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

After the hill conditions moderate somewhat as we traverse smooth lakes interspersed with short stretches of horrible trail. I take some wrong turns on a few of the lakes thanks to the sparse markings, but manage to get straightened out without much trouble. We roll onto Long Lake behind the town of Willow about five hours after the start; I know it well, having landed my little float plane on it many times, and my good friends Rich and Jeannette Keida live on its upper reaches. The lake is 40 miles from the start, so we’re making very reasonable time. Still, I’ve not seen any other mushers for almost an hour and I’m certain everyone has passed me. This doesn’t bother me too much, since I’m not trying to win this race or even qualify for the Iditarod.

The dogs settle into an easy 10-mile-an-hour pace as we pull onto the section of trail running in the ditch line beside the Parks Highway. It’s dark by now and cars and heavy trucks roar by not 20 feet away. The dogs remain blissfully oblivious to everything, trotting steadily on. After awhile we dip down to Little Willow Creek and cross under the highway bridge to work our way back toward the Talkeetna Mountains on a section of trail I haven’t seen before.

I know the trail to Sheep Creek (the first checkpoint, only nine miles from home) runs along the Anchorage-Fairbanks Intertie powerline and will be impossible to miss once I’m on it. However, the trails we are following to get to the powerline seem to be wandering around a bit, and I take half a dozen abortive excursions up likely-looking branch trails until I figure out the overall pattern of things.

Eventually I see the 100-foot Intertie towers etched against the starry sky and we follow them northward. Ten miles later we hit a stretch of trail John Barron has warned me about. He had to put it in himself a couple of weeks earlier the old-fashioned way — with his dog team, because no one would run a snowmachine over it; he was worried it would be really rough. As it turns out, it’s not as bad as some of what we’ve already survived, although it’s extremely slow going with lots of brush overhanging the trail.

Mount Foraker, the third highest peak in Alaska at 17,400 feet above sea level and southern companion to Mount McKinley, towers 70 miles in the distance beyond the Yentna River.

As we draw nearer to Sheep Creek, I start to recognize familiar landmarks and stretches of trail I ran in the Sheep Creek race in December of 1994. We manage to avoid any more major upheavals and pull strongly into Sheep Creek a little after nine o’clock. To my shock and surprise, I find I’m not last — in fact, I’m the fourteenth musher in, right in the middle of the pack. The checker asks me if I saw anyone else, because half a dozen mushers seem to be lost on the trail, a development I find completely understandable given my own experience.

I just shake my head at my good fortune and tend to the dogs, who are in good shape and excellent spirits after the tough run. The temperature at Sheep Creek is 32 below, which has been normal for our neck of the woods in the evenings for the past month or so. I’ve dropped off a bale of straw to supplement whatever the race provides, so my guys get enough bedding to hole up for a week. After they’re fed and settled down, I head inside the lodge for a bite to eat and to catch up on what else has been happening.

I find out John Barron was the first driver in, just after six o’clock; I can’t imagine how he kept his sled upright at that kind of a pace. He’s preparing to leave at 11 or so, followed closely by his son Will, Steve Adkins (another of my neighbors), and Martin Buser. Everyone is grumbling about the abysmal trail and the confusing markings. Apparently almost every driver got lost somewhere or other, many more than once; one has called in from Willow, where he returned after wandering around on the trail to Sheep Creek for hours. Several others are still unaccounted for, although no one is worried they will eventually turn up. This kind of pathfinding exercise isn’t normally expected in a big race, but it’s definitely part of mushing, and there’s no substitute for “trail sense” to keep things from getting out of hand.

I also learn the hill down onto North Rolly Lake that scared me so badly wasn’t even supposed to be part of the race trail — it’s actually a footpath marked by mistake. I hadn’t noticed as I screamed down the twisting incline, but there were pieces of sleds all over the hill from several calamitous wrecks by the mushers ahead of me.

The hill directly caused two mushers to scratch. Bob Welch, a rookie trying to qualify for the Iditarod, hit a tree so hard it splintered his sled, split his sternum, and broke a rib so forcefully the jagged end almost pierced his heart. A musher close behind him happened to be an emergency medical technician and immediately determined the injuries were life-threatening. The EMT borrowed a pistol and fired several shots in the air to get the attention of a circling airplane, which landed on the lake and evacuated Welch to the hospital, where he is in satisfactory condition — but definitely out of the Iditarod for this year.

Given the bad, confusing trails and the bitter cold, I think it will be prudent to play things more cautiously for the rest of the race. I decide to drop into a semi-survival mode, running mostly during the day and giving the dogs plenty of rest. After all, I’m not trying to win any money, and the Iditarod this year will likely be a full couple of weeks of what I’m seeing here.

We have to double back over the same trail to Willow before we turn west to the Susitna and Yentna Rivers for the run out to Yentna Station and Skwentna, after which we’ll return directly to Big Lake. My new game plan is to leave Sheep Creek just before dawn, so I can hit the worst part of the trail to Willow about first light. I was having trouble seeing things in the trail in my headlight beam on the way in, and I don’t want to risk hitting something that might hurt the dogs or wreck the sled. I also want daylight to make sure I don’t get lost on the maze of sloughs and channels in the rivers, which have additionally been crisscrossed by thousands of snowmachiners, who use them as highways.

Most important, I resolve to drive the dogs all the way out to Skwentna (the farthest point on the race), regardless of how long it takes. Once I’m out there, I can’t scratch, since the only way to get the dogs back will be to run them in to Big Lake. After my Iditarod fiasco last year, I intend to finish this race if it’s humanly (and caninely) possible. The Klondike has become a critical personal benchmark of my ability to keep myself going; I’m not going to blow it now.

Sunday — The Klondike 300: Sheep Creek to Yentna Station (70 miles)

After a quick meal and a few hours’ nap I’m up to get the dogs ready about five o’clock. It’s pushing 40 below, but the dogs aren’t bothered. On the other hand, Yankee and Buck had a minor altercation during the evening. They apparently got cranky because they were tired and snapped at each other for a few minutes. This is an occupational hazard when running a team heavy on big males like mine is this year; I try to minimize the opportunities for conflict, but some will flare up regardless.

Buck has a couple of minor bite marks; Yankee is up and ready to go, but he winces when I touch his tail while harnessing him up. Buck must have gotten him there, and it appears painful enough to convince me to drop him because the tugline on the back of the harness will probably bother him as he runs. There’s no point in subjecting him to any extra harassment. He’s a proven performer and is in good shape; he’ll be ready for the Iditarod even if he doesn’t finish this race.