Races leading up to Iditarod are adventures in themselves
Martin Buser’s wife, Kathy Chapoton, coined it perfectly in a blog during the Kuskokwim 300 sled dog race. She renamed the race the “Kusko-swim.” In a race where weather and location combined into a perfect miserable storm, mushers found themselves wading up to their hips in ice cold river water - and their dogs swimming in it - not once or twice, but over and over again for more than 50 miles.
Mitch Seavey from Sterling, Alaska, ended up with enough lead dogs and power to slog to the front and win the 2008 running of one of the most competitive and tricky 300-milers in the world. Ramey Smyth powered to second place.
Based in Bethel, Alaska, the race follows the broad Kuskokwim River north from village to village for 150 miles before button-hooking back to Bethel.
Weather was perfect when 22 dog teams departed on Jan. 18. It was in the 20s and the flat river trail was covered in snow. Then a warm south wind began to blow, then roar, gusting to 50 mph as temperatures rose into the upper 30s. By the halfway point, mushers reported crawling into howling headwinds with “blowing water” instead of blowing snow. And within hours, the snow turned to slush and then melted away. “I’ve never seen any change in a trail that fast,” said Martin Buser. “As we were going you could see things disappear. Even the ribbon of trail that was snow when we started out (from Aniak near the halfway point) was washed out and became dirt, a mere ribbon of fallen down trail markers.”
Anywhere else, such conditions would be bad, but the Kuskokwim 300 is run on a river, and one so near its mouth in the Pacific Ocean that it is tidally influenced. Along with the wind, tide waters were pushing up through cracks in the ice.
What the front runners hit on their way back to the start/finish line sounds nothing short of nightmarish. At night, they found themselves running on ice covered by six inches of water, punctuated with holes up to three feet deep. It seemed like the rising tide was forcing the wooden lathe trail markers up out of their chain-sawed slots in the ice. Mushers saw the markers floating in greasy pools of water.
“That last run from Akiachak (18 miles from the finish) to Bethel was the toughest run I’ve ever done,’ Seavey said. “That’s saying something since I’ve been running dogs since 1964.” Imagine the tension among mushers who had to lead their swimming teams across yards-long pools of deep water. They had to assume there was still river ice under their feet. The alternative would mean death.
“Our concern was, did the holes under the puddles go all the way into the river?,” Seavey said. “You just don’t know, and you keep the markers in your sight and assume that when they were put there, trailbreakers weren’t running close to any deep holes.”
Seavey always seems to rise to the top when conditions are the worst. Soft snow slowed teams to a crawl in the 2004 Iditarod, and Seavey pulled ahead leaving Koyuk to claim his first Iditarod victory. That same year, the Kusko had high winds and deep snow drifts. He won the Kusko that year, too.
He said his key to success in this year’s Kusko was enough leaders. He’d keep switching new dogs to the front of the team to spell the others. Seavey is understandably confident about his team for 2008.
Buser wasn’t trying to win, announcing before the race that his finish line was “in Nome.” He set out with a team that included younger dogs that needed testing. Buser is trying to field two teams in this year’s Iditarod, one for himself and one for his son, Rohn, 18, who is going to run his rookie Iditarod. Rohn got the A team, the trouble-free dogs, in Kusko, which his father described as a blessing. “I thought I gave him a winning dog team; they were some of the absolute best dogs of our kennel to work with. If it had been last year, he may have won by an hour or more.”
Indeed, Rohn led most of the way, but eventually got bogged down in those treacherous final miles. “His skills today are so much greater than his skills four days ago,” Martin Buser said right after the race. “It’s simply because he’s a young racer. There’s certain things you just can’t teach.” (Motivating your team to wallow through endless pools of deep ice water, for example.)
Actually, Martin Buser said his past experience taught him to do a few things to calm his team. He’d turn off his headlamp so the dogs didn’t have to see what appeared to them like an endless ocean all around. “In the scariest situations, I turned off all the lights,” he said. “I know that helped my dogs. Once I totally relinquished all my guidance, we were almost better off, but it was scarier than hell.”
Buser pointed out that these challenges, which the Kusko seems to throw at teams each year, are a real benefit to mushers and dogs. They build confidence, character and team unity.
Some drivers had better luck than others. Martin Buser, Seavey, Smyth, Ed Iten and John Baker found their way back OK. But others got lost or had to pull over. Rohn Buser pulled off on an island that seemed surrounded by deep water, and camped with his team until the water subsided a little. Jeff King got disoriented, which Seavey pointed out was easy to do with a dog team snaking around deep water on flat river ice. King mistakenly drove backwards for five miles, turned around, then wound up letting his team sleep for three hours up on a bank while he walked about a mile to find dry trail.
“These aren’t water dogs, they’re sled dogs, and they don’t like getting wet,” King said. “Miles and miles of grinding it out through endless water took a toll on the lead dogs, sapping their spirits.”
Seavey was surprised so many teams made it through the water and crossed the finish line. “When I was coming through there I was thinking, ‘There’s a lot of dog team that just couldn’t do this,’ he said. “I guess it’s a testament to the quality of teams in this race that as many finished that did. I was real impressed.”
Find the final standings and photos from the 2008 Kuskokwim 300 at the official race web site, www.k300.org/.