  On the other side of Elim, Garnie lost his team in similar circumstances, but his mitts were tied to the sled. Joe Garnie, an Inupiat from the coastal village of Teller, knew the enemy he faced. He dug himself a hole in the snow and flopped inside, facedown, conserving his body warmth as he waited for the storm to break. Whenever the creeping cold became unbearable, he ran in circles, waving his arms to get the blood pumping. Then he lay back down in his hole.

  Garnie eventually made his way to a survival shelter, where he found snowmachiners tending a hypothermic Matt Desalernos.

  On the ice between Shaktoolik and Koyuk, half a dozen mushers were lost for nearly 24 hours, including Barron’s 21-year-old son, Laird. Pinned down by the storm, mere yards from a shelter cabin he couldn’t see, the young musher’s bid for rookie-of-the-year collapsed. All he’d take home from this rite of passage was a partially frozen foot.

  Terry Adkins’s bold ambitions perished out on the ice fronting Koyuk. He was reduced to huddling with fellow racer Gary Whittemore, who was shivering, badly hypothermic. Whittemore probably would have died without the Montanan’s help.

  In Shaktoolik, two race volunteers shared the suffering, frostbiting their eyelids loading dropped dogs on a plane. In Nome, Thursday’s temperature was 20 below zero, with winds of 55 miles per hour.

  Race marshal Kershner sounded beleaguered as he discussed the known injuries and reports of missing mushers. “I feel like a mother who’s trying to gather her chicks,” he told reporters.

  Jeff Dixon fired up his snowmachine and left Shageluk on what he believed was a simple dog-food delivery mission. His duties kept expanding. First, he helped that fool from Anchorage, Rich Runyan, free his snowmachine from the drift. Next he found the Englishman with the starving dogs. Then Dixon had to go save Peele, whom he found sleeping on the ground outside his sled.

  “You know those Iditarod people don’t care about you at all,” Dixon told Peele, shaking him awake. “They left you to die out here.”

  Runyan didn’t spend long regrouping in Shageluk. He had ground to make up. At first light, he left for Anvik on his big snowmachine, towing the freight sled loaded with radio gear. Conditions worsened and, before long, Rich was lost again. Cruising atop a ridge, he glimpsed what appeared to be a marker in the valley below. Descending for closer inspection, he plowed into a deceptively large drift. He wrestled with it for a while, but it was no good. The snowmachine was stuck again.

  Rich Runyan hadn’t eaten for hours. It was miserably cold, and hypothermia was becoming a definite threat. True, he still had that big radio, but he lacked the energy to assemble it. Unpacking his sleeping bag, the ham operator from Anchorage placed a call to the Lord.

  Butcher’s dogs were reluctant to leave their cozy beds of straw. The air at White Mountain carried an angry scent that night. The calm when she arrived had given way to a heavy wind blowing snow across the trail. It didn’t bother Susan. She had an appointment to keep in Nome. At the precise minute her six-hour waiting period expired, 1:31 A.M., Thursday, March 14, she had her dogs on the march.

  Iditarod’s defending champion got off to a rocky start. Before her team faded from view, spectators saw Butcher jump off her sled several times to lead her team back to the trail. Her husband, Dave Monson, wasn’t particularly concerned as he watched her exit. Dogs facing such a crush of media and fans had good reason to act skittish. His wife was still driving the best team in the race.

  Minutes after the champ’s departure, a snowmachiner roared into the checkpoint.

  “You can’t see anything out there,” he said.

  The storm rolled in as Swenson packed to go. It was 30 below, snowing and blowing hard, as he mushed out of White Mountain, one hour, seven minutes behind Butcher. The final chase was underway.

  Joe Runyan was the third musher out. Susan had the fastest team. Nobody could catch her. Joe accepted that, but he fully expected to catch Swenson. And he did, passing far to one side of Rick’s team, which had obviously strayed from the trail. That was understandable. Conditions were unbelievably bad. Runyan hoped the trail ahead was decently marked. His sled was stripped for a sprint to the finish line. He wasn’t packed for camping.

  Peele collapsed on the floor of the Shageluk village school.

  “What do you want to do?” asked a checker.

  “I can’t leave, because I can’t get my hands to work,” the musher said, feeling morose.

  Peele stalled through the day. He nursed his dogs, his aching body and spirit, hoping for a palatable solution where none existed. Forty-eight hours after limping into the village, the rookie from North Carolina signed the paperwork,
adding his name to the scratch list, its numbers now having swelled to fourteen.

  There was no uncertainty about Alan Garth’s status. From the moment the Englishman had accepted a ride on the snowmachine, leaving his dog team behind, he had become subject to disqualification. To his credit, Garth joined the village rescue party that left Shageluk Friday and saved those Redington dogs.

