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

I actually look at this as a blue-chip investment and I don’t blink an eye as I watch a grand change hands — proven lead dogs can easily bring $5,000 or more. In Lucky’s case, I already know he’s a super leader, and Steve has two even better leaders who are sure to put him in the money this year. If Lucky is even partly as good as Hank and Crystal (his other two prodigies) I’m going to be in good shape. After last year, I know I need the extra depth in leaders, and Lucky will be my third first-rate male front-ender. I look at it as stacking the deck in my favor. Besides, he’s not even five years old yet, and is just coming into his prime; there’s no question he’ll be with me for a long time, even after Socks and Buck are comfortably retired.

I stop by Ron’s on the way back for a bit of Christmas cheer. In a fitting turn of the wheel, Lucky is directly out of Ron’s best line of dogs, the ones with which he helped pioneer the early Iditarods and Yukon Quests. As the evening grows pleasantly late, Ron reminisces about some of the truly legendary dogs he’s had in that line and some of the incredible things they’ve done.

After I get back to my place I can hardly get to sleep; Santa has just stopped by and given me the best gift anyone could have wanted. I can’t wait to get up in the morning and put Lucky up front with Buck. I finally drift off to sleep with Iditarod dreams of glory dancing in my head. This will be the year — now I know it for sure.

Sometimes mushers will run together on isolated stretches of trail, both for the company and to help each other if needed.

Lucky has proven to be everything I expected and more. He and Buck were perfectly matched up front on Christmas Day, roaring around a 30-mile run at speeds up to 20 miles an hour, and averaging 12 or better. The next day I hooked Lucky up with Socks, with virtually the same result on a 40-miler. I was so pleased I could hardly contain myself: the team genuinely looked like Iditarod quality, much more so than last year.

Today I’m taking the dogs out on a 50-mile run. The weather is great and the trails are still good. I’m secretly pitying the poor mushers down south of here who are still rumbling around on four-wheelers in clouds of dust like the old 20-mule teams hauling borax through the Mojave Desert. Lucky and Buck are up front and we storm out of the lot early in the afternoon like we really know what we’re doing.

After half an hour I stop to clear up a minor tangle up front. Dangerous Dan, whom I’ve recently acquired from John Barron, is a greyhound-looking yearling who can go like the wind, but who does so with a great bounding, loping run which tends to enmesh him in the tugline of the dog ahead of him if I don’t set the rigging up right. When this happens, he also has a habit of chewing through whatever catches him, which has resulted in several quick tugline replacements in the past few runs. Whenever I see him snarled up I have to stop quickly and fix things to avoid a real mess. We’re working through it, but for the time being I’m still learning how he operates, and he’s still learning the ropes, so to speak.

As I return to the sled, my new rocket-powered team decides to go. My left foot is partly on the runner — with my full weight on it — and the lower part of my left leg does a violent half-twist as the sled jerks forward. I hear an ominous pop from the general vicinity of my left knee and collapse on the trail as the team roars up the hill and out of sight. As I try to get up to catch the team, I realize my left knee isn’t quite what it was a few moments ago. I’ve never had knee problems in my life, but now I feel like an NFL quarterback who’s enjoyed the loving attention of opposing linemen for too many seasons.

And then there’s the equally immediate problem of the team, which is merrily bounding up the outbound trail without the benefit of my enlightened guidance. In the adrenaline-driven urgency of the moment, I stand up and start hopping and walking after the team. There isn’t much pain, but I know I’ll pay later for what I’m about to do. I’m not as worried about the team as I might be because I know where they’re going — down a cul-de-sac to a turnaround, and I’ll catch them as they come out or find them at the end of it with the sled spilled. On the other hand, it’s more than three miles, and I have no choice but to stomp up the trail like Captain Ahab grimly pursuing his white whale.

After half an hour the team doesn’t reappear and it becomes obvious they didn’t make the turnaround. This probably means a tangle of some kind, plus an extra mile and a half walk back into the cul-de-sac. As I push into the dead-end trail, I hear frantic barking far ahead; this definitely means the team is stopped and snarled. I hope they haven’t chased a moose off into the woods, in which case I’ll be all night getting things straightened out, provided nobody’s hurt.

I finally reach the end of the road but the team isn’t there. It takes me a minute to realize what they’ve done. Leading from the cul-de-sac is a disused tractor trail, which they’ve somehow found. This trail leads about 100 yards through the trees and then drops off the edge of the world down a nearly sheer 30-foot embankment into a creek bottom. I don’t even want to think what might have happened as I stumble up to the edge of the precipice, looming like a vengeful god over the suddenly quiet team spread out below.

Beneath my feet is a scene of canine confusion that is bad, but miraculously not as gruesome as I expected. Buck and Lucky apparently went over the bank and down the 60-degree slope with everybody else in hot pursuit. The sled hung up on a stump about halfway down, preventing it from overrunning the dogs. Only the front few dogs are tangled across a fallen tree at the bottom of the hill, and those not badly. Dangerous Dan has chewed through the leaders’ tug lines, but they have stayed put even though they could have kept going, for which I am endlessly grateful.

Somebody once told me dog mushing is really just a never-ending series of problem-solving exercises ranging from trivial to cosmic. This is one of the bigger ones, easily comparable to my little cliff-side derailment on the Copper Basin 300 last season. I can’t go forward because the cat trail degenerates into a morass of fallen trees; this leaves only the option of getting the sled turned around and back up the cliff. Hanging onto a tree on the impossibly steep slope, I try to lever it around just to see if I can, but my newly mangled knee quickly informs me this isn’t a viable option.

With a sigh I go to Plan B, which means unhooking the sled, tying it off, untangling the dogs, leading them back up the hill, rearranging the sled, and letting the team pull it back to reality. This takes about an hour, punctuated by sudden discourses of colorful language on my part as I discover the limits of my newly reduced mobility. Finally the team pulls the sled over the edge onto the level ground on top. The sled is amazingly undamaged, despite its high-velocity head-on with the stump; I’ve got to thank the builder (Keith Poppert, a real old-time craftsman down in Wasilla) for putting together a seriously tough piece of equipment. In this case, I can definitely say they still make them like they used to.

After a few more minutes sorting out the remaining tangles and looking for injuries (none I can find, thanks to the sled checking up before it could plow into the team), we’re off again. I find I can stand on the runner without much trouble, but anything more strenuous gets my attention instantly. I decide to go ahead and finish the run since the dogs are now rested and raring to go; I also figure this will be good practice for the Iditarod, where I’m certain to bang myself up and have to live with the consequences.