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

A few mushers reparked their teams, off the trail, near the cabin. Most ended their break and cleared out. As the trail ahead of us cleared, Harley and Rainy threaded their way through the traffic jam. Watching the others depart, Catherine changed her mind about staying and hurried to get ready. Her team was still blocking the trail as mine approached.

“You go ahead,” she said.

As I guided my leaders around her team, Mormile suddenly pulled her snow hook and tried to outrun us, nearly causing a tangle.

“My team is faster than yours. I’m supposed to be ahead of you,” she snapped.

Both of us urged our teams forward, meanwhile cussing each other out. The argument was finally settled by the dogs — mine emerging in front.

So she was faster? Only in her dreams. Driving hard, I left her behind. Later, during a quick break, I described the scene to Terhune. He laughed for the first time in days. Mormile didn’t catch up until we were camping that evening at Old Woman Cabin.

The plywood cabin was sparsely furnished with a pair of bunks and a fat stove. After tending dogs, mushers filtered inside. The tensions of the morning were gone, and everyone was in a sharing mood. Lenthar gave me a roll of film. I joined the mushers providing Herrman’s dogs with extra food, giving the light-traveling trapper a big chunk of lamb.

My own acute shortage was in personal food. When I had shipped out supplies, I hadn’t planned on two-and three-day treks between checkpoints. I hadn’t sent out enough juice or snacks. My main-course menu was not only insufficient; it was sabotaged by flawed packaging. Two of my staples, Anna’s meat-loaf, as well as her potatoes, were sealed in plastic baggies which disintegrated in hot water. I had to chuck them, or nibble on icy half-thawed portions, another sorry testimony to the importance of prerace field-testing. I had more success with the precooked steaks and pork chops. Each was individually wrapped in tin foil. To heat one up, I merely set the wrapped foil on a hot wood stove. By Kaltag, I was developing a reputation as a carnivore.

My provisions had seemed extravagant when Mary Beth and Anna spread them all out in the newspaper’s lunchroom. Yet I was running on empty at Old Woman Cabin. More was waiting in the supply sacks at Unalakleet, but here I was down to raiding the shelter’s emergency stocks: peanut butter, stale crackers, and a pile of dried salmon scraps someone found in a corner of the room. Daily, likewise destitute, joined me in delving into the meager rations.

Trading stories by the stove late Monday night, I dug out the surviving bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Plettner, Cooley, Herrman, and I toasted our impending arrival on the coast.

The Nome banquet had been delayed. Too many teams remained out in the storms pounding the coast. The postrace party was finally held Monday, March 18, day 17 of the race. While Daily and I gobbled stale crackers and scrutinized withered fish scraps, searching for edible chunks of salmon, 26 mushers and some 850 fans were moving through a buffet line at the Nome armory.

Accepting a $32,000 check for third place, Susan Butcher, her face puffy from windburn, graciously praised Swenson’s unprecedented achievement — restaking his claim as Iditarod’s all-time champ.

Martin Buser’s three-year-old son, Nikolai, sang impromptu trail songs into the microphone as his heavily scabbing father collected a check for $39,500 for his second place finish. It wasn’t the prize Martin had hoped to gain that final night. Hearing from a snowmachiner that Swenson was reported missing, Buser had slipped on a white windbreaker, what he liked to call his “stealth shell,” and sought to steal the lead. But Swenson, taking nothing for granted, had arranged to delay reports of his arrival at Safety, the final checkpoint before Nome.

As he presented Rick Swenson with a silver cup and the first-place prize of $50,000, Nome’s perennial checker, Leo Rasmussen, recalled the musher’s first appearance on stage as an Iditarod winner. The year was 1977, and the grand prize stood at $9,600, which, even then, hardly covered the expense of fielding a competitive team.

“He was so enamored with the race he couldn’t stop talking. He must have talked for 24 hours to whoever would listen,” Rasmussen said.

Swenson’s Goose and Major were voted joint custody of the Golden Harness Award given to Iditarod’s best lead dog.

Mere blocks from the finish-line arch, Nome musher Matt Desalarnos had the $14,000 check for seventh place in his grasp. Alas, his dogs veered toward an alley, and Dee Dee Jonrowe passed him. That last-minute move from seventh to eighth place cost him $1,000. Chief vet Morris also presented Dee Dee with the Humanitarian Award for displaying the best dog care among the competitive drivers.

Barve had regrouped after finding his lost dogs and finished seventeenth, winning $6,000. Garnie had also recovered his lost team and continued, but he missed out on the money, finishing twenty-third. The respect for their achievement, surviving storms on foot, was evident as the mushers in Nome awarded the pair jointly the Iditarod’s “Most Inspirational Musher Award.” The wind-scorched Eskimo had extra incentive pushing him toward the finish line; Garnie had to finish the race or forfeit the new pickup he had won in Skwentna.

The scars of the race were most evident on Adkins, whose windburned face was a swollen mass of scabs as he stepped forward to collect his $5,000, nineteenth-place check. The Montanan was also presented with the Sportsmanship Award for rescuing Whittemore on the ice outside Koyuk. Several dogs had died during the storm, and both men had been hypothermic and frostbitten by the time they reached the village. The worst part of the experience, Adkins told the crowd at the banquet, was when village medics had stuck a rectal thermometer up his ass.

“That was probably the most embarrassed I’ve ever been on the Iditarod,” he said.

Five more teams mushed into Nome before the banquet broke up. The last in was Redington. He checked in under the arch just before midnight, in thirty-first place. Cheers resounded through the armory hall at the announcement of Old Joe’s arrival.

The custody of one more award remained unsettled as the main banquet ended. Its ownership floated among a select few of the 29 mushers left on the trail. It wasn’t something anyone particularly wanted. Call it a booby prize. Such is the status of the Iditarod’s Red Lantern.

A sudden cry shattered the peace within Old Woman Cabin. Asleep on the floor, I awakened to find Sepp Herrman standing in the center of the room. The disheveled German was hurriedly collecting his gear.

“I’ve got to sleep outside,” the trapper mumbled, tightening the laces on his mukluks. “Where I live, I hardly hear nobody. I can’t take a house of snoring men.”

Terhune awakened in excruciating pain. Another musher examined his eye with a headlamp to no avail. Jon assumed the pain came from a speck of dust or some other irritant caught under his damn contact lens. It would happen at a place like Old Woman, a cabin with no running water, when his lens fluid was outside frozen solid in the sled. Unalakleet was only 45 miles away. Looking at his filthy hands, Terhune decided to clean his contacts when he reached the village. A little pain wasn’t going to kill him.

It was a glorious day. Daily stayed behind, taking his time. The rest of us leapfrogged past each other, trading positions, letting the dogs find their own gleeful pace. I traveled with Terhune for the most part. The last miles to the Bering Sea coast flew past in a blur of rolling hills, fat spruce trees, and winding river curves.