The wind rose as we passed through Susitna Station, a largely abandoned turn-of-the-century settlement and one-time Dena’ina Indian community. My dogs were due for a break, but I pushed them onward into the forest. I wanted to reach the entrance of the frozen marsh before stopping, so as to position the team for a strong march to the finish line.
I was fooled by the trees and didn’t see the marsh coming. We were 20 yards out on the icy flats before I managed to stop. The wind here was fierce, gusting maybe 40 miles per hour across the exposed, barren ice. It was a terrible place to stop, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I dug into the sled bag for my beef treats. The snack sac was missing. Appalled, I remembered placing it in the snow outside the roadhouse.
Belatedly, I tried to get the team moving. But the dogs, seeing no snacks forthcoming, were too tired to pay any more attention to me. Their survival instincts had taken over. Curled in tight balls, backs to the wind, they slept on the ice. The dogs had crashed on me.
My snowmachine suit was soaked from rain and exertion. On a colder day, the situation might have been grave. Today the weather was too balmy to pose any danger. I gave the dogs half an hour, then dished out globs of a pre-prepared meal from the cooler. A fellow racer caught up while I was feeding.
“Everything all right?” he shouted over the wind, no doubt puzzled to see me stopped in this miserable spot.
I pretended everything was under control.
After the meal, the dogs shook themselves and stretched. My athletes looked ready to go. I gave the word. Root, one of my most dependable dogs, was having trouble with her hind legs. She tried to run but couldn’t keep up. Jamming the hook into the ice, I unclipped her, figuring I’d pack her in the sled until we reached a more sheltered spot. I had my right hand on her collar and was reaching for the sled with the other — when the team bolted.
With a flying lunge, I grabbed hold of a rear stanchion. The dogs dragged me a good hundred yards on my knees, along with Root, before they finally stopped. Staggering to my feet, clutching a shoulder that felt half torn from the socket, I stuffed Root in the sled and ordered my mischievous friends onward. Amazing what a little rest could do for them.
Intense wind and sleet met us at Flat Horn Lake. The trail was awful. Raven and Harley kept punching through the thin crust and sinking into the powder underneath. The tracks ahead of us abruptly ended in the middle of the lake. Scanning the horizon, I saw the lights from two other teams inching along the distant rim. It was Plettner and her browbeaten disciple, Lenthar. Raven, always prone to go where she pleased, had skipped a turn. Thankful to have someone pointing the way, I swung my team around.
In the last 15 miles of the race the dogs slowed to a crawl. The heat was getting to Harley. The big dog kept dragging his buddies off the trail to munch snow. I could sympathize. Hills I had hardly noticed a day ago had mushroomed into mountains. My legs were cramping. I considered stopping to camp, but the alcohol for the cooker had somehow spilled. I couldn’t even make broth for the dogs, and further delay might even hurt the team.
The dogs and I emerged from a slough onto Big Lake in a near rout. Loaded in the basket were Root, who seemed shell-shocked, and Denali. The weary young male had been having trouble keeping his feet on the icy homestretch. After his third stumble, I let him ride the rest of the way.
Marcie and a few friends cheered when I crossed the finish line in twelfth place, shortly after midnight. The race had taken 38 hours. Stepping off the sled, I couldn’t get my legs to work. My feet were concrete blocks.
The dogs saw the truck and hauled the sled to it like champs. They didn’t even look winded as I left them, chained around the truck, and went in search of hot water to soak their food. I’d already given each dog a frozen whitefish. Their gnawing could be heard 50 feet away.
Baron was still celebrating his victory when I climbed the monstrous staircase to the inn. Fidaa Daily smiled nervously. She was waiting for news of her husband. Marcie, who’d slipped to seventh in the final miles, declared that her next outing was a shopping trip to Nordstrom.
“I need to remind myself I’m a woman.”
The 200-mile ordeal snuffed any interest Marcie might have had in running the Iditarod. “I’d rather go to an Iraqi torture camp,” she declared, loud enough for the entire bar to hear.
Sitting in the warm lodge with fellow Klondike mushers, I felt humbled and apprehensive. I’d earned my right to compete in the big race. For the first time, absolutely nothing stood in the way. That was sobering, because my 35-year-old body was a wreck after just 200 miles on a sled. What was Iditarod, more than five times as long, going to do to me?
Grabbing the food bucket, I headed back down to the dogs.
CHAPTER 2. Ready or Not
Only three weeks were left. Self-doubts and potential threats to the team’s well-being dominated my every waking moment. Even the home trails felt sinister. Blizzards had buried my landmarks, and I was driving the dogs longer and longer distances, getting lost for hours at a time.
It was warm out, 3 degrees above zero. I set out for Mike Madden’s house with an eleven-dog team, intending to make a quick turnaround. The entire 50-mile trip should have taken about 7 hours, including snack breaks, simulating the travel time between average Iditarod checkpoints.
I was using Chad in single lead. That was the Coach’s new strategy for handling our temperamental wonder dog. Chad, a quick blond male, trotted with one hip swung sideways. It was an odd gait and often caused him to bump his coleader. Mowry hoped that Chad might be one of those rare dogs who preferred to lead alone. All through the fall Chad was our unquestioned top dog. He was strong, smart, and fast. Having Chad up front amounted to having power steering. Whisper “Gee,” or “Haw,” and turns were immediate.
One winter day Chad quit on me leaving the lot. He did a complete nose plant, causing half the team to tumble over him. I assumed that he was injured, but we never found anything physically wrong. It was Golden Dog’s spirit that needed nursing thereafter. And the Coach’s new approach appeared to be working.
About 15 miles out, I wasn’t paying close attention when Chad lunged onto a side trail. I stopped and turned the team around. Next, emerging from a winding slough, I wasn’t sure which direction to take on the Chena River. Which way to Madman’s house? Upstream? Downstream? Everything looked so different covered by the recent dumps of snow.
Chad glanced back, impatient. “Haw,” I said.
I mushed 10 miles along the river, searching for the familiar trail crossing until it was unmistakably clear that I’d guessed wrong. Sighing, I again turned the team around. The snow was soft and deep. The dogs sank and thrashed about in the powder. I waded to the front of the team, then sank to my armpits pulling Chad back toward the trail. A fight broke out between Bo and the normally unflappable Skidders. Back on the hard-packed trail, I separated the two scrappers. Bo was in a surly mood. So I paired Raven with Chad in lead and ran the big troublemaker alone. After stopping for a snack, we backtracked along the river, chasing the setting sun. By nightfall I was lost again, but tried to hide it from the dogs.
At a loss, I directed Chad and Raven up a side trail. We soon neared a dog lot illuminated by blinding outdoor lights. Normally, I would have retreated; people tend to defend their privacy aggressively in Alaska. But I was ready to beg for directions. Our arrival set the dogs chained outside the cabin barking furiously. The cabin door swung open and, to my utter amazement, out stepped Mike Madden.
“Madman, this is your house?”
“Whose backyard did you think you were in, O’D?”
We’d been on the trail five hours. I should have camped and given the dogs a real meal, followed by several hours of rest, before returning home. But I was on a schedule. So I snacked the dogs and then started them back.
The river was braided with snowmachine trails. Raven and Chad weren’t meshing. When they weren’t bumping each other, the leaders were wrestling through their neckline, trying to pull each other along different threads of the interwoven trail.
Even so, we were making decent time when I blundered yet again by ordering the team down a side trail. Within a mile I realized the mistake and halted the team for another turnaround. That was strike three for Chad. His
