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

No distance race is ever over until the last musher crosses the finish line. That’s why mushing is the only sport with a red lantern, a recognition the last finisher has struggled at least as hard as the winner. Moreover, most long races have several prizes for important aspects such as sportsmanship and best dog care, and sometimes these are awarded to mushers who don’t even finish.

Luckily the Frontiersman, the twice-weekly local newspaper for the Mat-Su Valley, will have a good spread. And KMBQ-FM, the Valley radio station, is providing ongoing coverage and has promised to hang in there until the last musher is in. I suppose it’s expecting too much of the Anchorage media to treat dog mushing like Alaska’s official state sport and not just a seasonal curiosity.

Tuesday — The Klondike 300: Yentna Station to Big Lake (75 miles)

Four o’clock comes early. The lodge owner’s wife wakes Shawn and me and we fumble for our boots and heavy parkas. It’s minus 35 on the river bank and easily 40 below on the river. We take our time and have our teams ready to go by 5:30. There’s no moon and first light is three hours away, but the stark contrast provided by the snow cover lets us make out all the detail we need to keep oriented.

Both our teams move smoothly in the darkness; I’m following and drop back to maybe a quarter-mile spacing. This is a comfortable distance to keep my guys from overrunning. Any team following closely behind another (we call it “chasing“) will tend to run faster than normal and will inevitably wind up literally on the lead driver’s heels — just like my team did with Martin Buser for the first mile or so out of the starting gate on this race. However, chasing requires too much use of the brake, and I don’t think the frequent reminders to slow down help the team’s spirit for the long haul.

We settle into an easy 10-mile-an-hour nighttime pace. I leave my headlight on so Shawn can see I’m still back here; we agreed to keep an eye on each other at least until daybreak, and I’m keeping my end of the bargain. Still, my light seems out of place, and my team could easily follow the bobbing pinpoint in front of us with no trouble.

I plan to do a good deal of my Iditarod running at night, especially since we’ll have a full moon for the first several days of the race. The dogs love to run under any kind of a bright moon (the old-timers’ “running moon”, and there is usually more than enough light to allow the driver to keep the headlight off. The net effect is magical, as I’ve experienced on other races. I feel the full moon will be a good omen for the Iditarod this year, and I intend to use it to help me get a solid start on the long haul to Nome.

This morning, even though there is no moon at all, the trip down to the mouth of the Yentna goes very quickly and we have no difficulty staying on the trail. One checker at Skwentna said the race marshal sent out a special snowmachine team to beef up the markings on the inbound leg from Yentna Station to Big Lake and they appear to have done a good job.

The only potential problem is the temperature, which has been steadily dropping ever since we left Yentna Station. I’m starting to feel a bit too cool even inside my expedition-quality outfit. I check my little zipper thermometer: it’s off-scale low, which means it’s below minus 50. I don’t know how much below, but I think it’s all academic once it’s this frigid.

This is the coldest I’ve ever run a dog team, but the soul-numbing temperature doesn’t seem to bother the dogs, who cruise obliviously on. I remind myself this isn’t nearly as bad as it can get up here: John Barron and Ron Aldrich have both told me how they ran various Yukon Quests with temperatures hovering between 60 and 70 below. I can’t really say I’m cold, but there do seem to be some unexpected minor leaks in my layered, heavily insulated armor. I think it’s mainly the thought of getting stranded without proper protection in this kind of deep freeze that makes me shiver.

To reassure myself, I extract a few fresh charcoal hand warmer packets from my inside pocket and rip them open; I’ll keep one inside my fleece inner jacket and put the other ones in the improvised glove I’m using to replace the mitten I lost back at Cow Lake. These things make a huge difference; the ability to keep my fingers warm seems to do much to bolster my overall resistance to the cold. It’s certainly mostly psychological, but it seems to work — and who am I to change something that works, especially when it’s 50 below.

We turn into the five-mile slough cutting over to the Susitna River just before dawn. Then, just as the light brightens to a dull gray, the team stops. I’m sure there’s nothing physically wrong, and the dogs can’t be tired, since we’ve come barely 25 miles. Moreover, the problem seems to be focused on Batman, the co-leader, who seems not to want to go. Pullman, the main leader, seems ready enough to move but won’t go when Batman holds his place.

It could be Batman has gotten a bit cold running up front and is tired of acting as a windbreak for the rest of the team. After all, a 10 mile-an-hour wind at 50 below makes for a chill factor somewhere down near minus 100. It’s just as likely he’s only bored and wants a breather.

So, as the sun’s first rays gild the top of Mount Susitna to the southwest I play the old switcheroo game up in the wheelhouse. After several permutations of the lead and swing dogs which yield a mile of halting progress, I find a combination that clicks: the same pair that stopped in the first place. It seems we just needed to wait for the light to brighten a bit, or for Batman to shake off his chill, or perhaps the extra distraction involved in my swapping dogs around recaptured their interest.

I suppose I could just as well have stood up front and waved my arms and done a dance — anything to break the combination of indistinct light and relentless cold and the monotonous trail down the wide river channels. But most importantly, we don’t stay immobilized like we did on the Iditarod last year; this time we’re moving — and I intend to obey Newton’s laws of motion and stay that way until we get to Big Lake.

In another couple of hours we come to the hill leading up from the river. The dogs charge up the steep 100-foot slope as if they had just started the race, then continue at a good pace along the wooded upland track. Soon enough we come to the land of abominable trails; we’re not doing more than four or five miles an hour through the grabbing brush and protruding roots, and that’s plenty fast for me. It’s all I can do to keep the sled upright and generally pointed in the right direction. As we carom from stump to root to rock, I’m thoroughly convinced I made the right decision to do this during daylight.

As we come off North Rolly Lake and start up the infamous hill that claimed so many sleds and bodies on the first day, I have time to examine it more closely. It is even steeper and narrower than I remember, and so tightly hemmed in by unyielding trees I don’t see how anyone made it down. The uphill sides of several of the trunks look as if they’ve been skinned by chain saws; I can only imagine the carnage here and be glad I was lucky enough to have dodged this particular bullet. I think it’s a reasonable assumption there won’t be any more dog races down this monster for the foreseeable future.

After another unspeakable stretch of trail including the pinball slough,

which is just as bad from this direction, we come out onto Red Shirt Lake. By now the sun is well up and is glaring directly in the dogs’ faces. The three-mile-long lake looks even more like a river than the Yentna, and the endless expanse of white starts to work on the dogs as soon as we move away from the shore. They go slower and slower until finally one just sits down, followed by the whole team. I know exactly what the problem is: they think they’re back on the river and what’s more, they’re starting to overheat from the sun beating on their dark fur.