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

Things aren’t starting auspiciously, however. We’ve had another big dump of snow within the past 48 hours and we got Ron’s big van — our main dog truck — stuck in his driveway trying to get it out last night. Since we couldn’t get any other vehicles back into the dog lot, we decided I would hitch four of my dogs to the sled and run them over to my place for the night, with Ron and Barrie bringing the remaining eight over in the morning.

I’m up by eight o’clock preparing soup (hot water flavored with dry dog food) for the team when Ron and Barrie show up with the rest of the dogs. Barrie’s truck is already at my place with Bert’s small eight-dog box precariously balanced on old tires in the back. We rope the sled onto the box, fill the box with dogs, strap down the box, and load the remaining four dogs into my replacement minivan. It’s not exactly a professional operation, but it’ll serve.

As we convoy the 10 miles down to the lodge for the 10 a.m. musher’s meeting, I ponder everything that can go wrong. After a few minutes of steadily increasing panic, I manage to reassure myself there’s no point in being pessimistic. I have to start somewhere to try to conquer the doubts. In all likelihood, the dogs will run just fine and all I’ll have to do is hold onto the sled until everything settles down. In any case, I’m committed, and besides, I don’t think I could get my $100 entry fee back.

As we pull in I see several other Iditarod rookies; I’ll be in good company. I also see some of the real heavyweights of Alaska dog mushing. Since this race is short enough for the sprint racers, there are several of them, including Roxy Wright-Champaine, the many-times-over world champion of the sprint circuit. Her dogs are blindingly fast and are trained to go 20 or 30 miles at top speed; they’d probably have a tough time doing this all the way to Nome, though.

Martin Buser is here, as are Vern Halter and Diana Moroney, both top-20 finishers in the last Iditarod. Many of the dogs in my team came from Vern’s kennel, and like all mushers he’ll certainly recognize his former proteges when he sees them. Diana, whom I’ve known for years, gave me several of my dogs, so I’m glad she’ll see them running. Her husband Bruce, a longtime Iditarod pilot like me, is also here; he ran to Nome last year using many of the dogs I’m now using. It seems most of my dogs are better known than I am.

At the musher’s meeting we find out there are 23 teams in all, a very good turnout for this relatively minor race. Everyone is in good spirits and there is a real feeling of “cooperate and graduate.” Of course, everyone can pretty well predict who the top finishers will be. That being all but settled, the rest of us will perform our function as the Greek chorus and get a good training run out of it, which is really why we’re here.

I draw the number three starting position, which I don’t want. This just means I’ll be passed by faster teams, which is practically everybody behind me. Barrie and Ron and I linger over coffee and then go out to prepare for the 11 o’clock start. The parking lot is now full of dog trucks of all descriptions, from humble, rusted pickups with homemade dog boxes thrown on the back — like Barrie’s — to the heavy-duty rolling palaces of some of the professional dog drivers.

We get the dogs unlimbered and harnessed up and immediately have a fight on our hands. Doc and Rocky, normally best friends and running partners, are apparently stressed out by the race atmosphere and have a brief go at each other, fortunately with no damage. We do some fast rearranging and restore order, at least until the first team moves up to the starting line. Then the entire parking lot erupts in a crescendo of howls, barks, whines, and general bedlam.

This is one of the phenomena I want my team to experience so I can see how they react. Sled dogs have a sixth sense that alerts them when something important is going to happen. Race starts are always incredibly frantic events and the dogs are in a state of terminal excitement to get moving. My dogs seem to be average, which means it takes half a dozen people to hold them back as we move up to the starting line even while I’m riding the brake as hard as I can.

Sprint mushers usually hold races every weekend at their local track (in this case, at Montana Creek). They run dogs for distances of up to 10 or 20 miles in 4-dog, 6-dog, 8-dog, and open classes. Distance mushers will often run their dogs in these races for fun and to expose younger dogs to the frenzied race atmosphere. Sprint teams pull lightweight sleds with no loads and can easily average better than 20 miles an hour for up to 20 or 25 miles. This is usually enough to leave distance teams far behind.

In the starting chute, some of the more volatile dogs jump around and get tangled, which Ron and Barrie get straightened out with maybe 30 seconds to spare. Then the starter counts down the last five seconds and we’re off — the first real race of the season for the dogs, and my first serious mushing competition ever.

Socks is leading and he explodes up the trail with the team in a full run. I’m riding the brake as hard as I can to keep the speed down because I don’t know this trail and I’ve heard there are some bad moguls on it. I keep the team down to five miles an hour for the first mile, by which time I realize the trail isn’t as bad as I’d heard. I let up on the brake and we speed up, the dogs running in the pure ecstasy of a new trail and a real race.

We scream along for another mile along the beautiful spruce-lined trail, which eventually opens out into a flat swamp as it approaches the powerline right-of-way along which most of the race route is laid out. As we pull off the swamp and over a small rise studded with clumps of willow, we hit the first series of moguls. At full speed, the leaders sail over the crest of the first one and almost disappear down the other side. Before I can get on the brake they are up and over another and yet another. In a sort of delayed reaction I see coming and can’t do anything about, the sled crests the first mogul and crashes almost three feet straight down. Then the suddenly-slack gangline pops taut as the speeding team yanks it taunt, slamming the sled into and over the next mini-mountain.

After a couple of teeth-rattling repetitions I finally get the brake to work and drag the team down to walking speed. If this were a ski slope, it would be marked “Expert” and the Ski Patrol would be doing a land-office business picking up the casualties. Fifteen minutes later, we reach a flat stretch and I let the dogs resume their pace.

About then I turn around and see another musher — whom I don’t recognize immediately but finally identify as Martin Buser — charging up behind me. I find a wide spot in the trail and stop the team while he passes. His dogs step smartly by and accelerate rapidly out of sight like an expensive European luxury car. My team can’t even begin to catch up and I resign myself to being passed by everyone else before the lap is over. I suppose this is what they call character building. I feel a little better knowing many of those who are passing me are either sprint racers or will finish in the top 20 in the Iditarod.

The next two hours are a jumbled mix of moguls, soft punchy trails, being passed by everything including the kitchen sink, and to top it all off, a gathering snowstorm. I refuse to let the dogs go faster than a walk over the moguls, even though I see other mushers hitting them full speed. They must know something I don’t, but until I learn their secret I won’t risk injuring my dogs a couple of weeks before my first real Iditarod qualifying race.