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

While everyone says there’s nothing ahead to match what we’ve come through, I’ve heard there’s tricky trail before we get to Farewell Lakes. The area where the Post River flows in from the south is reputed to have a lot of glare ice, and the so-called buffalo chutes are supposed to be at their usual worst.

The chutes include stretches where the trail crosses open tundra with little snow cover and then plunges into narrow paths through the scrub forest. Periodically the trail crosses small clearings where buffalo (yes, buffalo) congregate to browse. The buffalo were native to Alaska after the end of the last Ice Age but vanished, possibly from hunting by early humans arriving from Asia.

In the 1920s a number of bison from the Lower 48 were brought to the University of Alaska, and a dozen were eventually transplanted to the Farewell area. The now-wild herd now numbers in the hundreds and supports a limited annual hunt.

The shaggy herbivores have supposedly never bothered dog teams, but based on my experiences with moose, I’m a bit wary in the presence of unpredictable animals weighing a ton or more that can run like the wind. And I’m not sure what the 15 instinctive predators harnessed in front of my sled would contribute to an encounter with the normally placid creatures. All told, today promises to be interesting, at least in the sense of the old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.”

The first few miles out of Rohn thread across the wind-scoured ice and rock-studded sandbars of the braided South Fork. Soon we duck into the trees on the south bank and begin to climb up onto a wooded plateau paralleling the river. The trail is in excellent shape and we’re making good time, at least for my plodders.

After a few minutes I notice the dogs looking around and then I hear snowmachines; two of them shortly pull up behind us. I stop to let them by and chat with the riders. They’re from the Anchorage Daily News : outdoors editor Craig Medred and photographer Jim Jager. They say they’re going all the way through to Nikolai.

I tell them I think the trail is supposed to be pretty good on across the Burn. They look at each other before allowing as how that’s generally true but there might be a few bad stretches. They tell me to watch for their snowmachines up ahead. While I try to figure out this last cryptic remark they roar off up the hill and out of sight.

Half an hour later the team comes off a steep hill onto a 100-yard stretch of glare ice. The sled yaws wildly as we hit the slippery surface and by the time I get it stabilized, riding the brake to keep the gangline taut, I see the snowmachines parked up ahead. The newsies are snapping pictures as we draw abeam. I nod and they wave back. Before we reach the next tree line they’ve zipped ahead of us again.

A couple of miles on we skitter onto another particularly treacherous patch of ice. As I work overtime to keep the sled pointed up the trail, once more I see the snowmachines off to the side, their occupants documenting my unsteady passage. Once again they zoom ahead. Now I’m starting to get the picture, so to speak. When I crest another ridge a mile up the trail and see them waiting on the other side of the intervening ravine, I wonder “What now!?” and stomp on the brake.

This time it’s a real winner: the Post River glacier. It’s not really a glacier, just a slanting sheet of ice where countless repeated overflows have created the skating rink from Hell (which must finally have frozen over). The snowmachines area quarter-mile farther on where a tributary stream has created its own steeply sloping mini-glacier, up which we must find a way after somehow surviving the wicked 200-yard stretch just ahead.

Many mushers say the twenty miles of trail between Rohn and Farewell Lakes is the most difficult of the entire race. This is the South Fork of the Kuskokwim just west of Rohn; the trail runs for several miles across the bare gravel bars and shallow braided channels.

After we careen down the hill and start gingerly across the void I notice a lone tree trunk sticking out maybe 20 feet downstream of the trail. Halfway across, the sled starts to slip slowly down the gently inclined ice.

With the sudden insight of one about to undergo a calamity, I see what’s coming and there’s not a thing I can do: the sled is going to hit the four-inch-thick snag, and hard. I dare not get off the runners because I can’t even stand up on the water-greased dance floor. I don’t want to try to slow the dogs, who are barely finding enough traction to keep moving, or I’ll have a tangled, and potentially dangerous, mess sliding across the ice, and probably wrapped around the snag as a bonus.

Like a truck in a slow-motion freeway crash, the sled slips inexorably toward the snag, which looms like a concrete bridge abutment. My brake is completely useless on the case-hardened ice. I have only one real choice: I can try to turn the sled over and take the impact on the runners, or I can leave it upright and let the superstructure absorb the shock.

I instantly decide I can’t risk breaking the runners; I could be immobilized out here in the middle of the wilderness. So I leave the sled upright and simply hang on and ride it out. I know intimately how the captain of the Titanic must have felt as his doomed ship bore down on the waiting iceberg.

Ten feet, five feet, two feet, CRUNCH! I know immediately I’ve broken something, but the sled still seems to be mainly intact. It literally bounces off the snag and the dogs pull it on to the edge of the ice, where I stop to survey the damage. The whole episode has taken less than a minute, but the mind’s remarkable time-slowing ability has stretched it into about two days.

Miraculously the runners are unbroken, but the good news ends there. The heavy-duty carbon-composite brush bow that could fend off a whole forest of trees is broken at its right-hand anchor; it was never designed for broadside impacts and its severed end now juts a foot out from the side of the sled. The front right stanchion is splintered and both of the rear stanchions supporting the handlebar are cracked at the bottom where the crosspieces are joined.

However, the sled is still runnable; absent any more catastrophes I should be able to nurse it into Nikolai for repairs. In the meantime I slap a couple of hose clamps on the front stanchion to keep it from shattering further. I cinch another hose clamp on one of the two rear stanchions and wrap the other one as best I can in duct tape. Finally I stretch a bungee cord around the protruding brush bow to bring it back into a semblance of alignment.

Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise would understand my tactical situation: we’ve got hull damage and the front shields are down. We can’t take another phaser hit, but we can make it to Starbase Nikolai if we can stay away from the Klingons. I signal the engine room for full impulse power and we edge out of the sled-eating nebula — right into its evil twin.

In the urgency of the moment I’ve forgotten about the ice ramp stretching up the floor of the ravine in front of us. I feel like Robert Falcon Scott staring at the icefall blocking the way to the South Pole: What in all that makes any sense in this world am I doing here? Even as I ponder, the dogs are already scrabbling up the slope and I can see they’re going to cut close around a rock outcropping on the right bank. The sled will be dragged into the rock wall in a replay of the episode with the snag a few moments ago.

Once again I have the option to leave the sled upright and bash the upper works, or lay it over and absorb the impact on the runners. We’re going more slowly for this encounter, so I opt for the runners. I fall down a couple of times trying to get leverage on the slick ice but I get the sled flipped a few feet before the crunch point. With me dragging prone on the ice as a human sea anchor, the slick plastic runner bottoms kiss the stone and glance off with no damage; thank heavens for small favors.