Mike Dillingham - Alaska Dogs and Iditarod Mushers - The Adventures of Balto, Back of the Pack, Honor Bound, Rivers

As we trek across the bounding main the wind picks up to 30 miles an hour or so but Socks continues his metronomic 10-minutes-a-mile pace. I put down the seat on my sled and settle in for a long ride. By sitting, I’m also helping the team by ducking out of the wind and cutting the drag, yielding a welcome extra mile an hour or so. For the next six hours we watch the hill behind Koyuk rise above the horizon with maddening slowness. I doze off repeatedly but Socks never misses a beat; he’s racking up more steak dinners than he can eat in a year.

The 50-mile expanse of open sea ice across Norton Bay from Shaktoolik to Koyuk is utterly featureless. Mentally, this is probably the toughest leg of the race for the dogs.

Eventually the wind dies down and I stop for a break. Andy has been keeping up with me and Lisa has dropped a ways behind. As Andy and I chat and toss some snacks to our dogs while Lisa catches up, we notice something on the trail in the distance behind her team, which is still almost a mile off. As the team comes closer we start to make out the object in the distance: it is Lisa, apparently on foot. Her team is chugging unconcernedly along without her.

In other circumstances this would be a cause for alarm, but now it’s just something else to break the monotony, and is even a little funny. I ask Andy to watch my dogs and I mosey back down the trail toward Lisa’s oncoming team. Brains dutifully pulls the team up to me, stops, and waits patiently while I turn everyone around. Then I drive them the mile or so back to Lisa, who is casually hiking up the trail after her wayward puppies.

She laughs as I pull up and sheepishly admits she dozed off and got deposited on the sidelines when the sled hit a bump. Of course, the team wasn’t going to do anything out here on the ice except follow Andy and me, so she was never in any danger of losing them. This is another advantage of hanging together back here at the tail end when we’re not at our effervescent best.

The sun sets behind Mount Kwiniuk on the run across Norton Bay to Koyuk. The 2,000-foot mountain is on the coast near Elim, 60 miles southwest of Koyuk. The trail passes directly beneath its steep flanks.

Besides, I’m glad for the opportunity to repay her — at least in part — for her help the other night when I almost lost Yankee. I hop onto her sled bag for the ride back to my team, where we all have a brief celebration: we’re within striking distance of Koyuk and we’ve finally left the heavy winds behind, for awhile anyway.

Even after we finally make out the individual buildings of Koyuk it still takes an hour to cover the last miles. We pull into the checkpoint on the beach at sunset. Our plan is to rest for several hours here and then head southwest down the coast, stop briefly in Elim, and then run over to White Mountain. The total distance is under 100 miles and we hope to be in White Mountain tomorrow night. From there it’s only 77 miles to Front Street and the end of our journey.

We are the only ones here. The four teams in Aaron Burmeister’s group that escaped Shaktoolik yesterday are already at White Mountain. They will be in Nome tomorrow in time for the banquet, which starts at four in the afternoon. The checker suggests we leave as soon as possible while we have good weather and a good trail in front of us and for once we agree. The run over to Elim promises to be fairly innocuous and we intend to be on the road after midnight.

As we work on the dogs some of the village kids are hanging around. They are interested in candy and the charcoal hand warmers which seem to have become a popular item everywhere along the trail. Unfortunately I don’t have any of either to spare because one of my bags was rifled here a few days ago along with nine others, including one of Andy’s. It’s the only place this has happened on the race and the village elders are much embarrassed. Luckily we can make do with what we’ve carried from Shaktoolik, so the damage is more symbolic than severe.

The village of Koyuk and its gravel airstrip hug the north shore of Norton Bay. The State of Alaska maintains airports at more than 200 bush villages and towns to support the air “highway system” on which much of Alaska depends.

After we take care of the dogs and head up into the village to the checkpoint we’re ready for a nap. I have another fax waiting for me, this time from Bert, who is already in Nome. He says we need to keep moving because a major storm is gaining strength in the western Aleutians.

By his estimation, which is usually pretty good since he flies in the Aleutians and the Bering Sea for a living, we have no more than 48 hours before unpleasant things start to happen between here and Nome. If we’re not through the gauntlet by then, we could be stuck for several days.

I know what happens when one of these late-winter weather systems moves through this region and it can be truly biblical. Aside from lousy weather which can include everything from freezing rain to blinding snow, the pressure gradient can trigger hurricane-force winds all along the coast, such as the ones which trapped Andy in front of Nome last year and have nearly killed mushers in previous years. If we get caught, it will be a fight every inch of the way to Front Street, far worse than anything we’ve already endured.

We catch a nap while a local teacher who’s helping the checkers dries some of our gear in the school dryer. I don’t get much sleep worrying about the weather: it’s good now, but in this part of the country, at this time of the year, the only time it’s good is just before it gets bad.

A team pulls into the Koyuk checkpoint. The dogs will be lined out on straw, examined by vets, fed warm food, and allowed to rest for several hours. The driver may also have enough time for a nap and a bite to eat.

March 17—The Iditarod: Koyuk to Elim (48 miles); Elim to White Mountain (46 miles)

We move out on schedule after midnight. This is where Lisa scratched two years ago when her leaders wouldn’t go any more; she insists on going first. As her team moves smoothly out of the checkpoint I can see her relief and I know exactly how she feels. She has finally exorcised her demon. Now she can look forward to the run up Front Street without the ghost of races past hovering over her.

The trail is mainly hard and fast and the dogs are in nighttime high gear. We cruise southwest along the shore ice for 15 miles and then dive inland across a low divide behind Bald Head, a prominent mountain at the tip of a peninsula we could see all the way up from Shaktoolik. By dawn we’re past Bald Head and crossing a series of inlets to Moses Point.

This area has been known to blow hard and was doing so a few days ago, but it’s only whispering now. As the persimmon sun rises above the mountains on the east side of Norton Bay we reach the long spit separating Kwiniuk Inlet from the ocean. Strung out along the narrow strip of sand is the old village of Elim, an eerie collection of ramshackle houses, huts, and fish drying racks. The new town was built a couple of decades ago 20 miles down the coast on high ground and this ancient place is now used as a summer fish camp.