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

Once at the top we start down Independence Creek and into the heart of the old mining district. I’ve heard the view is spectacular during the day, but with the darkness and the snow my horizon is no farther than my headlight can shine. We make reasonably good time down the long grade to the upper Innoko River valley. The snow continues to fall, not heavily but enough to obstruct vision and force me to put on my ski goggles.

At the bottom of the hill the road crosses Independence Creek on a bridge. The bridge is fine but the approaches are wiped out by overflow. This is the first serious overflow the dogs have had to actually negotiate and Pullman, who is spelling Socks for awhile, does her best to tiptoe around it, to no avail. It’s only an inch or two deep but it’s 50 feet across and looks ugly; finally I urge her through it and across the bridge.

I have a sinking feeling we’ll see a lot more of this and I’m soon proved correct. Every bridge for the next 15 miles (and there are more than a few) is preceded or followed by stretches of overflow of varying severity, usually less than an inch of water over slick ice. Pullman gradually learns to find her way through these situations, which I’m glad to see.

Fortunately none of what we’re encountering approaches the heavy-duty flooding we were able to bypass back on the Yentna. On the other hand, we don’t have much choice but to splash through this stuff, which the dogs most assuredly do not like. Regardless, we have to adapt as best we can because the trail from Ophir to Cripple and up to Ruby is supposed to have more water on it than the Everglades. It may well be sink or swim if we want to get to the Yukon.

We finally pull into Ophir just before midnight. We’ve taken a little more than four hours to come the 30 or so miles from Takotna; everyone else has done it in two or three. It’s been almost 24 hours since we left Nikolai, slightly more than 100 miles ago. We’ve spent 18 hours actually on the trail, considerably more than anyone else for this stretch.

It’s another measure of just how slow my guys are. I wonder what it must be like for the leaders to cruise between checkpoints at 12 miles an hour or better. But then, we’re still moving, and that in itself is a major improvement over last year.

The powdery snow continues to fall while I work with the dogs in the checkpoint. The white stuff will be a help on the trail later because it’s only a thin coating and will cushion the rock-hard ice underneath for the dogs. Hard, fast trails are nice, but they can take a toll on the delicate bones and ligaments in the dogs’ wrists.

This 1930s miner’s cabin on the summer-only road from Takotna to Ophir is now used only seasonally. Venerable cabins, buildings, and mine works from Alaska’s pre-airplane days can be found along many of the state’s trails and old mining roads.

We usually remedy these carpal aches and pains with neoprene wraparound sweats during rest periods, but sometimes inflammation persists and the dog must be dropped. So far only Socks has had problems of this nature but I’ve carefully put on his leg sweats at every stop and he’s doing fine. He acts his age whenever we get ready to leave a checkpoint but is always trotting happily within a mile or so. Like my other Iditarod veterans, he’s a trouper and would rather push on up the trail than get left behind.

In the meantime the snow is merely a nuisance as it sifts into everything including the sled bag despite my best efforts to keep it out. I finally get the dogs settled and drag over to the classic 1930-vintage miner’s cabin which has been the checkpoint here for decades. It’s hard to believe there were more than 1,000 people living here during the boom days of 1907; now Dick and Audra Forsgren’s cabin is one of only a couple of buildings left standing.

The cabin has always been one of my favorite places on the race, at least when I was flying. Now it’s full of people and I have to go find a place to sleep in the “Dodge Lodge” out back, a quonset-type tent with an oil heater and straw on the floor which is being used for extra bunk space. I wake up in half an hour shivering uncontrollably and stumble back into the cabin, where I stretch out on bare floor next to the wood stove. I don’t sleep well thinking about the ugly trail we must face when it gets light.

March 9-10, 1996—The Iditarod: Ophir to Cripple (about 45 miles); Cripple to Ruby (about 125 miles)

Because of a widespread midwinter thaw, the entire Innoko River valley, which the trail traverses, has become a semiliquid morass. Skiplanes have not been able to land at any of the spots along the Innoko River where the Cripple checkpoint is usually set up. A skeleton checkpoint called Cripple was finally established, but no one is exactly certain of its location, other than it’s not quite as far down the trail as Cripple normally is.

As a result of the access problems, the race manager decided to have all the food we intended for Cripple shipped to Ophir instead. Every musher planned a major replenishment of food supplies at Cripple, the jump off point for the longest and arguably most difficult leg of the race. Now we must haul all of our food from Ophir for both the leg to Cripple and the continuation to Ruby, more than 170 miles in all.

Even for the fastest teams this will result in more than 24 hours total time between food drops, which means at least three meals plus snacks for the dogs. Considering the dogs will eat a pound or two of food at every feeding, and snacks will add another couple of pounds, the front-runners must provision themselves with an extra 50 pounds of food or so.

For slow teams like mine, the on-our-own time may be more than 36 hours, and accordingly I manage to stuff almost 80 pounds of food into, on, and around my sled. To accomplish this feat of legerdemain I toss out all of the junk I should have left at home in the first place; I surprise myself at how much room can be made in a sled bag when the need arises.

I also decide to drop Batman. He’s had an open sore on one of his front foot pads since before the race and even with booties and lots of ointment, it’s not improving. He’s game to go on but I’d just as soon not expose him to what I fear is coming between here and Ruby.

He’s a big guy and I don’t want to carry him in the basket. Besides, he’s done his part to get us this far and deserves a rest and a trip home. This leaves me with 13 dogs, more than enough to get me to Nome. After all, Ron Aldrich said he actually started the race with 12 dogs one year and had no trouble making it all the way.

The old miner’s cabin at Ophir, owned by Dick and Audra Forsgren, dates to the 1930s. One of the two surviving buildings in Ophir, it has been the checkpoint here since the first Iditarod.

As I get ready to leave, the checker says the trailbreakers had to build 17 bridges across open streams on this portion of the trail, and there are many dozen more places where the trail traverses overflow. Apparently the piece de resistance of this wilderness construction effort is a crossing of the Innoko River 10 miles before Cripple. The checker warns me to be very careful not to get off the narrow built-up path on this makeshift bridge or risk going swimming in flowing water at least two feet deep.

The only good news is it’s been cold at night and some of the overflow has frozen up, although other spots have reportedly opened. Any way I look at it, it’s going to be a hellaciously bad trail, hard ice where the recent thaw and freeze has glazed the snow, punctuated by stretches of slush or open water.