Date: December 3, 2006 at 8:28 pm
Nayokpuk touched thousands with his energy, kindness and humor
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Herbie Nayokpuk, a legendary Iditarod pioneer and one of the best-loved and most natural dog mushers in the sport, died Saturday surrounded by family at the Alaska Native Medical Center. Nayokpuk had suffered a huge stroke in mid-November at his home in Shishmaref, which left him comatose as his family gathered from across the state and nation.
Nayokpuk, 77, had been ill before. He had a stroke in 1988 and had undergone two triple heart bypasses, bouncing back from one such operation to race in yet another Iditarod – and race well, as he always did. But this time, it was different. As word spread about Nayokpuk’s worsening condition, his family was inundated with cards and e-mails from friends, acquaintances and people who never met “The Shishmaref Cannonball,” but who had been inspired by him. Plainly Nayokpuk’s influence spread far wider than his home village.
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Date: December 1, 2006 at 5:21 pm
KASILOF, Alaska — Every year, students write to me and other mushers with a series of questions for some school-related project. And once in a while, one of them just seems to hit the mark with well-worded and insightful queries. I got one recently from a boy named Jack that covered what longtime race fans would consider well-trodden territory. But Jack asked such open-ended questions that I felt compelled to cut right to the heart with my answers. And while the resulting dialog covered the simple basics, it seems worthwhile to compile the Q&A into a column to be posted here. Some fans are new to the sport and might appreciate this. For others, who, like me, sometimes gloss over the simple joy of running sled dogs as they talk about the minutiae of run/rest schedules, it’s never a bad idea to take a refresher course.
Here are Jack’s questions:
Q: What is it like to compete in the Iditarod or any sled dog race?
A: It is like nothing else I’ve ever done. The Iditarod, more than most other races, takes you to places mentally and physically where most people these days never go. You get tired, sore and sometimes hurt, and yet you find that you not only can keep going but also still have fun. It gives you new perspective on the rest of life.
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Date: November 6, 2006 at 5:48 pm
King converts barn for his latest innovation: Altitude training
KASILOF, Alaska — Jeff King’s dogs nap on simulated mountaintops and run through real valleys – a one-two combination that experts who train Olympic athletes, Tour de France cyclists and the NFL’s Chicago Bears advise for peak fitness.
Many athletes have turned to altitude chambers – hoping to boost endurance, strength and speed – for more than a decade. But who would have thought the technique would show up in Alaska to condition sled dogs? Who else: Jeff King, winner of the 2006 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and renowned tinkerer.
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Date: October 27, 2006 at 5:53 pm
Lindner hopes to make waves in 2007
KASILOF, Alaska — When word got out this past summer that 2006 Iditarod champ Jeff King converted his own Goose Lake into an exercise pool for his racing dogs, several other stories emerged of mushers who’ve gone to similar measures to keep their canine athletes fit through the offseason. One of those mushers is Sonny Lindner, the savvy veteran from Fairbanks who not only loves being with dogs in the great outdoors but is also capable of racing to the front.
Lindner, who won the inaugural Yukon Quest in 1983, says he’s been swimming his huskies every summer for the past few years – ever since he read an article in “Mushing” magazine about dog conditioning guru Arleigh Reynolds’ devising a pool for that purpose.
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Date: October 16, 2006 at 11:21 am
KASILOF, Alaska — It seems you can almost never trust a die-hard Iditarod musher who claims to be retiring. Mike Williams has joined the ever-growing list of mushers who’ve claimed to be hanging it up for good, only to return a year later.
After a dozen Iditarods, he took a year’s hiatus in 2006 to relieve his family a little bit, but has signed up to make the journey from his home in remote Akiak to the Anchorage starting line again in 2007. It wasn’t Williams’ desire to take a break in the first place.
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Date: September 21, 2006 at 11:33 am
KASILOF, Alaska — Whiteouts are the norm along the largely treeless Bering Sea Coast, where cold, heavy air roars out of the hills in an urgent rush for the low-lying shore. But one particular storm in 1991 – a nasty, howling tempest – did more than simply sculpt new drifts across the landscape that year, it carved its way into the souls of the people who lived through it.
That storm ended a number of careers and boosted others, caused some people to lose hope while refining the hearts of a few. It forever changed the history of the sport, marking Rick Swenson – one of two who trudged blindly ahead into the storm’s maw – as the race’s only five-time champion, an honor he has held for the past 15 years.
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Date: September 5, 2006 at 3:43 pm
KASILOF, Alaska — Note: For a lot of reasons, I am reluctant to write too much about my own dog team and the limited success I’ve had racing Alaskan huskies. I’m not that interested in writing about myself, unless it helps illustrate something about the sport from an insider’s point of view. But I recently was preparing notes for a talk at a sled dog symposium about how I race with a small kennel of dogs, and I thought those notes might be interesting to readers.
I came off the ice-cold Kuskokwim 300 last year thrilled with my team. We’d held together nicely and chased Jeff King, Mitch Seavey and Ramy Brooks hard to the finish. Once again, I was fourth place in a sled dog race. I have a way of finishing fourth or fifth in most races. When I groused a little about that to DeeDee Jonrowe at the 2007 Iditarod signup picnic, she barely paused before replying, “There’s a whole lot of mushers who wish they had that ‘problem.’”
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Date: August 11, 2006 at 11:53 am
Jeff King wonders if he’s hit on another strategy to gain an edge.
KASILOF, Alaska — Ask Jeff King how his summer is going after winning the Iditarod and he might just say, “Swimmingly.”
The four-time champion from Denali Park, Alaska, is hardly resting on his laurels after out-racing his main rival in 2006, Doug Swingley of Lincoln, Mont., and 82 other dog teams.
Using a couple of boats with brand-new outboards, some rope, fishing buoys and some canine flotation vests, King has instituted a program of offseason exercise to keep his 30 top racing dogs in peak shape during the hottest time of year, when most sled dogs are losing muscle tone. It’s too hot to run them, so King’s dogs are swimming laps around Goose Lake, the scenic pond near his house.
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Date: August 7, 2006 at 3:06 pm
KASILOF, Alaska — With her husband and two children at her bedside at a Seattle cancer hospital, four-time Iditarod champion Susan Butcher – a battler with singular toughness and spirit – realized it was finally time to let go. She died at 3:25 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 5, in Seattle. She was 51.
Husband David Monson and daughters, Tekla and Chisana, left the hospital that evening, made their way aboard a ferry to Bainbridge Island, and sat in a quiet place by the water where their mother loved to go. Then they looked up at the stars.
“Tekla wore her mother’s necklace and Chisana wore her rings. We sat silently near the shore and looked up,” Monson wrote in a Web diary that he has kept since his wife went in for treatment. “The sky was an explosion of stars. I asked Chisana which one she thought was her mom. She sat on my lap and studied the sky for a long time. Finally she pointed and said, ‘I think that one. But don’t worry she is not alone.’”
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Date: August 2, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Setback: Butcher’s leukemia returns
KASILOF, Alaska — No sooner had the public learned that Susan Butcher was battling her body’s rejection of a recent bone marrow transplant than the news suddenly changed, but not necessarily for the better. She beat the marrow rejection, but doctors had to break the disheartening news that the transplant itself failed. The four-time Iditarod winner will need a second transplant if she is to beat leukemia.
Her husband, David Monson, has been keeping a Web diary, followed by thousands of race fans across the world. His July 29 entry must have been difficult to write. He said: “The news is very hard on us because it means that we have to go back and do everything we have done since December 5 over again, including having a 2nd transplant.”
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