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

By the time I’m on the track back inbound, everybody who’s going to pass me has done so. The snow is heavy and stings my face unmercifully. Like a fool I’ve left my goggles in the car; another lesson learned — never get on the sled without all the equipment I might need. I also left my headlamp behind, and this run is taking so long I won’t be back until well into twilight.

The last hour is a plodding journey through thickening snow into deepening darkness. Finally we pass a few remembered landmarks signaling the end is only a few miles away and the dogs suddenly break into a lope. Somehow the team knows we’re coming to the end; I hang on as we whip through the last stretch of trail. I get in dead last, but the team has finished very strongly and everyone says so. Barrie and Ron help me put the dogs away and we all head into the bar for a cup of coffee.

The second day goes much better. In most multiple-heat races, the order of finish determines the next day’s start positions. This means I’m starting out at the tail end, so I have nowhere to go but up. The weather is near-perfect and the trail is in great shape, fast and hard. Besides, I know it well enough now to let the dogs roll a bit. They respond admirably and we actually pass a couple of teams within a few miles after we start. On the way in I note the goggles and headlamp I carefully included won’t be necessary today, even though I started an hour later. The dogs are actually running flat out for the last five miles; it seems they are thoroughly in the spirit of the race and enjoying themselves.

We storm across the finish line an hour faster than yesterday, cutting more time off our first day’s run than anyone else. I thought for awhile we might get the red lantern for being last, but we’ve done so well we move up a position and are instead recognized as “most improved,” which I find infinitely more satisfying.

I’ve survived my first race. I still can’t believe I’m actually running dogs with the same mushers I’ve watched for years while flying for the Iditarod. More important, it seems I’ve actually learned something. But I also know this is only the beginning. I’ve just graduated from dog-driver grade school, and I have two months to earn what amounts to a Ph.D. in mushing before I can run the Iditarod.

Knik to Skwentna and Return

The Iditarod requires rookies (meaning anyone who hasn’t run the race before) to qualify by finishing one or two races totaling at least 500 miles. Iditarod hopefuls in Southcentral Alaska frequently run the Knik 200 as their first race, and either the Copper Basin 300 or the Klondike 300 a couple of weeks later as their second one. Barrie and I have chosen to do the Knik 200 and the Copper Basin 300. Race day for the Knik 200—New Year’s Eve — is on us before we realize it. For me, this will be by far the longest run I’ve made, even though it will probably be a yawner for the dogs, most of whom have been to Nome at least once or twice. So, the test is not so much for the dogs but for me, and how well I can keep the team focused on the task at hand.

As distance races go, the Knik 200 isn’t particularly difficult, consisting of a 100-mile run out the first section of the Iditarod Trail to Skwentna, followed by a six-hour layover and a return over the same route. On the other hand, it is the first real distance race of the season in this area. Anything from 200 to 500 miles is considered “mid-distance” in the world of dog mushing, although most mortals would consider 200 miles on the back of a dog sled to be a Really Long Trip, official nomenclature notwithstanding.

Ron will run with us on the Knik as a sort of advisor and to put the miles on his dogs for training. So, while normal people are watching bowl games on television, we’re trucking our teams 80 miles down to the tiny settlement of Knik, across Turnagain Arm from Anchorage.

I’ve gotten virtually no sleep the night before the race. In fact, I haven’t had much more than a nap since our practice run over part of this trail two days ago, when we ran 35 miles out to Flathorn Lake and back. I’ve drawn number 28, which lets me leave well toward the rear of the 40-team pack. At least I won’t be overtaken by too many drivers and I can let the team settle into its stride without a lot of interruptions for passes.

The weather is astonishingly mild. It’s been above freezing the past few days thanks to a big low pressure system in the Gulf of Alaska pumping in Hawaiian air. This will be great for the mushers but the dogs might flag a little more easily, since they’ve been training in considerably colder temperatures and are permanently dressed for the “real” Alaska winter.

Before the race start of any distance race, an official must check the loaded sled for all of the required equipment: ax, cooker, sleeping bag, snowshoes, booties, and (for the Iditarod) a mail packet. All of these items must be in the sled at all times until completing the race.

As we mainline coffee before the race and nervously await the time to start hooking up, I stop to think about Knik’s prominent position in the history of mushing. With its tidewater dock on Cook Inlet, it was the main starting point for teams on the original Iditarod Trail. Beginning about 1910 and lasting until airplanes started to take over in the 1930s, as many as 120 freight and mail teams a month started from this exact spot headed for the gold fields of interior Alaska, with many going ultimately to Nome.

Those intrepid drivers sometimes had 20 big dogs hauling two or three long freight sleds laden with a ton of everything from gold dust to gasoline engines to paying passengers. They’d stop every evening at a roadhouse or village after traveling perhaps 25 miles, most of which was spent walking or wrestling the heavy sleds. The Iditarod — and distance mushing in general, for that matter — is really a recreation of the world of the freight and mail mushers, a time when winter transportation in most of Alaska was via dog team. Of course, our light sleds and 100-pound loads are nothing compared to what the old-timers sweated and fought along the trail. I’m a little awed just to be following in their footsteps for a bit on this race.

With 40 teams signed up, the cramped starting area in front of the Knik Bar is the usual madhouse of eager dogs, frantic mushers, scurrying handlers, and wandering spectators. There are more than 600 dogs in an area about a third the size of the average Wal-Mart parking lot. Many teams are running 16 dogs, the maximum; Barrie and Ron and I are only taking 14, which we feel is plenty to get out and back while maintaining a measure of control.

To put this in perspective, every two-dog section of gangline is eight to 10 feet in length, which stretches a 16-dog team plus the sled to 75 or 80 feet. That’s as long as a full-sized semi-trailer rig, except the musher is standing all the way at the back of the trailer with little more to control the canine diesel tractor than dragging his (or her) foot on the snow and hoping the dog at the steering wheel will follow commands. The Iditarod limit this year will be 16 dogs; it was formerly 20, which resulted in more than a few teams becoming unguided missiles early in the race when the dogs were fresh and frantically eager to run. All things considered, 14 dogs are plenty for us rookies, at least for now.

As every straining team is hooked up and wrestled out to the starting line by as many as 10 handlers, the dogs on the remaining teams ratchet a notch higher on the excitement scale. As chaotic as it seems, this is really nothing compared to the Iditarod start, which is probably the biggest collection of screaming dogs in the world in one small area.