Teams jockey, pass each other right up to the burled arch

NOME, Alaska — Clint Warnke and Scott Smith had a few tough breaks along the Iditarod trail this year, but their teams were coming together and the pair noticed their run times were as good, if not better, than some of the teams about five hours ahead of them. So they busted a move.

Don’t ever think dog mushers aren’t racing just because they finish 35th or 45th. There are races within the race, goals being set, and the teams up ahead are always in the cross-hairs of the folks an hour or two behind. That’s the main reason for several last-minute passes between White Mountain and Safety, or right down here on the sea ice outside Nome.

Teams finishing in the 30s and 40s fall into a couple of categories: Those who have had tough breaks and are still learning how to manage a team competitively over 1,000 miles; the second category is the “puppy” teams run by experienced mushers who are on a mission to bring dogs aged two and under to Nome in strong shape so they learn the trail. (I’ve mentioned in the past, and some my find it hard to believe, but dogs have a superior memory for trail. Show them a route once, and they’ll remember it next year, regardless of conditions. I’ve seen it many, many times over the years.)

So Warnke and Smith were sitting at Old Woman cabin about four hours away from Unalakleet, pondering their teams when Warnke got a sparkle in his eyes. He said why not blow through Unalakleet and run straight to Shaktoolik? The dogs are rested, and it will be a good lesson for the young teams and a good test to see what they’re made of.

The pair launched their seek-and-destroy mission to reach a pack made up of Allen Moore, Tom Lesatz and Rick Casillo, and their teams pulled it off just as they’d hoped. By skipping the checkpoint, they’d made that four-hour deficit up in a single run. They were now even with that crowd and still running faster.

Warnke was still smiling about it in Nome.

Moore, who was running two- and one-year-olds for his kennel shared with Aliy Zirkle, laughed and said Warnke and Smith had made a nice move. They finished ahead of that group. But Moore was also smiling because he’d been able to make a few finishing moves of his own, which included descending Cape Nome with the sun at his back so he was invisible to Rick Casillo. Moore gained ground. When the pair got to the sea ice just a couple miles from the finish, Moore’s leaders started trotting right past Casillo’s runners.

Moore, who has two Copper Basin 300 victories to his credit, couldn’t conceal a grin behind his weather beaten face as he said, “I guess I could have called ‘trail’ but that wouldn’t have been as much fun.” (When a musher calls ‘trail’, the team in front must stop and let the trailing team pass, unless they’re within the last mile of racing, which is usually designated ‘no man’s land, meaning it is simply a footrace from that point on.)

Steadily, Moore’s team inched its way past Casillo’s, until Casillo jammed on his brake on his own to allow the obviously faster team by. Moore beat Casillo by three minutes, claiming 37th place.

Not all races ended with smiles

Eric O. Rogers was hoping to better his rookie finish last year of 68th place, but the 59-year-old retired geophysicist ran into a spiraling set of difficulties that left him with a busted sled, cracked leg bone and frostbit toes and a two-day wait to be airlifted from the most remote section of the Iditarod trail.

“The short history is that I left Ophir about 11 p.m. At 1 a.m. we got into overflow and my feet got wet,” Rogers wrote in an e-mail posted to an Iditarod chat group. “At six a.m. my right foot caught a frozen tussock and was bent to the right and then back (probably when the fibula was broken). I also broke the left runner on the sled (which was already pretty beaten up). I patched the sled runner, fed the dogs, and noticed my foot was cold. At noon I continued down the trail and about 1 p.m., about 8 miles down the trail and 1-1/2 miles past Don’s Cabin the sled caught another tussock, bent my foot back to the right and underneath again (OUCH!), broke the right runner and the patch on the left runner. At that point my race was over.”

Rogers limped back to Don’s Cabin, a three-walled relic that still has horizontal bunks, however. His dogs were fine but Rogers and his sled were done. He waited 24 hours before the trail sweeps (Iditarod-sanctioned snowmobilers whose job is to ensure the back of the pack is safe) pulled in. They gave him some medical treatment. It was another 24 hours before they figured a way to get him out of there.

The Iditarod Air Force (a lot of top-notch pilots flying Cessnas and other small aircraft) found a flat spot to land nearby. Rogers and his dogs were airlifted out, but his ravaged sled and gear would have to wait till later.

The medical report for Rogers is a spiral fracture of the fibula, mild to moderate frostbite on the outside and big toe of his right foot and a bruised right shoulder. So, really nothing too serious. “The dogs are in great shape and handled the rough trail much better than I did,” he wrote.