  Swenson didn’t even see the other dog team. His leaders trotted straight through the string of sleepy, snow-covered sled dogs. He wasn’t aware of the other team, parked crosswise blocking the trail near Fish River Flats, until his sled was nearly upon them. Then he wondered if he was hallucinating. That was Slugo he saw resting there — one of Susan Butcher’s dogs.

  A red suit with a dark fur collar popped out of the covered sled like a jack-in-the-box. It was Susan. Not sure what to make of this, Swenson shouted that he was continuing on. He got less than a mile before his headlamp gave out. Stripping off his gloves, the musher attempted to change the bulb, but had trouble seeing through his frosty eyelashes, and his hands instantly stiffened. His bare flesh couldn’t withstand the wind, which carried a chill factor of 90 below zero. Appalled and angry at this careless injury, Swenson jammed his frostnipped hands inside his snowpants to warm them.

  Rick, helplessly stalled, saw another headlamp approaching from behind. It was Susan. She berated Swenson for leaving her without even checking to see whether she was all right. Butcher parked her team and helped Rick fix his headlamp. She explained that she had driven through here earlier trying to reach Timber, a sheltered area where the wind never blows, but that she’d turned back after losing the trail. The savage storm had engineered the unthinkable. Some 70 miles from Iditarod’s finish line, Rick and Susan, the sport’s celebrated rivals, agreed to stick together.

  Swenson took the lead. The wind was so intense that he rode with his head turned to the left, protecting his face with the ruff. His leaders kept following the light to the side, and he repeatedly had to pull them back on the trail. Butcher was having the same troubles behind him. And then she was gone. No dogs. No headlamp. Swennie saw nothing behind him but swirling snow.

  Cooley opened his eyes just in time. Daily’s figure was shrinking in the distance. The musher was on foot, his dogs apparently abandoned. Reflecting on his own misery, Doc was seized by the conviction that Tom — gripped by a suicidal impulse — was marching to his death. The veterinarian leaped from his sled.

  Sheltered by the river bend, Daily hastily squatted in the snow and attended to what was, indeed, a personal emergency. He was pulling up his pants when Cooley rounded the corner.

  “Tom, … I thought—” gasped Cooley, panting from his sprint. Then he noticed the steaming evidence of Daily’s vitality.

  They both began to giggle.

  Martin Buser was astonished. The shrewd Swiss musher had departed White Mountain at 5:30 A.M., holding scant hope of catching any of the four teams ahead. Yet, hard as it was to believe, here was Susan of all people, emerging from the blinding gale, returning toward the checkpoint.

  “Hey, you’re going the wrong way, girl.”

  “It’s not doable, Martin,” replied Butcher, mentioning that she feared for Swenson’s life. Lost as he was out there. “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, I think I will give it a try,” said Buser.

  Tim Osmar and Joe Runyan materialized from the storm next. Like the champ, both were returning to White Mountain. They urged Buser to give it up. To take shelter at the checkpoint until the weather broke.

  Declining the invitations, Buser drove onward. He’d waited for this chance at redemption, at erasing the memory of the opportunity he had blown the year Redington faltered.

  In the 1988 race, Buser’s young hounds had slowly but surely run down Smokin Joe’s team. They nipped at Redington’s heels all the way down the Yukon. The old musher’s dogs remained swift, but he was having increasing trouble staying awake. Redington gave it his best, retaking the lead several times between Ruby and Kaltag. But he wasn’t going to win.

  The only one with a chance to stop Butcher that year was Martin Buser, an intense Swiss expatriate who was making his first appearance in the Iditarod’s front pack. Swenson was rooting for him, indeed, for anyone who could halt Butcher’s drive for three straight wins. He sent word that Martin should go ahead and use the lightweight racing sled he had waiting on the coast.

  Leaving Shaktoolik, Buser actually led Butcher by nearly an hour. The sun was sinking, throwing rosy shadows across the ice. Photographer Rob Stapleton and I followed Butcher out of town on a snowmachine. She was all business in her red jump suit. Her team looked strong. Her lead dog, Granite, owned this section of the trail.

  Then a ground blizzard swept across the front pack. Buser became disoriented and was lost for hours in the whiteout. When it lifted, Butcher held a commanding lead.

  “I’ve gotten sleep all over the place,” she said, claiming the crown. “I don’t even feel like I’ve been in an Iditarod race.”

  Looking haggard and disgusted, Swenson trailed her into Nome, saying that he “felt a little bad about beating Martin.” Buser finished a distant third, his face a windburned mask of regret.

