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

By now Socks and Pullman are both in lead, but they balk at the expanse of ice. I finally find a relatively negotiable strip of snow at the foot of the ice cascade and lead them down onto it; they promptly try to climb back onto the ice, which is completely impassable. After 15 minutes of repeated urging they slowly feel their way across to a stand of trees.

Beyond the trees is yet another sea of water-glazed ice where the road should be, with a trail marker in the middle of it. Socks heads for the marker but I see it isn’t going to work and yell for him to stop. As I flounder up to lead him back to a bypass trail someone has made, I break through the crust of snow into overflow above my knees. I begin to wonder whether Ruby really exists, or whether we’ve wandered into some alternate dimension especially reserved for tormented mushers.

After at least an hour of work we finally reach the end of the glacier where a recognizable roadway emerges from under the ice. According to the mileposts we haven’t even come a mile since this exercise in futility began. Now the road starts a steep incline back up to timberline. I remember flying over this particular stretch a couple of years ago, but again I can’t put this pearl of knowledge into any useful perspective as we climb toward the still-bright northern lights.

I am now incredibly tired and drift back into my on-again, off-again dance with reality. The next 12 miles or so are a confused jumble of images. At one point I’m flying for the race and watching myself down below. Then I’m driving a car along the wide, smooth road and am surprised when I turn the steering wheel and nothing happens. Overhead the northern lights provide a flickering celestial illumination for this journey into the surreal.

Finally I catch a glimpse of what I recognize for dead certain as an airport beacon. We’re within a couple of miles of Ruby and the end of this nightmare. The road comes to an intersection I know is only a mile from town, and almost immediately I can see the reassuring yellow and silver of street lights across the valley.

But there is one last surprise. The road, scraped down to the ice on this stretch for use by village traffic, plunges down a steep slope toward the Yukon. It’s mostly sidehill with an icy two-foot berm on the downhill side. The dogs know there’s a checkpoint ahead and are accelerating. I have the brake jammed into the diamond-hard ice but the sled still drifts down into the berm, banging into it again and again.

Halfway down the slope is a final hummock of glaciered overflow, sort of a parting insult from the trail to me. The sled hits it and I lose my footing; we flip and I am dragged down the icy road for 50 feet before I can get it and myself back upright and continue to the bottom. We limp past outlying houses and then climb a quarter-mile up the opposite hill to the checkpoint.

I am, as is becoming my custom, the last musher into town. As I check in, I reflect on my current state of affairs. I’m running last in the race. I’m soaked up to my pants pockets in overflow. I’m bruised and hurting in a dozen places from assaults by trees and icy trails. I haven’t had any meaningful sleep in two days. I’ve just come through the weirdest visit to never land I’ve ever experienced. And as I pull off my mittens both of my hands are so outrageously swollen and discolored the checker and the vet immediately send someone to roust out the village public health aide.

Someone asks me what I think of the trail up from Ophir and Cripple. The only line I can dredge from my half-functioning brain is another question: “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”

I’m so tired and in so much pain I’m not sure I can continue. The thought of scratching is slowly working its way forward from the nethermost recesses of my mind. As I fight off overwhelming waves of fatigue laced with deepening depression I mechanically start to work on getting the dogs fed and settled in. Shortly I become aware of someone standing beside me and look up to see Emmitt Peters, who won the race in 1975. He lives in Ruby and is an old friend of Ron’s and an acquaintance of mine.

Emmitt Peters of Ruby, the “Yukon Fox,” won the Iditarod in 1975, the second Native musher to win the race. His record pace of 14 days and 14 hours was more than five days faster than the previous best; it stood for five years.

Emmitt says his wife, the village health aide, is on her way to check on my hands as soon as I finish my checkpoint routine. Then he says I’m really doing just fine and he’s glad to see me here in one piece with the team in good shape. Coming from him, it’s the highest com pliment and strongest support I can receive. I’m deeply grateful for his confidence. I realize that if he thinks I’m okay, things can’t be nearly as bad as I think, and I don’t have any real reason not to go on.

About then the checker hesitantly asks me if I’m going to scratch; I laugh so hard he must think I’ve lost whatever remains of my sanity: Not only no, but hell no. There’s nothing wrong with the dogs some good rest won’t cure. The sled is still more or less intact, and I can hang on to the handlebar as long as it takes to get to Nome, with or without hands. Emmitt has helped me chase my ghost of Rainy Pass back to its lair and I don’t intend to let it out again.

I do decide to take my mandatory eight-hour Yukon-River layover here, like virtually everyone else in the race has already done after their jaunts up from Ophir. I’m sure if I’ve made it this far I can probably survive just about anything. As the old saying goes, anything that doesn’t kill me can only make me stronger.

As I work on the dogs the northern lights burst overhead in a renewed frenzy. Now they’re no longer the vaguely threatening backdrop for my journey through fantasy land and I can sit back and enjoy their ethereal beauty. As they play across the sky in intricate swirls and shimmering cascades I reflect that the great white expanse I see at the foot of the hill below the checkpoint is really the Yukon. We’ve actually made it more than halfway through the race. In more ways than one, I have to believe it’s downhill from here.

March 11, 1996—The Iditarod: Ruby to Galena (52 miles)

Inside the checkpoint Emmitt’s wife looks over my hands. There’s not much she can do except clean up the bite wounds and give me some antibiotics to combat any infection which might infiltrate the swelling. She agrees with the vet my right hand is broken. It’s grotesque: released from the confines of the mitten it resembles an eggplant with fingers. No broken bones are apparent, but a hairline fracture would do the same thing. She suggests I get it x-rayed at the regional clinic in Galena when I get there. She also remarks Emmitt ran to Nome one year with a broken hand; I feel a little better — at least I’m in distinguished company.

In the meantime I need to get dry, find something to eat, and then get some sleep. For the first count, I hang my dripping gear on racks thoughtfully placed around the roaring wood stove. For the second, the checkpoint has been lavishly provisioned by the townspeople and I graze contentedly for half an hour while I read a handful of faxed messages waiting for me on the bulletin board. All things considered, the messages of encouragement are especially welcome.

I’m warmed by the reception from the people of Ruby. People come and go all evening and everyone has a good word and a pat on the back for the mushers. The town was founded in 1911 as part of the gold rush to this area and the local Athabaskans gradually moved in. Now the almost 200 people live from fishing and hunting and a limited number of jobs, but their hospitality is unlimited, and it’s most gratifying.