Rookies learn patience of distance mushing on Iditarod trail
NOME, Alaska — Matt Anderson’s father, Doug, had his son’s number one rookie lesson figured out long before the team hit Front Street.
Anderson, 26, was a big time wrestler for the University of Iowa. He ate, breathed and spat wrestling. He thinks like a wrestler, his father said. So I’m told, that frame of mind is “all about me.” What is it going to take for “me” to win? Distance dog mushing takes just as much focus, but that attention has to paid not to “me,” but to the dogs.
One of the first statements out of Anderson’s wind-chapped lips at the finish line was, “This takes an incredible amount more patience than wrestling.”
The young rookie with a mere two years of dog mushing to his credit still appeared as unflappable as he had some 11 days ago, back at the restart in Willow. But he said the Iditarod Trail had taught him some new lessons and a lot of respect. His most memorable section of trail, he said, was the Yukon River. It is flat and featureless. From the air, it seems like the easiest part of the trail. After all, it’s horizontal. Where’s the challenge in that?
Other parts, such as Ophir to Iditarod, with its endless exposed mounds of grass and dirt were physically challenging, but “not as hard on the dogs as the river was,” he said. The river wasn’t hard on Anderson, but it was hard on his dogs, and if it’s hard on the dogs, it’s for sure going to wind up being hard on Anderson. “The wind, it was intimidating,” he said, his voice now vocalizing in the English language what his dogs through drooped ears, hard looks and decreased speed had communicated to him all too clearly. By now, he had become their translator, an extension of them as they were an extension of him. “And they’d never seen overflow or glare ice in their lives,” he added.
Before he ran the Iditarod, neither Anderson nor any of his 16 dogs had the slightest clue what they were in for, and it was easy to see that in their faces as the team trotted up Front Street in Nome. His dogs looked startled at the parked cars, pedestrians and store fronts, which come as a shock to the human on the runners, too, after 11 days of seeing virtually nothing but Alaska wilderness. They approached the snowy ramp leading to the finish line – the famed burled arch – with trepidation not seen in veteran teams. (Veteran dogs trot forcefully under the arch, knowing precisely that the trail is at an end.)
Like all the other rookies who completed this wind-ravaged Iditarod, Anderson had a big smile pasted under the frostbite at the tip of his nose.
A crowd of friends, family, race officials and plain old race fans cheered the team into the chute, impressing the daylights out of Anderson’s father. He was amazed that a 41st-place finish like Anderson’s would be so warmly welcomed by Nome, by fellow competitors and past champions like Dick Mackey, in town for the week just like Doug Anderson, to celebrate his son’s victory.
Matt has competed and placed high in national wrestling tournaments, his father said, stumbling for a moment over the words while his eyes rimmed with moisture. Finally, he managed, “Wrestling prepared him for the Iditarod.”
Musher’s secret tip: Hot pockets
Two non-rookies, half-brothers Ray and Ryan Redington shared one secret to keeping warm on a cold night while running a team of sled dogs. Most every dog musher sends several packets of chemical, air-activated, handwarmers to every checkpoint. The little packets of iron shavings can radiate warmth for about six hours. But the secret isn’t in using the heat packets in mittens to keep hands warm, although there’s nothing so sweet as shoving cold hands into preheated overmitts. Ray Redington said he stuck a couple of the heat packs into the front pockets of his pants just to stash them for a second, and discovered that it seemed to heat his whole body, hands included. I haven’t talked to any medical people about this, but Cabela’s does include pockets in the back of its Trans-Alaska suit intended for those handwarmers. The point is to aim the heat near the kidneys, and warm the blood flowing through that region. It’s possible the same thing happens to the blood flowing in the arteries down the legs.
Right after Ray Jr., 31, pointed out how he discovered the phenomenon, Ryan, 24, smiled and said their father, Raymie, had told him about that a long time ago.
No wonder he was shivering
Jim Lanier had a sore left foot all the way up the Bering Sea Coast, but like all the other mushers in the Iditarod, he had lots of aches and pains. It was just one more to deal with. He had a blister on the heel earlier, so he didn’t bother looking at it. Then the 66-year-old retired pathologist started feeling cold, shivering all the time even when he was taking his mandatory eight-hour layover at White Mountain. His wife, Anna, noticed his odd, distressed behavior when she spoke with by phone during that break. The miserable, sickened musher limped his way to the finish line 11 hours later and hobbled off to shower and nap. That’s when he discovered red streaks going up his leg. That blistered had opened into a sore and that sore was very, very infected. Lanier was all smiles 24 hours later, walking around with a shoe on his right foot and a soft boot liner cushioning his tender left foot. The father of another musher who is a licensed doctor prescribed some antibiotics. Lanier said he was doing much better.