Brian O'Donoghue - My Lead Dog Was a Lesbian - Mushing Across Alaska in the Iditarod--The World's Most Grueling Race

“What you need ees a beeb,” she said.

“A beeb?” I said, baffled by her Israeli-accented purr.

“A beeb for the legs. A pile vest to keep your chest warm. You’re too thin, you need the protection,” Iris said, laughing. “You should place your order now. It gets very beesy in winter.”

I dragged Iris back toward the dance floor. It seemed much too soon to be ordering cold-weather gear. It was 70 degrees out. Volleyball games continued past midnight under the rosy midnight sun. Winter seemed a million miles away then. Now I inhabited a hostile cold world, wearing those “beebs” like a second skin.

While the dogs snoozed, McAlpine entertained Daily and me with stories from his own 21-day Iditarod saga. The tempo of the villager’s race had been set on the first day, when he lay down for a quick nap and didn’t stir for 14 hours. It was a blunder Daily and I could well appreciate. McAlpine, for his part, understood what it was like to hunt trail markers at the far end of the Iditarod’s field. He made his 1983 trip in the company of Colonel Vaughan, who’s never been known for speed.

“The colonel was so polite he tipped his hat to every tree,” the checker said.

Barry Lee had ground to make up. He didn’t want to tackle the Yukon River alone, and Peele was too far behind. Feeling pressured, he hurried out of Iditarod in the early afternoon on Tuesday.

Garth had an hour’s lead. Considering the Englishman’s mad dash the night before, when he mushed his Redington dogs 90 miles without a break, Lee wasn’t at all confident that his team could close that gap. He was, at first, happily surprised when he found Garth camping roughly midway to Shageluk. But something about the scene disturbed Barry Lee. He paused to check on the Englishman’s condition.

“I’m OK,” said Garth, peering from his sleeping bag. “I just need to sleep.”

“Are your dogs still moving?”

The dogs are fine, the sleepy musher assured Lee.

Barry shrugged and continued on. He came across Kuba, a few miles later.

“What about the other guy?” the German asked. “He seemed to be in pretty bad shape. And his dogs won’t run.”

Lee was perplexed. Should he go back? Garth said he was all right, and he was in his sleeping bag. It was not as if he was collapsed on the trail back there. Barry Lee mushed on.

Fresh snow was blowing. The team’s speed slipped as Lee’s dogs plowed through half a foot of powder. The musher’s low-budget approach was also costing him. He had tough white plastic on his sled runners. The white-coded material lasted longer than the softer black or orange plastic favored by most racers; it was optimum for traveling over bare, rocky terrain. In these conditions, white plastic created friction, which made Lee’s sled harder to pull. Most racers would have changed their plastic, but Lee had long ago used up the few spares he had bought in Knik.

Barry wasn’t packing much dog food either. He didn’t plan for a dinner stop on the 65-mile run to Shageluk. Forced to camp, the musher tossed out snacks. His dogs would just have to hold out until Shageluk for a full meal.

The checkpoint was closed when Barry mushed into the village on the morning of March 13. He found a veterinarian, but the volunteer’s plane was already revving for departure. The vet made no effort to hide his eagerness to get to Nome for the finish of the real race.

Lee’s anxiety was heightened by the Iditarod official’s impatience. Catching Daily and me was becoming absolutely urgent, or so the musher decided. Making a snap decision, he scrapped plans to cook his dogs a meal here and — minutes after arriving in Shageluk — Lee bolted for Anvik. Barry thought the Yukon village lay a mere 18 miles ahead. But he was confusing the upcoming run with the short hop to Grayling. The distance to Anvik was closer to 30 rugged miles.

Up and down the Iditarod Trail, Lee and other weary mushers were making costly mistakes. The grace period was over. Alaska, ever remorseless, indifferent to mortal ambitions, was about to remind us that the games played here are hers alone to call.

Peele found the cabin at Iditarod stifling hot. He slept poorly, wishing he could speed up dawn’s approach. He, too, felt rushed. But it didn’t make sense trying to leave the old ghost town in the dark. Late in the second week of the race, the tape on the trail markers was often so frosted that it was no longer reflective, or it was torn off entirely by the wind. Assuming, of course, that a particular marker was standing at all for the Iditarod’s Red Lantern musher.

Morning brought the light Peele wanted. It also brought wind, and the team smacked into drifts soon after leaving Iditarod. Seeking a boost, Peele dug out his personal stash of caffeine tablets. “This is worth one or two cups of coffee,” the musher told himself, swallowing the first pill.

Radio operator Rich Runyan was supposed to close down the checkpoint at Iditarod, then follow the last team over to Shageluk on a snowmachine, towing a sled packed with his electronic gear. He was going to accompany the rear teams through to Unalakleet, a distance of about 350 miles.

The plan had sounded reasonable back at race headquarters. The radio operator from Anchorage hadn’t given it much thought while mushers were still on the way to his remote post. His attitude changed after Peele had mushed away Wednesday morning. Listening to the wind, Runyan felt growing flickers of dread. He was alone. Left behind out in the wilderness. Runyan knew his fears were foolish. If he needed to, for any reason, he could fire up his generator-powered radio and talk to the world. This knowledge wasn’t enough to dispel the camp’s eerie silence, or the whispers from the dark corners of his mind.

By late afternoon, the demons were gaining strength, adding urgency to the volunteer’s packing. He keyed the big snowmachine to life. After an agonizing second, the engine caught. Rich Runyan savored that beautiful roar. His confidence surged as he quickly overtook Peele a few miles from the checkpoint. Though his team was crawling, Peele appeared in reasonably good spirits, or so it seemed to Runyan, who gladly accepted the musher’s offer of fruit juice. After a brief pause, the radio operator bid the musher and his dogs good-bye and took off, his big snowmachine cutting a new trail through the mounting drifts.

During his second trip up McKinley, nearly a decade before, Peele had frozen his hands so badly that several fingers had turned black. None had to be amputated, but he lost a good deal of feeling, and his hands remained more sensitive to cold weather. Peele wasn’t thinking clearly in the hours after Runyan left him. Fatigue and determination combined to induce a sort of madness in the musher. Battling to stay awake, he kept popping caffeine pills. And the musher took off his gloves, figuring that the pain of gripping his icy handlebar would keep him alert.

In the front of the pack, Susan Butcher weighed the risk. A ground blizzard was raging over the ice ahead. These were extreme, life-threatening conditions. Sixty-mile-per-hour winds and temperatures to 30 below combined to produce a wind-chill factor in the 100-below-zero range. Rather than attempt the exposed 40-mile crossing to Koyuk, Iditarod’s leader took refuge in a shelter cabin below Lonely Hill, the last finger of land overlooking Norton Bay.

Butcher had mushed from Shaktoolik holding a 45-minute lead over Swenson. He, Osmar, Buser, and Barve caught her at a shelter cabin, where she spent six hours waiting for the wind to drop.

King and Jonrowe left Shaktoolik together, about four and a half hours after Butcher. The storm, moving inland, made for slow going. The pair hadn’t got far before they were overtaken by Joe Runyan, whose swift, strong dogs were refreshed after a long rest. Jeff and Dee Dee spurred their teams to chase the tall musher from Nenana, but his team was faster and vanished into the swirling tempest. The storm intensified, at last forcing the pair to turn back.