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

Nobody expected us this soon — we’ve actually made pretty good time considering the bad trail, a bit more than nine hours. Shawn, who left Yentna Station with me, arrived almost an hour ago, just about the time difference I’d expected because of my leader problems at sunrise back on the river. Before I drive the team over to the truck, the checker says I really did finish in ninth place — in the money, no less. All I can do is shake my head. The world is truly turned upside down when my team can pull off a single-digit finish in a major sled dog race.

Of course there are only 12 mushers left out of the original 26. I don’t know if this speaks to my good luck, my determination, or my questionable judgment. On the other hand, I do know if I’d scratched without a really good reason — like death or dismemberment — I couldn’t have lived with myself and I would have had severe doubts about my ability to try the Iditarod again. In any case, we’re finally done and we who stayed the course will definitely have something to talk about. After all, we finished when Martin Buser and several other big names didn’t, and we kept ourselves and our dogs in reasonably good shape in the process.

After I get the dogs fed and bedded down in the truck, I head inside the lodge for a quick bite to eat. As a pleasant surprise, I discover I’m going to get my lost mitten back. The same cross-country skiers who caught my team on Cow Lake were kind enough to pick up my glove and leave a note at the Klondike Inn saying they had it.

A couple of earlier finishers are still in the lodge when I come in from the cold. They are among the rookies who refused to scratch because they needed to qualify for the Iditarod; they had a sensible reason to stick it out. When they find out I’m already qualified and don’t need this race at all, they look at me like I’m several sandwiches short of a picnic. One of them asks why I did it when I really didn’t need to. All I can say is it’s a long story, longer than he probably wants to hear right now. Maybe I’ll tell it to him in Nome.

Be careful what you ask for, it might come true — Part II. Our record-setting snow drought in Southcentral Alaska is finally over. Boy, is it over. After a pleasant four or five inches last week for appetizers, the main course arrived Friday and kept coming until this morning. By Saturday noon we had almost 18 inches of new snow, and it was still falling at the rate of two inches an hour.

My trusty snowblower, which I’d never even started this winter because of the dearth of snow, was in near-constant operation as I tried to keep ahead of the fluffy deluge. Finally the skies cleared Tuesday morning, revealing more than three feet of freshly fallen Alaska sunshine at my place, and more near the mountains. Somebody living out on our normal 20-mile loop measured 51 inches.

I’ve never seen this much snow fall in one storm, at least not in the Upper Susitna Valley, which tends to be much drier than locations nearer the coast or the mountains. Anchorage caught more than 30 inches, bringing the entire city to a slipping and sliding stop.

The late-season snow derby winner is the town of Valdez, over on Prince William Sound. It’s normally one of the snowiest inhabited locations on the planet, with more than 30 feet of annual snowfall, but until this storm rolled in they had barely an inch on the ground. Now they have about 10 feet, and residents there are actually breathing a sigh of relief because their late-season ski festivals (including a national extreme skiing championship) are safe.

In our area, though, it’s a case of way too much of a good thing. Our trails are buried much too deeply to try to break them open with the dogs, and the snow is so light snowshoes don’t work. Worst of all, snowmachines don’t ride up and over it to pack it down — they just plow into it and bury themselves.

At the beginning of the season, Ron and Steve Adkins and I chipped in to overhaul one of Ron’s old dual-track Alpines — arguably among the best go-anywhere snow vehicles ever built — especially for setting trails. Like my snowblower, it sat idle for months, waiting for a chance to prove itself, but now it just bogs to a sputtering stop in this stuff.

Even the hordes of recreational snowmachiners from Anchorage who normally descend on us after every good snow are crying in their beers at the local lodges. Anchorage prohibits snowmachine use in the city, and under normal conditions these expatriates are so determined to use their machines they will run under conditions too abominable even for a dog team — but not now. It will take another few days for the snow to settle enough to be usable by the iron dogs. Then our problem won’t be too much snow, it will be trying to avoid being run down by motor mushers working off a season’s worth of frustration in our back yards.

But at least there will be enough snow for the Iditarod. We’d all been worrying about trail conditions after the Klondike 300 torture test, but it’s been snowing all the way to McGrath and things are starting to look at least passable. This year has been a perfect example of my long-held belief there is no average weather in Alaska — only extremes from which meaningless averages are derived by statisticians. And you know what Mark Twain is alleged to have said on that subject: There are liars and damn liars, and then there are statisticians. And as I repeatedly shoveled one of my shed roofs to keep it from collapsing, I could think the number crunchers must be having a field day about now.

But I’m not worrying about driving dogs for the moment: it’s Iditarod food drop time again. I tried to get ahead of the power curve this year by getting my meat cut and bagged early, but the snow derailed my schedule. After I finally got my driveway blown out for the last time and then excavated the dog food and other items buried under their protective tarps, I worked from noon yesterday until seven this morning to organize all of the little things I’ll need on the trail.

I have 54 Iditarod food bags lined up in my driveway, each bulging with everything from dog food to batteries to paper towels. This year I’m shipping out more than 1,800 pounds of munchies for the dogs, which in total is far more than I can ever use, but which might be just right for a particular checkpoint if I get stuck for several days.

In a change from last year, I’ve shipped out 20 bags of dry dog food from (gasp!) Sam’s and Wal-Mart. I’ve been catching flak from other other mushers for using it instead of the high-priced spreads whose emblems are prominently displayed on the sleds and parkas of the Big Names. Actually, I’ve been feeding Sam’s professional-grade stuff since last spring and — for my dogs at least — it’s turned out to be as good as the elite fare at half the price.

Anyway, the dogs sure like it and it got them through the Klondike 300 in grand style. There’s nothing wrong with the fancy-name kibbles, but they’re a bit spendy for somebody like me who doesn’t have a big sponsor (and especially a sponsor who happens to be a deluxe dog food company). This is just another of the tricks I’m learning this time around to keep the cost down without sacrificing quality.

The Iditarod food drop is a massive undertaking. Here the author’s venerable dog truck (minus the dog boxes) is loaded with 54 bulging bags totaling more than a ton, ready for the 100-mile trip into Anchorage. The race will ship out more than 100,000 pounds of musher bags, plus another 50,000 pounds of race equipment and supplies to two dozen checkpoints scattered between Anchorage to Nome.