Broken Trails

She gathered doggie dishes and blankets, cleaned her area, and booted her team. It was becoming second nature. She finished the task in less than fifteen minutes this time. By the end of the race, she would be doing the same thing in five. This time she grabbed a bail of straw and lashed it to her sled. The dogs would need some warm bedding out on the trail.

“See you out there,” she told Roman, who was in the final stages of preparation himself.

“I’m right behind you.”

Lainey grinned at the inherent threat of his words. Rather than take the bait, she ordered her dogs toward the check out point. It was time to put some distance between them, at least for a little while.

CHAPTER FORTY

THE STRAW LASHED to her sled made the ride a bit ungainly, but the good weather compensated for the extra weight. Cool temperatures and the setting sun made for decent trail. Anything that had softened up during the day would freeze over in the night. Lainey’s team trotted along in the footsteps of thirty mushers with little difficulty. She joined the dogs, stripping off her parka to combat overheating as she ran alongside the sled.

They passed through an abandoned mining town, with old and deteriorating cabins on either side of the trail. This was Poorman, once a booming metropolis in the early 1900’s when the siren’s song of gold had plucked the string of many a man’s heart. Even after they left Poorman behind them, occasional mining camps sat desolate and forgotten off to either side. Lainey almost wished she could stop and explore. If it were not for the threat of Roman overtaking her she might have. Instead, she sighed and continued to run with her dogs.

The team climbed to high ground for a bit. When the team dropped to Sulatna River, Lainey hopped back onto the runners. Iditarod markers were easy to see, which was fortunate. Along this stretch there were many trails, evidence of wildlife, trappers and trail breakers. Even with the well marked paths, it was easy to be distracted onto a different one and Lainey was forced to keep her attention on the trail instead of sight see. It was just as well since the sun would be setting soon.

Lainey went over her notes while on the easy sections, though she kept her eye open for sweepers. She expected some difficulties once they hit the road. Chuckling, she said, “What the hell is a road doing out here?”

No answer was forthcoming, but her timing was good. The road in question loomed up before her, and the team ran along it. Up ahead was the Sulatna Crossing, a steel bridge spanning a creek. According to trail markers, Lainey was supposed to go right over it, but she halted the dogs. The bridge looked pitted and worn in her head lamp, just like Poorman had. Was it truly safe to cross?

Lainey snacked her dogs and checked Heldig’s paws. She still had one bootie on, and Lainey put on three more. Then she walked back to the bridge and peered down. The drop was about fifteen feet, no worse than falling off the roof of the cabin. But at least there she would not have a heavy sled and fifteen dogs to tangle in if she slid off. She reached out and thumped the steel. It seemed solid enough, and there were no tracks showing mushers taking a different route. She had not gotten lost because the way had an official Iditarod marker.

She heard barking behind her and ran to her sled. Damn. Roman was coming. She would be damned if she let him catch her ogling. “Let’s go!”

Her dogs, eager to keep ahead of the approaching team, bustled across with ease. Lainey glanced back to see Roman coming up to the bridge. She envied his assurance as he never wavered, letting his team pull him across without a second thought. Was she more cautious than he was? Or did he simply have the benefit of hearing Iditarod tales as he grew up?

In any case, he was here now, and she could either urge her dogs forward or let them run at their own pace. Lainey had to remind herself that the race was already won and she still had days to go before reaching the end. Risking her dogs now would do nothing but force her to scratch before Nome when they became too exhausted.

Keeping that firmly in mind, Lainey refused to become too disgruntled as Roman passed her with a grin. Much. Her trash talkers had other ideas, though, as they bitched and kvetched at Roman’s dogs, who returned the favor with lots of swagger and tail wagging. She laughed at her team, proud of their attitude. “That’s right, you tell them,” she said.

The trail continued on the road for several miles. They followed it between two lakes and across a creek. There was some overflow here but nothing too dangerous. A decent breeze pushed through the area, causing small drifts that smoothed into the trail, but even that difficulty hardly slowed them.

Lainey passed Roman while he was snacking his dogs, and tried not to grin too impudently. They were evenly enough matched that he would pass her when she stopped to do the same.

Apparently the road followed switchbacks that the trail did not. Her team went off the road for a time only to return to it for a while longer, then repeated the procedure. In the dark it was a rude surprise to find herself suddenly in a ditch due to glacier like run off crossing the trail. A couple of times Lainey balanced on one runner to keep upright. A spiteful little voice hoped that Roman would have the same difficulties.

They passed a highway maintenance shed, though there was no way this road could be termed a highway, even without snow and ice covering the pavement. Providing there was pavement under the snow. The breeze was stronger here, but the treeline kept it to a minimum. It was not long before the trail climbed out of that meager protection.

Here the wind was stronger and had scrubbed parts of the trail clean. Lainey learned firsthand that the road was not paved as her teeth rattled from going over bare gravel. Rather than worry about Roman overtaking her, she now ran along with her team to lighten the weight of the sled, hoping the runners would survive the rough ride. She had spare plastic runners to replace the coverings that were shredding, but if the metal parts of the runners themselves were damaged … Lainey only had one other sled waiting at a checkpoint, her sprint sled at Unalakleet, and that was two hundred miles or more away.

The sled trundled along for some time, the occasional patch of remaining snow giving sharp contrast to the grating of the road and the wind pulling at Lainey’s parka. Finally, the trail dipped back into the protected tree line, and snow once more carpeted the ground. Lainey breathed a sigh of relief.

She passed a sign, Mile Point 30. It would be time to stop soon. Lainey turned off her head lamp and looked behind her, not wanting to give Roman a chance to see her if she could help it. His lamp was nowhere in sight. Either he had dropped back or he had turned his lamp off for the same reason. Lainey grinned.

More signs, these indicating the trail where it ran through a summer village called Long. Everything was boarded up for the winter, but the buildings were well cared for, not like the aging Poorman she had passed outside of the last checkpoint. According to her notes, she was at the halfway point between Cripple and Ruby. If she went much further, she would be back into exposed wind and weather. Again she glanced back. Had Roman stopped for a rest break? Should she?

Outside of Long, Lainey pulled her team to the side of the trail. She turned on her head lamp to read her watch and was surprised to see she had only been out for four hours. She still had two more to go before reaching her recommended run / rest schedule. Two more hours would put her almost to Ruby. It would be ridiculous to rest then, knowing she only had twenty miles to the checkpoint.