Injuries starting to pile up, and the racing season hasn’t begun

KASILOF, Alaska, Nov. 15, 2006 — Jason Mackey sat in the passenger seat of Bruce Linton’s dog truck and had a chance to fling the door open and jump as the heavy vehicle slid toward a steep bluff, but he didn’t bail, mainly because they were going so slow and he figured the truck would stop. It didn’t.

Like a bad dream, the wreck unfolded in slow motion on the sharp, icy right button-hook turn around the lip of a steep gully down to Coyote Creek. Locals call the spot “Deadman’s Curve.” The two dog mushers on their way to the only useable snow in the region were packing 20 dogs, two sleds and supplies for a short training run. Linton turned the wheel but the truck kept sliding toward the lip of the canyon until the truck tilted left over the edge and began a series of cartwheels, flinging and crushing the sleds, smashing the wooden dog box built on the truck’s frame and imploding the cab against the two men.
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