“It’s got to be Plettner,” I decided by process of elimination. No one else had that kind of speed. The musher waved as the team caught and passed us. It was a man. That didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t figure it out, and then I realized the team and the sled looked all wrong. It wasn’t an Iditarod musher. The sled was empty. It must have been some local speed demon.
The trail joined an unplowed road. Misery incarnate. Clocking the accompanying mile markers, I calculated that the team had slowed to under three miles an hour. No wonder it felt like we were crawling tonight. Rainy kept stopping to stare at … nothing.
Tonight my space cadet was in total orbit. Her pauses hobbled us. Watching the lesbian blast off for the third time in a mile, I stopped the team and switched Chad into lead with Harley. The team’s pace improved. But it felt like we were just plowing faster into the void. A light snow caused spots to dance in the beam of my headlamp. I had a terrible time holding on. The road was so smooth. So endless.
With absolutely no warning, I drew alongside another parked Iditarod team. I didn’t recognize the sled, but it was fully packed. The musher was nowhere to be seen. Dusted with snow and curled in tight balls, the musher’s dogs were sleeping in front of the sled in a straight line.
Dazed, wondering who I’d caught, I stomped my snow hook into the ground. When I looked up, the other team was gone. A line of driftwood rested in its place.
I didn’t need my headlamp anymore. The slow-falling snowflakes taunted me, jittering unpredictably, straining my eyes in the blue predawn light. It was approaching eight A.M. We’d been mushing down the lousy road for what seemed like days. The coffee baggie was half gone, and I was feeling queasy.
At last, a light gleamed in the distance. A red and white bar light. A checkpoint called Safety. “Let’s go home!” I whispered. Chad raised his head. Ears shot up along the line. The dogs shifted gears, recharged with purpose.
I clung to the hope that others might be having similar problems. Surely I’d catch a few other teams lingering in Safety. I knew Terhune wouldn’t wait. But Cooley had talked about it. And the Mormiles couldn’t be too far ahead, could they?
All I found waiting was a tattered Iditarod banner, flapping in the wind. And a beer Daily had bought me on his way out the door.
“How long ago did the last team leave?” I asked the weary checker, hope flickering an instant longer.
“No more than twenty minutes,” he said.
Calculations raced through my mind. It was 20 miles to Nome. Except for Cooley’s dogs, the teams ahead weren’t anything special. They’d be lucky to do six miles an hour. That gave me …
“They rested here two, maybe three hours,” the checker added.
Hope died. Dead last. I was going to finish dead last.
A musher was sighted on the outskirts of Nome. The news was broadcast on KNOM radio at 9 A.M. Sunday, March 24, day 22 of Iditarod 1991. The banners and other decorations that greeted Swenson were no longer present, long since torn down or damaged in the numerous storms of the last 10 days. But the Burl Arch marking the Iditarod’s finish line remained standing downtown. That was all that mattered.
No other dog teams were in sight as Terhune climbed off the frozen beach and turned his dogs down Front Street. At long last the old paratrooper relaxed. The fifty-third musher into Nome was a satisfied man.
He found Dawn and his two grown daughters waiting near the arch. They were holding a long handmade banner. “Welcome Jon,” it read.
Gunnar Johnson mushed into town 45 minutes later.
The others weren’t far behind. Johnson’s desertion had sparked a general exodus from Safety. To hell with waiting for me. The race was on again. A wild contest developed in the final miles. Charging across the icy drifts outside Nome, Daily thought he had the edge. Bogus, looking inspired, loped like a frisky pup. He dusted the Mormiles and surged ahead of Mark Williams. But Tom Daily’s eight dogs were simply outpowered by the fourteen dogs pulling Urtha Lenthar’s sled.
Lenthar, Daily, and Williams finished within one minute of each other, notching the fifty-fifth, fifty-sixth, and fifty-seventh positions in the record book. Not long afterward, Catherine Mormile won the race that mattered most to her — beating her husband, Don, and the Mowth’s old dogs to the arch by almost 20 minutes. Cooley, our unofficial participant, let the others go ahead and followed Mormile into town, finishing at 10:43 A.M.
Bellies warmed by a hot meaty broth, my dogs slept on the lee side of Safety while the other teams raced for Nome. I lingered at the bar, sipping the beer Daily had bought me, sinking ever deeper into depression as I listened to the live radio coverage. The voice of Nome’s checker, Leo Rasmussen, pierced my funk.
“If Brian O’Donoghue would ever leave Safety,” I heard Leo say on the radio, “maybe we could get this over with.”
I briefly wondered if there was any way to sneak into Nome, hide the dogs, and keep Rasmussen waiting forever. That would show him.
The one thing I had in my power to do was scratch. Let Mormile keep the damn Red Lantern. That was tempting. For the first time in the entire race, I seriously considered scratching.
Pondering the ramifications, I ordered another beer.
Two and a half hours later, I’d run out of reasons not to go. The wind kicked up as I prepared to leave. Drifts had erased every trace of the trail.
“Perfect,” I said, dragging Chad to the closest marker, the first in a line of flapping streamers, which stretched toward a cluster of subdivision homes.
Golden Dog was in a contrary mood. He ignored my commands and repeatedly dragged Harley and the team away from the markers. I wanted to win this last battle of wills, but Chad was equally determined to follow snowmachine tracks leading to nearby homes. Forty-five minutes after leaving Safety, the bar remained in view behind us. The checker came outside and stared. This wasn’t going to work. Demoting Chad, I placed Rainy up with Harley. The lesbian quickly sniffed out the trail, and Safety finally faded behind us.
Wind, fog, mist, and blinding snow — we encountered the whole gamut on the Iditarod’s final 20 miles. The dogs paid no mind. They were too hardened to flinch.
Passing through a cluster of homes near the beach, I saw a couple sitting on chairs next to a marker. It was an older man and woman. They flagged me down.
“We were waiting for you,” the woman said, petting Rainy and Harley. “Could we offer you a cup of coffee or a bite to eat?”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I guess there’s some folks waiting for me.”
I was flattered that strangers would take the time to welcome me. The wind was dying down, and the day appeared brighter.
Rounding a bend, I confronted several dog teams, headed right at us. I realized we must have crossed the trail of another race as three teams passed, head-on, going full bore. I was startled by a face I knew, Iditarod musher Peryll Kyzer. She’d not only finished an impressive eighteenth; she was already running another race.
“Hi, Peryll,” I shouted as she flew past on my left.
“Brian!” she said. “Welcome to Nome.”
A few miles ahead the trail neared a plowed road leading to Nome. I knew the area well. It was the place where I had once had a pair of cameras freeze up while I was shooting Nayokpuk leading another musher through a storm, which subsequently halted the race for days. I had also been waiting here as Butcher charged into view, en route to her third straight victory. And it was at this same spot, 40 hours later, that I had witnessed Redington cap his bold run as Smokin’ Joe.
With the race lost to Susan and the other young hounds, Redington had waited at Safety for Nayokpuk. The two veterans traded stories over coffee, then Old Joe issued a challenge.
“Now we’re going to race,” he said.
The lead switched several times during the furious 22-mile sprint that followed. Redington emerged victorious, crossing the finish line 1 minute, 16 seconds, ahead of Nayokpuk.
“This is fantastic,” Butcher said, greeting the pair under the arch. “This is the best race within the race.”
Iditarod’s 70-year-old founder had failed to take the big prize, but Smokin’ Joe’s style couldn’t be beat. He
