NOME, Alaska — Chalk up two top 10 finishes for Team Baker in the most rugged, wind-blown Iditarod in recent memory. John Baker crossed the finish line at 9:36 a.m. Wednesday and was in the chute in street clothes three hours later to welcome his dog handler, Tollef Monson, who ran Baker’s second-string dogs. Monson rolled to a stop under the burled arch in 10th place.
It was a race of highs and lows for Baker, as it was for most every musher who didn’t finish first. A race like the Iditarod is unforgiving. Any mistake can cost minutes and hours, and there are always hungry teams willing to pass.
First of all, the bad news: Baker has racked up nine top 10 finishes in his 12 Iditarods. He is one of the best, most consistent dog drivers in distance mushing. “It is really gratifying,” the Kotzebue, Alaska, musher said of his track record. “Not to forget there’s another Baker team in the top 10 this year. Team Baker is alive and well.”
For Baker, the race boiled down to an exercise in patience. Early on, he lost his patience, and his temper, after missing a key turn back at Rainy Pass. The mistake cost him four hours, which the longtime veteran noted wasn’t really that significant in itself. A good team can make that up by the coast. But the dogs picked up on his foul mood and slowed down, plus he tried to make the time up too quickly – impatience – by running an hour longer and resting an hour shorter instead of nickel-and-diming his way up the trail. His run times slowed down and he dropped a few dogs. It looked like he was in survival mode coming to the coast.
Then the good news: Baker still had plenty of tricks up his sleeve, including some gentle mind games with the competition. “It was kind of fun. I started making them think my team was weaker than it was,” lulling them to not pay attention to him.
Then Baker’s race experience kicked in. He made a series of long runs with shorter rest, knowing his dogs could handle it, and he kept the mood light, managing to pass several teams. The last was Mitch Seavey on the way to Nome.
Monson was just as pleased, but mainly he marveled at the way his boss finessed his way up the Bering Sea coast. This was Monson’s second Iditarod, and he said seeing the other teams up at the front and how Baker managed his team was a great learning experience.
“I knew you could do it,” Baker told Monson. “Next time you’ll believe me.”
Monson, 28, is one of the toughest individuals on the trail and has a unique sense of fun. He likes it real. Asked what his favorite part of the trail was, Monson replied the run from Ophir to Iditarod, which other mushers described as a hellish ride through barren tundra with hummocks as tall as they were, with no discernable trail between the wooden lathe markers. Monson described it as “rough with no trail markers at night. It was like, whoa, we’re out here in the middle of nowhere with no trail markers and no trail.”
At one point, in Unalakleet, it appeared Monson was on the verge of passing his boss’s team. The two talked and Baker most definitely did not tell his prot?g? to back off. He told him the opposite. “The only thing we talked about was if he had a chance to pass me, or anyone else, he better do it. It’s a race,” Baker said.
If Monson had a chance to do it over again, he said he would definitely have run the dogs from Unalakleet all the way to Koyuk, a 12-hour journey bypassing Shaktoolik. The dogs had it in them, he said. When he saw Baker spend only two hours at Shaktoolik and get up and go, he said, “I’m, like, holy cow. It’s a go-get-’em attitude kind of deal.”
Cim “sneaks” into Nome
The Smyth brothers, Cim and Ramey, are famous for their fast finishes. And Cim lived up to expectations this year with a blistering two hour, four minute run from the last checkpoint of Safety to Nome. It’s a 22-mile leg.
His seven-dog team streamed under the burled arch in 11th place, and one of the first things people noticed was Smyth’s footwear. He had worn a pair of regular cross-country running shoes the last 77 miles from White Mountain in temperatures hovering around zero degrees.
“Well, uh, I sent the sneakers to White Mountain by post office,” he explained. But the package hadn’t been delivered to the checkpoint when he got in late at night. “I wouldn’t have worn ‘em, but I had to wake up the mayor to get the sneakers, so figured I had to wear ‘em and run.”
Was it cold? “It would have been if I hadn’t been running, but if you wake people in the middle of the morning to get your sneakers, you better use ‘em.”
The Iditarod has an award for the fastest run from Safety to Nome within the top 20, which is traditionally won by either Cim or Ramey Smyth. Cim’s run time will be very difficult to beat.
Tragedy for Ramy Brooks
Ramy Brooks handled the media microphones well but seemed tired and spent as he arrived in 15th place. As it turned out, he was distraught. He had something very troubling on his mind. Asked about the trail, he replied in a thick voice, “In all the Iditarods I’ve seen it’s the worst trail conditions. It definitely beat up the mushers and sleds. Oh, it’s just good to be done.”
What Brooks didn’t say was that he’d had a dog die on the way to Safety. He reported it to Iditarod officials there, and they’d told him to carry the body in his sled to the finish line so they could begin a necropsy to discover a cause. Brooks, from Healy, Alaska, and the son of sprint mushing legend Roxy Wright, is soft spoken, serious and sincere. He was having a very satisfying run, nursing a younger team up the trail to build the dogs up for next year.
“This is very disturbing to Ramy,” said Iditarod race marshal Mark Nordman, who announced the death to the media after Brooks left the chute, which is the Iditarod’s standard way of handling this. It allows the musher some time to recover without media questions at the finish. Nordman announced the situation immediately after Brooks was gone. “As you saw, he did not sign in. We have up to eight hours to make sure he has done nothing wrong. We’re going to try to learn something from this tragic accident,” Nordman said.
It is the second known dog death this year. The first was a dog named Snickers running for Karen Ramstead’s team of pure-bred Siberian huskies. Ramstead had a goal of making it to Nome in 12 days, a good standard to the slower-paced Siberians. But she was so distraught, when the dog died at the checkpoint in Grayling, that she scratched from the race. That dog was resting at the checkpoint when it began to act lethargic. It turned out to have a bad ulcer, which veterinarians treated for hours to no avail.