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

Scientific theories notwithstanding, I am totally lost in the spectacle until a car horn blasts in my ear. A pickup has come down the road behind me with its lights on, but I completely failed to notice it. I sheepishly hop back into the driveway and the driver eases his truck by with a friendly wave.

I am reminded of my first-ever encounter with the lights, early on a cold February morning 20 years ago, somewhere along the Glenn Highway in Chickaloon Pass northeast of Anchorage. I was headed to my new assignment after returning from Southeast Asia and didn’t have the faintest idea of what I was getting into. I’d just come up the Alaska Highway and had been on the move for a week on highways I’d never traveled before, through country I’d only imagined in my dreams, and in winter conditions I had only seen in my nightmares.

My attention on that long-ago night was suddenly attracted by glowing movement to the north, outside my headlights. I stopped and stepped out into the 20-below cold and came face-to-face with a first-magnitude display. I’d heard of the lights but had never seen them. No description could ever have done them justice. For an hour I stood next to the car transfixed while the lights danced and raced, faded and reformed. No tour company could have arranged a more profoundly impressive introduction to Alaska.

Back in the present, I imagine what this would be like out beyond the Alaska Range, with just me and the dogs and the trail and all of the vast emptiness of interior Alaska. I’ve seen the lights while flying for the race and have watched them from checkpoints along the trail, but I’ve never seen them from a sled. Many experienced mushers have told me all of the months of work and hassle and hardship can be erased by one clear night on a sled on the trail, cruising under the lights behind a smoothly pulling team, headlamp extinguished, and the only sound the hiss of the runners on the crystalline snow.

I remember standing on the river bank at the Galena checkpoint during the 1994 race, waiting for the last-place musher to straggle in from Ruby. A small group of us had watched the bobbing speck of her headlamp for what seemed like hours as she worked her way slowly down the darkened, mile-wide Yukon. At the same time, we were listening on the radio as Martin Buser closed in on the finish line at Nome. As much as I respected and admired Martin, I couldn’t identify with him; he was — and is — on another level from me when it comes to driving dogs. I was with that lonely musher far out on the ice, who could just as easily have been me.

As the long minutes crawled by, a magnificent display of the lights began to build in the northern sky, over the distant and unseen Brooks Range. They intensified and expanded, shading from green to yellow, and finally danced from horizon to horizon, tinged with deep red. I was transported to the pinpoint of light still miles away on the river, wondering what it would be like to be out there with my own team under those same shimmering curtains, making my own way across the vastness of the Last Frontier.

Now, less than a half a year later, I might get my chance. The lights fade as quickly as they came and I return to the more mundane business at hand. But another piece has fallen into place. I have yet another experience to anticipate and savor on my pilgrimage to Nome.

Without good feet under them, the dogs can’t do their job. Every musher spends inordinate amounts of time checking dogs’ feet for everything from cuts to broken toenails to sore wrists. Martin Buser calls the process “praying to the dogs”; by this standard, mushers might be considered among the most religious people in the world.

The past week brought a decent dump of snow and we’ve got at least eight inches on the ground. Our nearby trails are finally in fairly good running condition with most of the bumps smoothed out. I decide to try the 20-mile loop for the first time.

The sun is well down by the time I’m ready to go. I’ve seen the long trail from a four-wheeler during the day in the summer, but it’s an unknown quantity now. I have an ace in the hole, though — Socks. He will undoubtedly make me work for the roundtrip ticket, but he will ultimately get me through, just as he has Bert and other mushers on the Iditarod in conditions more like Antarctica than North America.

This is the first time I’ve really realized how much I will have to depend on and trust the dogs. This trail isn’t really remote, but it has enough hidden dangers and is sufficiently isolated to leave me on my own for at least a couple of hours while everyone figures I’m late and then mounts a search party. The temperature is hovering down around zero as well, so any mistakes on my part will be magnified by the cold. I’m doubly glad Socks is up front for this particular run. He may have some fun with me, but he’s as reliable as they come. In any case, I have little choice but to trust his proven trail sense.

Socks doesn’t waste any time showing me who’s really running the team, nearly ripping the sled out of my hands as he launches us out of the yard. Somehow I get around the infamous S-turns and out into the swamp without crashing. After a few minutes I pick up my bearings and start to get the feel of the sled and the trail. The dogs continue at a dead run for a full mile, across the swamp and up the hill on the far side.

At the top of the hill the trail opens into a driveway and then crosses a borough road. When we burst out into the driveway I see the taillights of a truck completely blocking the narrow cut through which we must run. I stomp on the brake and yell to the dogs to hold up, but not much happens because the snow is still too thin and too firmly packed. Then I notice there are maybe a dozen people standing around. I don’t have the faintest idea what they’re all doing out here. We’re by in a flash and the last thing I think to do is initiate a casual chat with them.

Meanwhile, the driver of the truck must have seen my headlight bearing down on him because the taillights suddenly turn out onto the road barely 30 yards before what I thought would be a calamitous collision. Of course, Socks would have stopped, but you couldn’t have convinced me. We whistle across the road and over a two-foot snow berm tossed up by the road grader. The sled goes airborne, with me in loose formation, and returns to earth 15 feet down the trail. I follow shortly, miraculously still aboard.

The dogs really have steam up now and it’s all I can do to keep the sled upright. The heavy, sticky snow has bent over every bush and sapling and some really big trees as well and the trail resembles a sugar-frosted obstacle course. The dogs are streaking merrily beneath everything, intent on exploring the new world of snow. In my slightly more lofty perch, I’m getting pummeled by every branch. I try to crouch down and hide behind the handlebar but there is no escape, and I repeatedly get whacked hard enough to raise welts.

The first four miles of the trail are like this and I feel like a long-term guest of the Singapore penal system by the time we tear out of the end of the back trail onto upper Montana Creek Road. Quickly we sweep onto the unmaintained portion of the road, which is now a newly packed snowmachine trail.

We hit the first hill almost immediately. It’s a 10 % grade with maybe a 100-foot rise, but the dogs hardly hesitate. It’s the biggest hill they’ve seen so far this season but their instinct to pull carries them up and over with speed to spare. Triumphantly they surge down the other side as I step on the drag to keep the gangline taut and avoid overrunning the wheel dogs on the downgrade.