Broken Trails

Lainey quietly went through her team with their late night supper, waking each of them in turn with soft words and pettings. She was pleased to see them all eating well, a sign of continued good health. The dreaded kennel cough had not been spoken of among the other mushers; perhaps this would be a sickness free race. After another watering, she began the heating process all over at the cooker, drinking freshly brewed instant coffee from her thermos.

Another voice spoke nearby, and she looked over to see Scotch mirroring her tasks. She watched as the woman worked through her team, seeing the love and devotion the dogs gave her, seeing Scotch reflect the same back to the animals. Scotch had been wrong in the lodge. It was not just her abilities that she relied upon to survive. The dogs had everything to do with it, too. Scotch might be the alpha dog in the pack, but it was still a team effort.

Lainey quickly grabbed her camera and snapped off a couple of photos, catching Scotch in the act of bestowing attention on one of her dogs. The flashes attracted Scotch who looked up at her. Lainey waggled her camera with a not-so-apologetic grin for the intrusion. Scotch merely smiled and returned to her chores.

The second round of dog stew was finished, and Lainey dumped it into the cooler. She shucked her heavy mittens for two layers of rubber gloves over silk liners, stuffing hand warmers into the palms, and started down the line with ointment and booties.

“You ready to go?” Scotch asked.

“Yeah, just about. You?”

“Yup.” Scotch looked over Lainey’s lively team. “You’re doing a great job with them.”

Lainey’s skin reddened, and she felt a foolish grin plaster itself across her face. “Thanks.”

Scotch looked out over the dog parking area, scanning the surrounding darkness. Lights from the lodge and around the checkpoint were visible, and stars sparkled overhead. “Remember, we’re going to be crossing a few ice bridges this leg. Don’t stop on one. It might not be able to hold the weight. The temperatures have stayed pretty low, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot.”

She nodded, not liking the idea of taking a midnight swim in the dead of an Alaskan winter. “What if someone else has already broken through one? How will we follow the trail?”

“We’ll figure that out if we get there. It’s only a creek, not a river, so that’ll make things a bit easier.”

Lainey’s concern was not allayed, but she did not argue. Surely they would not be penalized for going off the trail in search of a different crossing. “Okay,” she said, placing her confidence in Scotch’s experience. “Let’s do it.”

They finished breaking camp and urged their dogs toward the checkpoint. A couple of mushers, seeing Scotch make her move, decided to get going as well. They began rousing their dogs, glancing over their shoulders at Scotch or at their watches. Were these the ones who would give Scotch a run for her money? Would they be able to keep up with her? Lainey scanned her memory, putting grizzled faces to press release names and realized that this pair were long time veterans. She felt a swell of pride that Scotch, with her admittedly limited experience was causing such a stir with men who had been racing almost as long as she had been alive.

“Midnight, straight up,” the checker told her as she initialed his paperwork. “Good luck. There’s some mean winds blowing, so visibility may be shoddy.”

“Thanks. That’s good to know.”

Again Scotch led the way. The trail immediately climbed toward the top of Rainy Pass. Once they passed this ridge, they would be mushing through the interior of Alaska, bracketed by mountain ranges through frozen tundra. Lainey shivered in anticipation. Overhead, eerie wisps of greens and blues sheeted across the sky, a colorful backdrop behind grand Denali which rose above them. She had a fleeting wish to see the view in daylight, but her thoughts turned back to the trail as Scotch began the descent.

The path twisted and contorted as it went, solid and well packed. Lainey barely kept up with the commands, the trail switching back and forth with hairpin turns, then abruptly plunging into narrow ravines. Her head lamp picked up sheer walls of snow and ice, boulders rushing toward her from murky darkness, and the wagging tails of her dogs as they surged forward in pleasure. She barely had time to force her heart out of her throat before the next danger whizzed forward and past, her belated responses to duck useless when the peril was quickly put behind her.

They hit the bottom of the gorge, the trail leveling out though it did not become less convoluted. Lainey used the more mellow ride to unclench her fingers from her handlebars. That had definitely lasted longer than the Happy Valley run. Despite earlier trepidations, she was glad they had taken the run at night. The trail had been scary enough with just a head lamp; taking the descent in daylight would have caused her heart failure.

Before she could relax completely, the trail began a steep climb, slowing her team. She hopped off the sled and helped push the cumbersome thing up the hill, and they broke out of the gorge onto tundra.

Lainey stepped back onto the runners, feeling wind whipping about her lower legs and brushing her face. Powdered snow apparently covered the ground, though she could not see it for the windswept blizzard. Lainey saw only the tails of her wheel dogs in the gloom, yet she easily located a six foot tripod trail marker coming up in the distance. Her visibility was obscured below her waist and she took in the sight of Scotch ahead, gliding through a cloud, pulled by unseen forces. She marveled at the eeriness, the sky illuminated by the Aurora Borealis, starlight flickering bright in the crisp cold sky, and shadowy lumps of hills bordering the shallow valley.

They continued to climb, moving from one valley into a more narrow one, the wind dying down to give Lainey better visibility. The trail crossed a river with standing water. As the team splashed through it, Lainey frowned. Heldig was bare pawed again, as well as a couple of other dogs. She would have to stop soon to take care of their feet before ice formed between their toes.

The climb steepened, the trail weaving between foliage and a frozen creek as it went. It opened up onto a frozen lake, and Lainey whistled to get Scotch’s attention.

Calling the dogs to a halt, Lainey had a difficult moment stomping the snow hook into the icy surface. She grabbed a bag of frozen fish and snacked her team as she moved forward.

“We need to go over their paws,” Scotch said, meeting Lainey halfway between their teams.

“That’s what I was thinking. Heldig kicked off her booties miles ago.”

“Let’s get to it then. We don’t have much farther to go in mileage, but we’ve got a potential rough road ahead.”

Lainey returned to her team. The bitter cold nipped at her fingers when she removed her arctic mittens. She fumbled with the rubber gloves and stuffed her pockets with dog booties. Even those who still had them would need them replaced. She spent the next several minutes changing out booties, digging ice balls out from between canine toes, slathering ointment on pads, and recovering her dogs’ feet with corduva booties. It took longer than she thought it would, because even those with booties had ice developing on their paws from the water they had run through.

“Passing!”

Startled, she looked up to see a musher’s head lamp coming toward her. She gave the musher a wave, noting he was one of the pair hastily attempting to follow Scotch when they had left Rainy Pass checkpoint. She grinned and returned to her task, wondering if the man felt smug at catching Scotch so soon in the race. Was the other musher on his way, as well?