quit wasting time and get moving to Nome.
Merrill hadn’t ever heard of Ken Chase, and he wasn’t impressed by the stranger’s ragged outfit. He stayed put in his nifty shelter. Within 48 hours, Chase was mushing into Nome, beating Babe Anderson, an old rival from McGrath, by 10 minutes. The failure to heed the old veteran’s advice caused Merrill to spend 2 days pinned down on Topkok Hill, battered by wind so fierce it blew his dogs backward.
“I didn’t know who Ken Chase was,” Merrill sheepishly told me. But Merrill had come from behind to preserve his honor by beating the damn Poodle Man.
Chase’s eleventh Iditarod wasn’t going well. His dogs were bummed after cutting their feet on the icy trail out of Knik. A few whitefish might perk them up, he said. Unfortunately, I was only carrying snacks. By the time Chase asked, my one small bag of whitefish was gone.
The roadhouse radio was crackling with discussions about Carpenter, the screaming idiot “in trouble” down on the river. The musher’s wife and handler were desperate for information. Apparently this was Joe’s second flameout. Five years earlier, Carpenter had scratched in Skwentna. He had better dogs this time, “a great team,” his handler said. What was going wrong? The musher’s friends had access to a plane. They wanted to fly out and DO SOMETHING. The handler asked Dan Grabryszak to pass a message to Carpenter that there would be a meal waiting for the dogs in Skwentna.
Dan assured the callers that Carpenter was in no immediate danger. He also gently reminded them that Iditarod has rules limiting outside assistance.
Barry Lee sacked out in the frozen marsh. Back on the trail by 5:30 A.M., he quickly caught and passed Gary Moore. Two hours later, Lee camped a second time near the Yentna, building a fire and serving the dogs a hot meal. It was part of Barry’s schedule for working his dogs into shape.
He was napping on the sled when Moore found him.
“Everything all right, Barry?”
Lee smiled and waved Moore by, appreciative of his concern.
He’d hardly closed his eyes before two snowmachiners drove up. It was Craig Medred, a reporter from the
A few minutes later, Lee was disturbed yet again. A bicyclist no less! The guy was training for the Iditabike, an upcoming 200-mile mountain-bike race.
“There’s a guy a mile or two up the trail who can’t get his dogs to go,” the bicyclist told Lee. “Said he’s been stuck there for nine hours.”
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
