their unholy spawn. This trail climbed forever, bumping over snowmachine moguls, with no end in sight. At last, I saw a cluster of lights. The promised land beckoned. Tiny Takotna was famous for greeting every Iditarod team, from the first to the last, with hot water for the dogs and a hearty meal for their driver.
The checker, a local musher, was apologetic. “We didn’t expect anyone before morning,” he said.
Five days had passed since Butcher had led the first wave of teams through the village. With a lull expected tonight, the fire under the water barrel was left unattended. A skin of ice covered the surface of my complimentary “hot water.”
The walls of the community center were lined with a neat gallery of mushing photos. I found a huge spread of food waiting, and several nice locals eager to host a tired musher. Did I need anything? Anything at all? What did I think of the race so far? Afterward one of the women guided me to a quiet library, where I bunked out on the carpeted floor.
I was awakened, as requested, at 6 A.M. The dogs, after more than four hours of rest, would be primed. I felt worse off for my own 90-minute snooze. My body was rebelling, but I staggered to my feet. The race clock was running again.
The Coach’s strategy called for bolting from Takotna, thus sealing my lead over the teams still napping in McGrath. The concept — so exciting in the kitchen at home — felt awful in the flesh. Before lying down to rest, I had asked the Takotna women for booties I might salvage and for a needle to patch the chewed harnesses in my sled.
“I wouldn’t use thread on those harnesses. Use dental floss, it’s tougher,” one woman told me.
Six hours after arriving, I left Takotna, packing a box lunch prepared by the checkpoint volunteers, a big bag of salvaged booties, and a dental-floss dispenser with several needles tucked inside. The Coach’s plan had vaulted me a dizzy three or four spots ahead in the standings, past Lee, Garth, and Daily. Not to mention Peele, who finally captured sly Charlie in the Burn that very morning. Mushing for Ophir, I traveled in sole possession of sixty-second place, approximately 30 hours behind the next teams.
Little Cricket limped terribly on the road out of town. I checked her over, but found nothing wrong. If the mysterious malady had shown up in a bigger dog, I would have turned around and dropped it at the checkpoint. Cricket was so small that carrying her, if it came to that, wouldn’t be a problem. Watching closely, I left her in the team. She limped for about two miles, then straightened up. Over the 35 miles that followed, Cricket was her old self, keeping a taught tug line and briskly trotting with no hint of strain.
I was also watching Cyrus with considerable concern, but that wasn’t a new development. He hadn’t looked good since his foot problems surfaced at Rohn. Rattles’s pup was a changed dog, and not for the better. He was listless. His ears were down, and his tug line, running in wheel, was often slack. He wasn’t even ripping off his booties anymore — the one good sign since I had devoted a lot of time to keeping his paws medicated.
The Coach would have dropped Cyrus in an instant. “Remember, O’D, you’re only as fast as your slowest dog.” I was not sure why, but I wasn’t ready to give up on Cyrus yet.
The 38-mile trail to Ophir followed a closed seasonal road through a valley flanked by savage mountains. “Weight Limit” signs were posted at several small bridges, specifying tonnage restrictions for various vehicles. I snapped a picture of my dog team trotting by one of the signs.
The morning was cool and clear. The team made good time behind Chad and Raven, our fair-weather duo. Despite an increasing number of cabins alongside the road, the valley was marked by a disturbing stillness. No welcoming smoke rose from the cabins here. They were entombed, cold and lifeless. The eerie spell was broken by a hand-painted sign taped to a trail marker: “Ophir, 5 miles,” framing a sketch of a smiling coffee cup.
The Ophir checkpoint pulsated with life. Inviting smoke rose from a cabin nestled in a grove of tall spruce. A neat line of supply sacks rested outside the cabin, near an assortment of snowmachines, freight sleds, and a small mountain of trash and surplus gear. The checkpoint was staffed by veterinarian Mary Hoffheimer, a radio operator, and the owners of the cabin.
“I was beginning to wonder if you would ever get here,” said Mary, whom I knew from covering past races. She frowned with mock indignation.
