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

Meanwhile, Kaasen was asked to join the relay race. He was to mush to Bluff, 53 miles from Nome, wait for the serum, then carry it 33 miles back to Point Safety, where another musher, Ed Rohn, would be waiting to make the final 20-mile sprint to Nome.

He had no choice but to use Seppala’s dogs — and he picked Balto as the leader! Kaasen knew Sepp wouldn’t approve, but he felt he was a good judge of dogs, too, and had the right to pick the leader he felt would do the best job. Kaasen felt he saw something in Balto that Sepp had overlooked — a strength, a steadiness of character — qualities that had become apparent only with age and maturity. Balto was a late bloomer!

The team set off. Like an understudy who has at last stepped on stage, Balto rose to the occasion, holding a straight course on the long, windy trip and even saving the team from running into icy water.

Meanwhile, Seppala had decided to take a dangerous shortcut to Golovin across frozen Norton Bay. He knew the ice could break up at any moment and carry the whole team out to sea. But driving around the big bay would add hours to this near-last leg of the serum run. Nome’s children were dying. Sepp put his trust in God and set off into the slippery darkness.

At Golovin, Sepp handed the serum to Charles V. Olson, who carried it to Bluff. There Olson handed it to Kaasen, who was waiting for him at a cozy roadhouse. Driver and leader were resting contentedly — Kaasen in front of a wood-burning stove, Balto at his feet, tail thumping. The two clearly had become companions, even friends. They trusted and liked each other. The other dogs were tied up outside.

Nome in the early 1900s. The dark colored dog standing broadside to the photographer is Balto. Courtesy of Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum.

Kaasen quickly set off for Point Safety, but when he got there, he found his replacement, Ed Rohn, sleeping. Rather than wake Rohn up and wait for him to dress and harness his team, Kaasen decided to make the final dash to Nome himself.

Balto ploughed through snowdrifts and fought high winds for more than three hours in the swirling, crystalline blackness. When the team arrived before dawn, there was no one to greet them — almost the whole town was sleeping.

But relief and elation soon spread through Nome like the golden rays of the dawn itself. The diphtheria epidemic was checked! The children of Nome were saved!

Kaasen and Balto became instant heroes. By daybreak, reporters and photographers had swarmed the exhausted team, asking questions, wanting details. What kind of dog was Balto? What was his racing record?

A French film crew that happened to be in town asked Kaasen to re-enact his pre-dawn arrival. He obliged, driving the team outside town, then turning around and charging back down Front Street. The citizens of Nome went wild, cheering as if the precious serum were just arriving!

By the time Seppala and Togo showed up, no one was quite as interested in their story, even though their team had traveled 169 miles to pick up the serum and had carried it almost twice as far as any other team — 91 miles! Kaasen’s and Balto’s team had traveled 53 miles to pick up the serum and had carried it for only 53 miles. But Kaasen and Balto had the spotlight — there was no room in the winner’s circle for Seppala and Togo. The contributions of all the other teams were ignored.

Seppala was understandably miffed. For starters, he didn’t believe Kaasen’s story about not wanting to wake Ed Rohn. He suspected that Kaasen, knowing that news of Nome’s plight had captured the world’s attention, had simply seen an opportunity and taken it. Why not let Rohn sleep and victoriously deliver the serum himself? There was no glory in being the second-from-the-last man to carry the serum. Not that this is what went through Kaasen’s mind. But it might have been, though he later denied it.

To make matters worse, reporters had mistakenly credited Balto with Togo’s accomplishments. Now, Balto was the super Siberian — the veteran racer, skilled navigator, loyal leader that never stopped pulling. The distorted stories had been transmitted around the world. Balto was the toast of New York, London, Tokyo.

But even that wasn’t what upset Sepp the most. Togo had run himself to exhaustion on the relay and had badly injured a leg. He would never race again or be able to go on a long run. He would have to retire as Sepp’s best leader ever. The sad realization hit Sepp like an icy snowball to the heart. But Balto’s celebrity would soon carry him far beyond his simple world into the vast, unimaginable unknown.

Sol Lesser loved making movies.

The young Hollywood producer had gotten his first job in the movie business as a boy, working at his father’s nickelodeon, one of the country’s first movie theaters. Sol sold ice cream, helped the cashier, operated the projection machine and ushered while the audience — mostly kids — watched short silent films for a nickel — 10 or 12 of them back-to-back: chase scenes, bank robberies, five-alarm fires.

Movies were in Lesser’s blood, and the friendly, talkative Californian loved a good story, especially a good adventure story. By 1925, Lesser had made all kinds of short films and one blockbuster — Oliver Twis t, starring the impish child actor Jackie Coogan — the Macaulay Culkin of his day — and based on the famous Charles Dickens’ novel about the adventures of a poor orphan boy in 19th Century London. The full-length film had made a whopping $2 million, enabling Lesser to buy a chain of new theaters that were many times larger than his father’s tiny, storefront nickelodeon.

News reports of the serum run immediately inspired Lesser to send a cablegram to Kaasen: Would he be willing to travel with the dogs to make a short educational film? Lesser wanted the team to re-enact the serum run in the majestic, snow-covered Cascade Mountains of Washington state.

But the invitation wasn’t Kaasen’s to accept. So he gave the message to Seppala, who after all, was the dogs’ owner. But Seppala was ambivalent — he had mixed feelings about the offer.

On the one hand, letting Kaasen and the dogs make a movie would make them even more famous than they were already. On the other hand, it would get them out of his sight — at least for awhile. Seppala had kept his disappointment over the serum run to himself, but he had paid a price: It was eating him up inside. He quickly agreed to lease the team to Lesser for 10 weeks for $200, plus traveling expenses. Kaasen would go along as handler.

But the Bering Strait was frozen, and tiny Nome was icebound. So Kaasen, his wife, Anna, and the 12-dog team set off by sled for Nenana, a trip that normally took two weeks. But under the terms of Lesser’s contract, the dogs had to be delivered in perfect condition — there could be no injuries or deaths along the way. So this time, Kaasen drove the team at a normal pace, stopping for the night at small native villages and taking short, frequent rest stops.

At Nenana, the team caught the train to Anchorage, where they boarded The Alaska Steamship Company’s steamship Alameda for Seattle. It was Balto’s first real adventure! The run to Nenana had been his longest ever — a month-long romp across long stretches of glittering white flatness and up and down mountains. And the boat trip was thrilling! He and the other dogs had never been at sea before or seen whales, walruses, seals, glaciers — though some of them, including Balto, did get seasick. (Don’t ask.) That was no fun! But they ate well — fresh salmon stew with rolled oats, rice or cornmeal. And they were petted lavishly by the captain and crew, who treated them like prized pets, not common work dogs. But where were they going? What lay ahead? And would they ever return to Alaska?