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

“I have a lot of bucks tied up in this shit, and I don’t think it’s supposed to look like this,” said Mowry, his eyes bloodshot and his dirty blond hair sticking from his head like loose straw.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “and our tub is still full of it.”

There is, apparently, more than one kind of honey. Redington’s recipe called for thick granular honey, not the syrupy brew my roommate had used. The Mowth’s dogs did without honey balls that year. And he cleaned the tub. There’s a limit to friendship.

Recalling the chaos of Mowry’s first big race, I allotted four full days to assemble my own Iditarod food drop. It wasn’t enough.

The first setback occurred when I had to unpack twenty-six checkpoints’ worth of fish. I’d forgotten to paint my name on the sacks. It was probably just paranoia, but I had been scared the fish might become contaminated in the labeling process. So, dumping the fish, I spread out the sacks in our driveway, thinking I could knock out the job using spray paint and a stencil. It was 40 below, and the paint nozzle froze, forcing me to shift operations inside our cramped A-frame. Space constraints there limited me to painting two bags at a time. And there was no damn room for anything to dry. The quick task ate up three hours.

Two friends from the paper, Mary Beth and Anna, were in charge of my personal food. They came up with a delicious assortment of precooked meals, breads, brownies, and cookies, but it took precious hours to assemble the packets. Anna’s efforts, cooking dozens of steaks and pork chops, fell behind when her propane stove quit.

For heating water out on the trail, I planned to use a fancy cooker borrowed from another local musher. But when I tested it against the Coach’s battered old unit, Mowry’s cooker boiled water in about 25 minutes, or roughly 30 percent quicker, despite the fact that it used toilet paper for a wick. Of course, I wanted that faster heating unit, and that meant another run to town for 50 more rolls of toilet paper.

The Coach concentrated on the real athletes, leaving me to deal with the food drop — and with Rattles, a strutting peacock of a dog man with a handlebar mustache, who’d become a constant presence as the race drew near.

Mike “Rattles” Kramer had earned his nickname working a jackhammer in a hard rock mine. That was before he took up dogs and became a boisterous fixture in the Two Rivers mushing scene. Now he bounced between washing dishes and seasonal farm or construction work. He, his new wife, and their infant son were among the 20 percent of Fairbanks-area residents who lacked running water at home. He didn’t seem to mind hauling around water jugs; it provided a good excuse for visiting the neighbors and, perhaps, peddling a few eggs gathered from his chickens.

I enjoyed Mowth’s company as long as he didn’t get started talking about the Feds, the gold standard, or the threats to personal liberty posed by Social Security numbers. Rattles knew a lot of tricks about tuning snowmachines or rigging sled lines. In his excitement about the race, however, the old musher was getting on my nerves, following me around, but lifting nary a finger to help as he relived his own doggy deeds.

“Rattles,” I cried at last, “if you’re not going to help, get the hell out of here.”

The old musher chuckled, amused by my jitters.

I hit the panic button with 36 hours remaining until supplies were due at Iditarod’s Fairbanks collection drop center. I called Anna, my photographer friend Nora, Sam the editor, Wilda and her husband, Charlie, everyone I knew — begging for help. Sunday, the yard was full of helpers bagging toilet paper, fish, spare underwear, batteries, headlamp bulbs, and runner plastic.

Wilda dragged along her dad, who was visiting from Kentucky. He pitched right in, chopping meat with an axe. Our whole operation fascinated him: the dogs watching from the woods; the sleds leaning on the shed; even the cabin interior, strewn with harnesses, lines, and cold-weather gear. The day spent helping an Iditarod musher became the highlight of his Alaska trip.

By nightfall, the work party had filled 60 sacks, each color-coded for one of the 21 checkpoints where we mushers could expect to find our provisions waiting. The next day friends and I delivered the sacks to a local freight company that was assisting with the race. My contributions were weighed, sorted, and added to the pallets bound for various checkpoints. Freight handlers waited until the pallet loads reached about 6 feet tall, then stepped forward to seal them with giant rolls of plastic wrap. Fairbanks handled only a third of this year’s Iditarod field, yet the sheer tonnage was immense. My team’s load alone weighed 2,094 pounds and cost me $523 to ship.

Rounding a turn, I saw a moose on the river ahead. It was a tall bull, plunging through deep snow. The dogs quickened their trot as they caught sight of him. I lifted my foot off the brake, letting the dogs break into a free lope. It was unlikely the moose would change direction and bother us, but you never knew. Moose are unpredictable as hell.

I didn’t want any surprises to mar this gorgeous day. It was 15 below, just cold enough to envelop the team in a flowing fog of exertion. The sun hung low over the river, creating orange streamers between the blue trees. Seven dogs were pulling my sled. The sunlight set their breath ablaze, wrapping the team in a warm glow.

As we neared the river, the trail rose and fell along a series of man-sized dips. Topping one of the rises, I saw a dark mound ahead. The trail dropped again before I could make it out. Something odd was coming up. I braced as the sled climbed another slight hill. Hair, I could see hair. A moose. Oh God.

Then I realized it was dead.

The dogs slowed to sniff the carcass. “All right! All right!” I cried, forestalling any thoughts of stopping. Where there’s one, there are often others.

“A person’s crazy to go out without a gun,” Rattles had said. “With all this snow, those moose are desperate. They won’t give up the trail.”

I didn’t even own a gun, so I was a real Alaskan oddity. I’d arranged to borrow Cyndi’s.357-caliber pistol for the race. The gun was waiting for me 360 miles south. Here in town, Madman had offered me his old rifle — if I ever got around to picking it up. I’d been trusting luck to dodge the sort of encounter that postponed Susan Butcher’s first appearance in the Iditarod winner’s circle.

1985 was supposed to be Susan’s year. No woman had ever won Redington’s Great Race, but Butcher had placed second in two of the three previous years, and her 17-dog team led the race crossing the Big Su. Traveling through a spruce thicket soon afterward, Butcher and her dogs came upon a large cow moose blocking their path. The musher threw her sled over and braced for the moose’s charge, which, experience told her, would carry the brute through the team. But this angry cow was far more destructive. Wading into the middle of the team, the moose reared on its hind legs and began stomping and kicking.

The carnage lasted for about 20 minutes until fellow racer Dewey Halverson mushed to the rescue. He emptied his.44-caliber special into the enraged moose, which continued kicking dogs until the last bullet brought it down. Susan’s dog Johnny was dead. Another dog named Hyde died after five hours on the operating table. Two more needed surgery, and thirteen others were injured. The distraught Butcher scratched, clearing the way for Libby Riddles’ march to glory.

This year Alaska’s interior was reeling from an invasion of the long-legged brutes. Starving, irritable from battling the unusually deep snow, moose were in no mood to mingle peacefully. Finding it easier going on packed trails, roads, and railroad tracks, many refused to surrender their right of way to anything, including trains. The carnage was particularly gruesome along the northern railroad corridor. It got so bad that the Alaska Railroad provided counseling for engineers freaked by the nightly gore. At least locomotive drivers knew they would come out on top. Moose held the advantage over unarmed mushers.