“It came head-on,” the musher told reporters later. “I thought it was all over. It hit the dogs and then glanced off to one side and went right by. It sounded like he had the throttle wide open. He didn’t even slow down.”
The collision left Westrum cradling a dog named Jeff, who was crippled, and weeping over the loss of four- year-old Ace and eight-year-old Bandit, his favorite lead dog.
The grim toll should be placed in perspective. Approximately 1,400 dogs chased mine out of Anchorage. The fallen six were magnificent athletes. They died giving all — too much, perhaps — pulling a sled with their teammates, as breeding and training inspired them to do.
We began descending into a ground blizzard less than a mile out from Unalakleet. So this was the haze I had noticed in the distance. It started with a flowing white carpet, which broke into streamers on contact with the paws of the dogs in front. The carpet steadily swelled to a foot deep, creating an illusion of a chain of disembodied heads floating on the gang line ahead. I could only guess what lay concealed in the approaching white tide. It kept rising until it swallowed the dogs, the sled and, finally, me.
We weren’t in any immediate danger of charging off a cliff. Not crossing these flats. I knew it couldn’t be more than a few miles to the clear area I spotted near the hills. It wasn’t even that cold. But my headlamp was useless in this soup. And where were the markers?
The wind was kicking up all kinds of debris: snow, chunks of ice — I even tasted gravel on my lips. I had to content myself with glimpses of the leaders. But I noticed they were acting a little odd. Rainy’s ears were up, but the bossy little lesbian looked unusually tentative. Damned if Harley wasn’t leading her for once.
The team suddenly bunched in a mass tangle. Harley was to blame. The big dog had stopped, with his nose thrust into a half-buried plastic bag, ignoring the other dogs piling into him. As I ran up front, Harley wrenched the bag loose and furiously shook it in his teeth. The plastic tore as I snatched the bag away, spilling empty cans, used coffee grounds, and other trash.
Pig and several other dogs lunged for the scraps dancing on the gusts. I threw the bag away, but the wind caught it and slapped it back at the dogs. It skipped across the ground to Digger and Spook, which triggered a ruckus in the middle ranks. More dogs grabbed loose scraps as I snatched the bag away again. This time, remembering my merchant marine days aboard S.S.
Dragging Harley forward by the collar, I sent him on down the trail. Where were those trail markers? The garbage bag should have been a clue. But I was too rattled to digest the surroundings. I was more in the mood to nurse my sufferings this morning. Give me a marker please!
I should have noticed that we weren’t on a trail — it was a snow-covered road. The lesbian had been flashing me concerned looks. But Harley seemed so confident. His head was high. He had the team really rolling. So I ignored Rainy’s silent protests. That was my big mistake. As if Harley ever gave a hoot about anything but his stomach. He was following his nose toward El Dorado.
Disaster struck quickly. Scar sunk his teeth into one of the mounds and yanked out a trash bag. Rat, Harley, Cyrus — in a matter of seconds they all joined in. Thirteen dogs each tearing into buried garbage bags, or wrestling over scraps. I yelled. I screamed. I picked dogs up and threw them as far as the lines would allow, tearing their greasy prizes away with my bare hands. But the dogs were beyond control. They were rioting before my eyes, intoxicated by the smells and gripped by instincts far more persuasive than my tenuous authority. As fast as I pried dogs loose, their companions burrowed deeper into the rotting treasure trove. There was nowhere to tie them down. On all sides and underfoot — I was surrounded by trash.
Evidence was literally piling up around me in snow-covered heaps, but I didn’t grasp what was happening until Harley had followed his nose to the center of Unalakleet’s village dump. I had to get the team out of this place. God knew what diseases were lurking here. But dragging my well-muscled Iditarod team out of the goddamned dump was just more than I could manage alone. I finally admitted defeat and gave up, barely holding back tears in my weary state. I’d never felt more enraged, or hopeless.
Realizing that I had to get help, I abandoned the team to its feeding frenzy and scrambled some 20 feet up the side of a trash pile. The wind was fading, and in the distance I saw snowmachine lights. I flashed my headlamp until they turned my way.
It was the guys who had led Doc out of town. The three of us wrestled my dogs out of the trash and over the side of the dump. The checker hopped on my sled and, displaying mastery far surpassing my own, rode it careening off garbage piles to the valley below. Firing up their snowmachines, the pair led me several miles into the hills. They wanted to make absolutely sure that this woeful excuse for a dog musher was headed someplace else.
The tunnel of trees gave way to a windy clearing in the hills. Day was breaking. Gunnar and several other mushers were parked parallel to each other, in what didn’t seem like a social gathering.
“None of our teams can lead in this wind,” Johnson yelled. “Think yours can do it?”
“Mine are pretty good in the wind,” I said. “I’ll give it a shot.”
Harley and Rainy charged across the clearing, but my team tangled shortly after reentering the forest. I straightened the dogs out and was reaching for the hook when Gunnar called for the trail. He had some nerve.
“I can’t believe you, Gunnar,” I said, waving him by.
As I could have predicted, Johnson’s team slowed immediately after the pass. We traveled bumper to bumper for several miles until Johnson’s dogs found another team to chase.
Tom Daily had overslept. Instead of leaving Unalakleet with Cooley and me, he snoozed straight through the morning in his cozy cabin bunk. Like me, Tom had no idea where to find the trail out of the village. Seeking directions, he dropped by the village cop shop. After chatting with the local patrolmen about Mugsy’s overnight escapades, Daily paid one of the officers $15 to guide the team into the hills.
It was bright and windy. Gusts raking the trail were so savage they knocked Daily’s fully packed sled sideways and ripped the officer’s goggles from his head. Tom speared them with one hand as they flew past. When the pair parted company in the hills, he surprised the officer by returning his goggles. Daily didn’t need any extra souvenirs. He and his dogs were traveling alone, miles behind everybody, lugging the burden of the Red Lantern.
We climbed ever higher. The sheer beauty of these hills was staggering. Sunlight streamed through scattered clumps of trees. To the west, I caught glimpses of the frozen Bering Sea, a wasteland of glimmering blue-white shards extending to the horizon
I ran as much as I could to lighten the dogs’ load, borrowing occasional rides to catch my breath. The temperature was near zero, and the air was crisp. Hot and sweaty from the exertion, I steadily stripped off gear. The snowmachine suit went back inside the sled, as did the wind shell Nora had made me. I unzipped the sides of my bibs. What a day!
Terhune’s team was directly behind mine. I couldn’t mistake him in that fluorescent orange musher’s hat. Cresting the barren top of one of the hills, I stopped to get a picture of him passing a wooden tripod. Seeing me, he raised a pair of army mitts. “Missing something?” he hollered.
Few items are more precious to a musher than his mitts. Mine were linked with a nylon rope that had a large hole to slip over my head. From the moment I stepped on the sled until I made camp, I almost never took them off. When I wasn’t wearing them over my gloves, I let them dangle at my side. Sometimes it felt annoying having those mitts swinging free, but it kept them within reach.
Four years earlier, Peter Thomann, a thoughtful musher driving beautiful burly Siberians in these same hills, had gotten careless on what appeared to be a mild, delightful day. Figuring he could dispense with his heavy beaver mitts, Thomann stowed them inside his sled bag.
Later that day, Peter suddenly found himself in a wind so wicked his fingers stiffened at its touch. He stripped off his gloves, intending to place on dry liners for extra warmth. The wind sucked the life from his bare hands before the musher could get the liners over his fingers. Thomann’s mitts would have come in handy then, but they remained out of reach, locked away by the frozen zipper on his sled bag.
