Seavey joins tail-dragger set, aims for second victory
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — I never thought driving an Iditarod-caliber dog team could be so easy, until I hitched up nine of Mitch Seavey’s dogs and headed down his home trails for my first run on the back of a tail-dragger sled.
From my seat - a padded fold-down chair bolted to a plastic tote - I had to convince myself it was OK to let go of the handlebar. I did. Then I reached into the handlebar bag, pulled out a thermos with one hand, and, holding the cup in the other, poured myself a cup of strong Irish breakfast tea. This was easy. Snowflakes pelted my face on the straight, flat trail as I lazily watched black spruce trees pass by at 9 mph and sipped the hot drink. Seavey piloted a 10-dog team just up ahead. “So this is what it’s like to drive a tail-dragger sled,” I thought. “I’m going to have to build one of these.”
Seavey suddenly took a hard right off the main trail. I watched for a second or two before the realization sunk in: I still had the thermos in my left hand and the cup full of tea in my right. I tried dumping the cup to the side, spilling most of it on my right knee, jammed the cup onto the thermos and fumbled it into the sled bag just in time to stand up, grab the handlebar and work the sled through the tight turn.
“No wonder mushers end up falling asleep on the back of these things,” I thought. “You get lulled by the comfort.”
This will be Seavey’s first Iditarod with a sit-down sled. He built his own and has been testing it all season.
He had invited me over from my home about 25 miles away to run half his Iditarod candidates so he could break the group into two manageable sets, keeping speeds down and reducing risk of injury to his dogs as the days ticked ever closer to the start of the 2007 Iditarod. Enjoying a crack at riding a tail-dragger was just one first on that snowy night in mid-February. I also got a look at the 2004 Iditarod champion’s dogs and his unique harness and gangline setup.
We ran about three hours, starting out an hour before sunset at 4:30 p.m., camped the dogs on beds of straw for three hours, then ran three hours back to his home kennel, getting back about 2 a.m. - a typical Seavey schedule. Actually it was early for Seavey, who’d been taking off at night, bedding down with his dogs through the wee hours, and running the team back home in the morning. Late-night scheduling permeated the kennel. Son, Dallas, was out well after midnight along with a handler, running his squad of 2-year-olds that he’d be racing in the Iditarod.
Holding down the fort during daylight, Seavey’s oldest son, Danny, could be found between the shop/office and the house, managing the business end of the sprawling enterprise, which includes summer and winter dogsled tours in addition to two racing teams. Mitch and Janine Seavey’s youngest, Conway, 10, spent the afternoon hauling firewood to the house and helping his father harness dogs.
Halfway through the 60-mile run, Seavey and I pulled off the trail, hooked our teams to trees, removed booties and put straw down for the dogs. Seavey unloaded a cooker and dumped in six bottles of methyl alcohol. Igniting it, he topped it with a pot of fresh snow, casually ladling more snow into the pot as the snow melted into an ever-warming pool of water, heated by the flickering blue flames of the cooker.
Tending dogs on the trail is a mindless, uncomplicated exercise, and it was easy to remember why so many mushers look forward to the simplicity of life on the Iditarod trail. No phones, no interruptions. Snow fell silently as we waited for the water to heat up and talked aimlessly about mushing and the Iditarod.
I had to ask him to discuss his harness and gangline setup, which uses small dowels of wood to spread the harnesses and bigger pieces of wood to anchor the harnesses away from the central towline. When it comes to these things, Seavey and I are from different worlds. I use the small half-harnesses that Jeff King pioneered, going without necklines. Each system is an attempt to tweak equipment to make it better suited for traveling long distances. King swears by his setup, in which dogs push against the front of the harness. The point is to get the dogs to pull less hard and cruise along at a safe speed for hours. Seavey has an entirely different viewpoint, saying his bars and spreaders get the maximum efficiency out of his dogs over the long haul. They can pull more with less effort, he said.
Whether it was the harness arrangement or whether it was Seavey’s fine dogs and his meticulous training, the nine dogs I ran that night easily hauled me and a loaded sled up every small rise we encountered. The ride slowed down predictably on the uphills, but it felt like a smooth conveyor belt.
Speed isn’t a major issue with Seavey. Although his dogs naturally have the ability to run fast, he has trained them to trot along at 9 to 10 mph right out of the dog yard. He expressed a mixture of satisfaction, pride and a hint of discomfort as he talked about the pace of his team. No musher enjoys being passed, and Seavey is no exception. He and a few others (King, Robert Sorlie and John Baker come to mind) typically have their teams dialed down a notch. It will be easy for a few others to pass them on the first wild night of the 2007 Iditarod as 80-something over-amped dog teams wend their way down the frozen Yentna River to Skwentna. They will pass them back later.
Seavey has never been one to give away his game plan, but he acknowledged he’ll have to run longer and rest a little shorter if he’s to keep up with the speedier competition. But that’s been his specialty the last three years - a team capable of powering through tough conditions like a monster truck, and motoring the same speed all the way.
That same team that seemed slow at the race start can look like a dragster down the homestretch leaving Unalakleet, when all the other teams have slowed down after seven days of hard racing. Suddenly, slow becomes fast, and that’s where Seavey might be poised for another come-from-behind victory like he managed in 2004, when he passed Kjetil Backen on the coast and padded his lead to a comfortable margin by the time he reached Nome.