PUNTILLA LAKE — Just before dawn Tuesday, the final few teams were making their way up from Finger Lake, though increasingly deep trenches left behind by the passing of 80-plus dog teams. Some made it better than others.
“It was a heck of a trip,” sighed Joe Runyan, the 1989 Iditarod champ brought out of retirement to help guide legally blind musher Rachael Scdoris of Bend, Ore. Runyan and Scdoris were in great spirits, as were their dogs. Runyan, 59, said the trail brought back fond memories, but he was sure glad he wasn’t racing.
He said there were ruts eight feet deep, which sounded like an exaggeration, but his description was backed up by Sue Allen, driving Martin Buser’s team of yearlings. The ruts, which looked like something scooped out of the earth by a backhoe the width of a dog sled, totally submerged her as she went through, she said. Her head was below the level of the surrounding ground, and she would see nothing but snow walls on either side as she passed through.
The problem with such ruts is the dogs try to run to the side of them, then the sled invariably gets sucked in, dragging the team into the hole as it goes. Sue Morgan, a rookie, had painful evidence of just how nasty these holes can be. She’d tipped over into a deep rut, fell face first hanging on to her sled and her nose connected with a stump or tree limb at the bottom. Her nose was bloody and slightly swollen as she tended her dogs at the Rainy Pass checkpoint, but she was in good spirits and said it didn’t hurt, yet. There was no immediate sign of bruising.
While some humans got banged up, the dogs have looked just fine. Only a smattering of dogs were being left behind at Rainy Pass; most of the teams leaving here are 14 to 16 strong.
Morgan broke some ribs in the Happy River steps on her first attempt to complete the Iditarod in 2006. She was forced to scratch at Rainy Pass. With the generally excellent trail through the steps this year, Morgan was just starting to get excited. “I was thinking, ‘Oh man, I’m going to get through this! Then crack,’ ” she said.
Morgan had no intention of scratching because of the banged up nose.
It wasn’t just mushers having a tough time in the trenches. Snowmobilers traveling up with the dog teams with video crews were having a difficult time, some getting thoroughly wedged in the narrow holes. One cameraman tipped his snowmachine in soft snow at the top of one of the steps, pinning his foot between his heavy machine and a tree. Along came Jason Mackey’s team, which ran right over the cowling of his upended machine. Somehow, Mackey’s snow hook bounced off his handlebar and hooked the footboard of the machine. The power of 16 sled dogs raring to go downhill reefed the heavy machine up, freeing the rider’s trapped foot. Mackey simply asked if everyone was allright, pulled his hook and roared off.
Rough ride for Joe Garnie; socks go up in smoke
Joe Garnie was taking his 24-hour layover at Rainy Pass after having a rough time getting to Puntilla Lake. His northern dogs from the Nome area were overheating in the soft snow and temperatures in the upper 20s. As if to add insult to injury, Garnie had draped his boot liners over a oil-fueled heat stove in the small musher’s bunk house. The liners, made of synthetic materials instead of good, old-fashioned wool, soon melted. Smoked filled the roughly 12-by-16-foot room. A black cloud poured out when one of the race judges opened the door to check on the sleeping mushers inside. He kept the door open to clear the air, prompting one of them to complain that it was getting cold.
Scdoris, Runyan having a good time
Both Scdoris and Runyan made it through the trenches without a scrape, although Runyan said he’d tipped his sled a few times. “But were you moving when you got back up?,” Scdoris asked as she tended her dogs parked side by side with his.
“Yeah,” Runyan replied.
“Then technically that’s not a crash,” she said.
The pair were playfully bickering about what to do next. “I prefer camping; he prefers checkpoints,” she said, prompting Runyan to shoot back, “You can’t beat the service — bales of straw and hot water.” What’s the big deal with packing straw and dog food to your own campout?, Scdoris asked, suggesting they blow through Rohn and camp on the way to Nikolai. The big deal, her veteran mentor pointed out, is that they’d be adding 50 pounds of food, straw and fuel, making their sleds top heavy in what will likely be the worst section of trail in 1,000 miles of racing. The snowless section out of Rohn is always difficult: bumpy, icy and tricky.
Snow continued falling Tuesday morning in Rainy Pass, generally fairly light but persistent. My goal is to leap-frog by airplane up to Nikolai to meet the front runners but I’m at the mercy of the weather. Pilots will not fly if it’s not safe to get through the always tricky Alaska Range.