  In the three years since that disappointment, Buser hadn’t ever come close to duplicating that showing. Other mushers faulted his breeding program. Too much hound in those dogs, they said. The breed can’t handle coastal wind.

  Watching Susan and the others retreating, Martin Buser reeled from the opportunity now before him. Far from being frightened, he heard a magnificent, enthralling, victory song riding this storm.

  Back at White Mountain, Butcher described how she had marked Swenson’s last known location with an X in the snow, in case snowmachiners launched a search.

  “If Rick’s got a leader with the will to get him through, more power to him,” she told a Times reporter. “I don’t think he had much hope when I last saw him.”

  At the tail end of the field, Barry Lee made a deal. Two villagers in Grayling would bust a new trail to Eagle Island on their snowmachines, and he agreed to pay for their gas. The last musher in the field repacked for the Yukon with new determination. Next stop, Eagle Island.

  Right off the bat, Lee noticed that his dogs looked feeble. The team’s confidence was shot from the recent turnabouts. It was a dispirited bunch that stumbled out of Grayling along the familiar river trail. Barry resorted to the easy two-hours on, two-hours off, schedule he had used during the first days of the race. This time it failed to perk up the dogs. The team’s progress remained dismal. Twelve hours of effort netted Lee barely 20 miles.

  Less than an hour past our wretched Yukon camp, we found the cabin Doc had talked about the night before. The owners, David and Mona Blackburn, had amazing news.

  “Have you heard? Swenson passed Butcher in a storm.”

  After they became separated, Swenson apparently figured that Butcher had made use of the blinding conditions to pass him. That suspicion seemed confirmed since his leaders soon regained their confidence, acting as if they were chasing another team. The wind faded as Rick neared the cabin at Timber, where the snowfall reminded him of flakes in a Christmas ball. The 12-mile trip from White Mountain had taken three hours. Now the musher was presented with a mystery. Eight inches of fresh snow rested on the ground, and it was completely free of tracks. How could that be? Swenson wondered. Was Susan lost?

  After a brief rest, Swenson continued. Emerging from the sheltering trees, the trail reentered the wind. There weren’t any markers to follow, and the team strayed into a willow patch. Swenson cautiously backtracked until he found a reflective marker. He was again on track, but the musher knew he had to be careful. Visibility was so bad he couldn’t even see his own feet. None of his lead dogs could be trusted here.

  Clipping together a handful of spare neck lines, the musher attached himself to the front of the dog team. He was the leader now. Advancing from marker to marker, Swenson led his dogs onward. The wind
remained blinding. The dogs repeatedly knocked him down, surging forward faster than he could walk. His driverless sled kept lurching into the team and causing tangles. Was this all worth it? the 40-year-old musher asked himself. Thoughts of his strained marriage and the years of humiliation provided him with his answer. Death on the Iditarod Trail would be better than giving in now, Rick Swenson vowed.

  He was resting on the ridge, with his hood ruff flapping in the wind, when a bright light approached. He assumed it was Butcher and felt drained. But the light belonged to a snowmachiner.

  “Where are the others?” Swenson asked the driver.

  “They all turned back.”

  Twenty-three hours after leaving White Mountain, a slow-moving musher, with his parka collar sealed up to his nose, stood by the Burl Arch in a glare of floodlights, stiffly waving to the crowd cheering his arrival at the Iditarod’s finish line at 1:35 A.M., March 15.

  “I walked a long, long way leading the dogs,” said Swenson, his weary voice amplified through a public address system. “It was cold. It was not a pleasant night.” The musher’s energy returned as he discussed Butcher’s decision to turn back in the storm. “Maybe she’s gotten a little bit soft with four victories under her belt,” he said, prompting a whistling clamor on Front Street. The Iditarod’s all-time champ wasn’t finished. “She’s going to have to get SIX now — if she wants to be the top dog.”

  The news of his victory staggered us. It wasn’t so much the idea that Rick had beaten Susan. It was the sheer notion that anyone was in Nome — while we had another 450 miles to go.

  The Blackburns treated our shock with a heavy dose of bush hospitality. Picking up a fork to eat breakfast, I felt as if I was dining at a resort. The sausage was spicy and charred, just the way I like it. The orange juice was thick and painfully tart. It was hard to believe the Yukon was right outside waiting for us. It was a clear, starry night. The temperature on the Yukon registered 3 5 below as Barry Lee crawled into his sleeping bag. The situation was daunting, but he remained hopeful. Between the temperature and the prevailing calm, the trail ought to firm up by morning, and that might help a lot. A hard, fast trail would do wonders for his dogs’ spirits.