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

The Cripple checkpoint is nothing more than a wide spot on the trail next a suitable skiplane landing area on the frozen Innoko River. Tents, straw, dog food, and other equipment are flown in (and out) by the Iditarod Air Force. Teams are bedded down on lines of straw wherever a place can be found among the straggling black spruce trees.

The only bright spot is a much-rumored “hospitality tent” at Sulatna Crossing. The official checkpoint at Sulatna was discontinued several years ago because it was difficult to supply by air. The new incarnation is a private operation but has the race’s blessing, and is supposed to have food and a place to rest. Everyone is looking forward to it as a badly needed break in what is rapidly becoming a torture test.

While I’m trying to rest, the mystery cyclist finally comes in. After more gesturing, we determine he is from Austria, and he has pulled a muscle and needs to rest. The checkpoint crew will be here until tomorrow so they offer him a place to crash for awhile. As near as I can make out, he’s actually trying to get to Nome on his bike. Unless I can get my guys to speed up from their turtle’s pace, he may well beat me there.

By six o’clock the assault of sunlight has subsided. The general mood is this is not going to be a walk in the park, but it’s something we’ll just have to get through. Ruby is the shining light at the end of the dark tunnel; everyone will be much relieved to be on the Yukon for a couple hundred miles of relatively easy running.

Knowing I’ll eventually be passed by everyone else, I leave before several of the others. The trail isn’t too bad for the first 20 miles or so as we run down the east side of the Innoko River to the site of the old Cripple Landing, now completely vanished. In its heyday just after the turn of the century it was a steamboat stop serving the mines in the gold belt which stretched south from Ruby all the way to Ophir and McGrath and down to Iditarod.

This part of the modern race trail wasn’t part of the original Iditarod, which actually ran southwest from Takotna to its namesake town. However, there’s plenty of history on the northern route. The Serum Run of 1925 went down the Yukon along the Yukon Mail Trail, passing through Ruby, Galena, and Nulato enroute to Kaltag and the coast, just as we will do in a day or two. And the Ruby mining district has been producing gold for 90 years; its ghost towns of Poorman and Long are every bit as intriguing as their southern counterparts of Flat and Iditarod.

However, we’re not seeing a lot of history as we punch along the trail in the fading light. Lisa Moore has caught up with me and we’ve been running more or less together for a couple of hours. The trail passes the site of old Cripple Landing and strikes out cross-country, northeast toward Poorman, about 40 miles distant. Soon we’re both passed by the rest of the teams that waited longer at Cripple before leaving.

Once again I’m bringing up rear of the race, but I’m confident my team is solid and not about to quit on me. And I feel better knowing I’m still moving with others of similar station. In short, I’m not alone this year; it’s a comforting feeling. I’m still very much a part of this race, even if I’m not about to keep the leaders looking over their shoulder for me.

The trail climbs steadily away from the river, following the base of a low ridge. Of course, such a sidehill trail is prone to overflow this year and we are quickly back in the messy business. We labor over an endless succession of low rises and drop down into anonymous gullies, each with its own little soggy surprise at the bottom. We pass one particular section I distinctly remember flying over a couple of years ago looking for Ron; unfortunately I have no idea how far it was from anywhere, so the information only serves to confuse me further.

As the sun sets, the deepening twilight begins to collapse our universe. The moon is rising later each evening and when night falls the darkness is complete, costing us what little orientation we’ve had from looking at the terrain around us. We feel as if we’ve been swallowed by a great featureless void through which we seem to make no progress.

Later in the evening we come to another detour off the main trail. After a half mile or so we enter a forest paved with semi-frozen overflow. Without warning we’re running along the glare ice of a 40-foot-wide river. I look down and in the beam of my headlight I clearly see bubbles moving in the current beneath the not-so-thick ice. I suddenly have an overwhelming urge to be anywhere else.

We follow the channel for a few hundred feet and Lisa yells to stop; the erratically marked trail has jumped off the river to the left and she’s just barely caught a glimpse of a reflective marker off in the trees. After I wrestle the team to a stop I notice the spruce boughs originally used to block the channel and divert teams off the ice have been swept aside. Someone must have roared on down the thinly frozen slough to who knows where.

As I’m scrambling on the ice to lead Socks back onto what looks to be the correct trail, I see another team coming back up the river. Mark Black, another of the back-of-the-pack rookies who passed us a couple of hours ago, pulls to a shaky stop. He says he went right through the flattened barrier and down (or up?) the slough for several miles.

When he didn’t see any more trail markers he got suspicious, and when the river ice started to crack ominously underneath him he got downright scared. At 250 pounds and six-foot-something, Mark is no lightweight and he had no illusions about trying to float like a feather across thin ice. He is quite relieved to be back here, although none of us is really sure where “here” actually is.

Lisa gets her team pointed toward the nearest trail marker gleaming dully through the trees and gets underway. She has to stop several times to negotiate tight turns but is eventually out of sight on the other side of the tree line. When the trail appears clear I get Socks aimed in approximately the right direction and gently urge him into the trees.

While Socks is a superb leader, he has a habit (which I actually encourage) of going directly from marker to marker at night; Pullman is actually better at following faint trails, but she’s not up front at the moment. Socks charges off toward the marker and promptly tangles us around at least two trees. I walk out in front of him to see what’s ahead and discover every team ahead of us has apparently picked its own way through the closely packed birch and spruce trunks. I can’t see how to negotiate this obstacle course with anything less maneuverable than a four-wheel-drive ATV with a working reverse gear.

Mark comes up to help me get untangled. We can’t believe anyone would try to put a trail through something like this and don’t even want to speculate on what horrific hazard existed on the main trail to force such a drastic rerouting. By the time we creep out of the Maze, as we’ve come to call it, we’ve lost at least an hour. I’m soaked with sweat, which is not good because I’ve got no easy way to dry my heavy outer gear. And as far as I know it’s still 50 miles or more to the hospitality tent at Sulatna Crossing. This is going to be a very long night.

In a mile or so we’re back on the main trail and moving steadily again. I start to pass other mushers who have pulled off the trail for brief rests. So far my guys are doing okay and I keep going. As near as I can figure, eight or ten of us are out here banging along this part of the trail. Without doubt we’re the only humans within 50 miles. As we pass each other we feel like the last inhabitants of a lost world, slowly working our way to some distant and rumored remnant of civilization.