The veterinarian carefully examined Cricket, feeling for sore spots and manipulating her legs. Like me, Mary couldn’t find any cause for the limp. The dog’s leg might have been asleep, she said, or possessed some other kink that worked itself out. There was another possibility, Mary suggested, smiling. My little Cricket might have faked the whole thing — in hopes of hitching a free ride.
“Could you also check that bandage on Skidders?” I asked, and went on to tell her about my harrowing plunge off the cliff in the Burn.
“Wait a minute,” she said, peeling the bandage from the staples. “I’ve heard about this dog. You’re the one!”
Hoffheimer said she’d run into the vet who treated Skidders in Nikolai. He’d described a semihysterical rookie who had dragged him out of bed to treat an old dog who was mending just fine. “I put in a few staples,” the vet told Mary, “more to calm the musher than anything else.”
“That rat bastard!” I said.
We compared notes on the race as Mary changed Skidders’s bandage. Working this, her third Iditarod, the New Hampshire veterinarian had the opportunity to watch the entire field pass through checkpoints. The general condition of dogs appeared excellent, she said, in teams traveling in both the front and the back ends of the race field. But the vet was appalled by what she had seen in several of the middle teams.
Inside the cabin, Mary raided the checkpoint supplies and heated me a bowl of stew. I studied the checker’s log while I ate. Four teams had departed Ophir within three hours of my arrival: Linda Plettner, Urtha Lenthar, Mark Williams, and Gunnar Johnson. But those mushers had all rested here for at least 13 hours, and most had stayed closer to 19 hours. Worse, the Poodle Man was reported already out of Iditarod, meaning that he had a lead of at least a hundred miles. But Suter’s speed was deceptive. The fool hadn’t yet taken his 24-hour layover, a strategy that had the vets increasingly concerned. The damn poodles hadn’t beat us yet.
I could have used a nap, but I didn’t plan to linger long in Ophir. I was in a hurry, determined to press on before Lee and the others caught up. Such foolishness shaped my thinking as I rushed into a series of stupid mistakes.
King was sleeping off his big dinner. Butcher mushed into Anvik, paused just 12 minutes, then led a wave of veteran teams up the Yukon River.
By the time King resumed the chase, three hours later, Butcher was resting at the next checkpoint, Grayling, with eight other mushers on the way. The front pack held no surprises to those familiar with the race: Barve, Jonrowe, Garnie, Buser, Tim Osmar, Runyan, Swenson, and Matt “the Miner” Desalernos from Nome.
Butcher paused six hours in the village of Grayling, resting her dogs through the heat of the day. The champ then set the pace again, leaving on the 60-mile trail to Eagle Island at 3:20 P.M. on Saturday.
Adkins mushed into Grayling as Butcher pulled out. The Montanan paused just five minutes and then gave chase. By dusk, ten teams were streaking up the Yukon behind Butcher, with half a dozen others preparing to follow.
The forecast called for a blizzard with possible temperatures of 30 below on the windy river. “I’m just going to wear everything I’ve got,” former champion Rick Mackey told reporters.
The predicted storm didn’t materialize, but strong winds and drifting powdery snow slowed Butcher to a crawl.
At 11:30 A.M. on Sunday — at approximately the same time I mushed into Ophir, 200 miles south — Joe Runyan parked his dogs in the ravine below Ralph and Helmi Conatser’s cabin on Eagle Island. Coming from behind, Runyan had beaten Butcher, Barve, and Quest veteran Kate Persons to the remote island checkpoint by nearly half an hour.
Nome remained more than 400 miles away. No one wanted to break trail to Kaltag, a tough 70 miles farther up the Yukon. Front-runners bedded their dogs in the snow, built crackling wood fires, and nervously eyed each other, daring someone, anyone, to make the first move.
Ralph Conatser had checked in 23 teams before the first musher left. The deadlock was broken at 6:30 P.M. on Sunday by Jeff King. Within an hour, the chase was resumed by Barve, Runyan, Buser, Swenson, Jonrowe, and Butcher — whose 18-dog team remained the largest and best rested among Iditarod’s lead pack.
