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

My start goes smoothly, at least until about 30 seconds before the starter says “Go!” Somebody helping hold back my surging team casually asks me whether I intended to hook up the gangline so it runs over rather than under the brush bow at the front of the sled. Obviously I didn’t, because the gangline will be rubbing on the hard edge of the brush bow and could start to fray, which in turn might lead to the line breaking and the team running loose down the trail.

I feel like an idiot, but there’s nothing I can do except get out on the trail and find a place to stop the team, undo the dogs’ tuglines, anchor everything on a tree, and then make the 10-second fix. I wonder what else I’ve forgotten to do as the starter counts down and we rocket out of the chute.

Things settle down quickly out on the trail. Surprisingly, I’m only passed by one or two teams, and actually overtake several myself. I keep a close eye on the mis-rigged gangline, but it seems not to be chafing so I push on, not wanting to break the dogs’ rhythm.

The first few hours go like clockwork, partly because we’ve seen this stretch of trail before. I even get the gangline re-routed with no trouble during a five-minute pit stop. About 20 miles out of Knik, we come to a hand-painted wooden sign at a fork in the trail. Over a prominent left-turn arrow it says in gold letters, “Nome 1049 miles.” We’re not going to Nome, at least not this trip, but I get a thrill as I realize I’m actually running my own team over a part of the real, honest-to-goodness Iditarod Trail in a serious race leading to the Iditarod itself. After months of work and training, I can finally see something tangible to mark my progress from rank civilian to aspiring dog musher, and it’s very gratifying.

The Knik 200 is traditionally the start of the distance racing season in south central Alaska. It follows the route of the Iditarod from Knik out to Skwentna and back. For the 1995 race, 40 teams made the journey.

At the 45-mile point we roll onto the broad, frozen Susitna River as night falls and then swing up its main tributary, the Yentna. Although I’ve flown this river so many times I can recite waypoints in my sleep, everything is different on the ground. The first thing I have to learn is to adjust to life at 10 miles an hour, for hours on end. It’s really not that bad, and there are plenty of reminders of substantial movement and progress. On the other hand, in the middle of a half-mile-wide river things can seem to be frozen in time, and the next bend always seems to take forever to arrive.

I spend a lot of time running without my headlamp. On the white nighttime expanse of the river, this yields a peculiar sensation of floating. The team and the sled and even me seem to be suspended in midair, on a magic carpet of sorts. I flip on my Walkman and the music I’ve carefully selected for just such a situation adds the soundtrack completing the illusion. It’s a shame I can’t bottle these moments and save them. If I could sell them, I’m sure I’d be rich beyond avarice.

On the upper reaches of the river, after we’ve passed most of the cabins, I’m traveling with Ron and Barrie on the last 35-mile leg into Skwentna. Rounding one isolated bend, I’m surprised when the dogs suddenly all look to the left, at the south bank of the river. They make no noise and don’t speed up as they would if they scented a moose. I stab the bank with my headlamp but see nothing. The dogs keep staring as they run, until after a few minutes we’re back to normal. Barrie tells me her dogs did the same thing, and so do several other mushers.

An experienced driver later tells me it was wolves, which are defi-nitely not an endangered species in this area. For me, the feeling was primitive and mysterious; my dogs sensed something from another world, another time, something from which I was excluded. I was being silently watched by eyes from what amounts to another universe, being evaluated by intellects totally alien to my understanding.

In two decades I’ve flown planes all over Alaska and hiked many miles as well, but here on the Yentna River, with my dogs running silently in front of me, isolated from the modern mechanical world I’ve always taken for granted, is the first time I’ve actually felt the undiluted primeval soul of the North Country. I can begin to understand what other mushers have told me: driving dogs is the only way to see the “real” Alaska.

Finally the long hours in the darkness and now below-zero temperatures bring us to Skwentna, where we pull in just after 11 p.m., less than 12 hours after leaving Knik. We’ve actually made pretty good time, considering our periodic breaks to tend to the dogs. Soon after we arrive and begin to feed and bed down the dogs, we hear fireworks going off through the trees. The New Year has arrived. If someone had told me last year I’d be spending this New Year’s Eve at Skwentna tending to my dog team, I’d have collapsed laughing. I’m not laughing now, although I’m so tired I might collapse anyway.

I start feeding the team, Silvertip and Yankee first. They are my biggest dogs and have happily run beside each other in wheel all day. However, like many sled dogs after a long run, they’ve become grouchy now that we’ve stopped and immediately begin to quarrel over a chunk of frozen lamb I carelessly toss between them. Without thinking, I lunge into the fray and grab Silvertip’s collar; Yankee obliges by taking a chunk out of my little finger as he tries for Silvertip’s ear. I manage to pull them apart with help from a nearby musher who wades in swinging her aluminum feeding dipper, which does no harm to the dogs but certainly gets their attention.

Yankee has managed to puncture Silvertip’s left front foot, which is bleeding and is obviously causing some pain. Silvertip, although younger and inexperienced, seems to be learning his trade and has gotten in his licks, opening cuts on Yankee’s ear and muzzle. I can patch Yankee up with no trouble, but I don’t want to force Silvertip to run on his foot. I reluctantly lead him over to the dropped dog area. He’ll get a quick look from the vet tonight, a plane ride back to Knik in the morning, and will be waiting for me when I return.

His injuries are quite minor, but I’m a bit shaken because he is my personal companion, whom I raised from a puppy before I ever decided to get into mushing. I never intended him to be a sled dog, but he has become one of my best — a true “walk-on” of whom I’m inordinately proud because I trained him myself. At least he’s pulled well coming out, and he’ll be ready to go again in a few days.

After leaving Silvertip with the vet, a sharp pain in my left hand reminds me I’ve sustained a worse wound than either of the dogs. My little finger has a one-inch gash ripped completely out of it, almost to the bone, and it’s bleeding profusely. I shake my head at my own stupidity in jumping into the middle of a brawl between two 70-pound male dogs in top combat trim.

The approved solution, of course, is to prevent fights in the first place. For obvious reasons, no sensible musher will keep a habitual fighter. Likewise, any driver who has a dog that attacks other teams is quietly asked not to enter any more races with it. But even non-fighters will occasionally not get along, and quarrelsome combinations must be separated within the team. And without proper supervision, even best friends can quickly revert to atavistic behavior during the critical feeding period, especially when they are tired or stressed.

Often an authoritatively shouted “Knock it off!” can defuse a developing situation. Failing that, more drastic measures are needed to separate the combatants before they hurt each other. However, the occasional squabble is a part of mushing nobody likes and everyone tries to prevent, but which sometimes happens nonetheless. Dogs (and particularly male dogs) will, after all, be dogs. I suppose I’ll have to chalk this up as another learning experience and do my best not to let it happen again.