Bicknell’s Red Lantern run includes pit stop in dreaded blowhole
KASILOF — The 2008 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is officially over with the arrival of Red Lantern winner Deborah Bicknell.
The second time proved to be the charm for Bicknell, who returned to the Iditarod in 2008 after enduring a day-long adventure last year lost in a blizzard and drenched by a slip in the Kuskokwim River in the heart of the Alaska Range. This year, Bicknell helped a couple of other mushers — Liz Parrish and Molly Yazwinski — and wound up getting the honor of being last across the finish line when Yazwinski scratched and Parrish’s stronger team surged ahead.
Bicknells’ eight-dog team trotted under the burled arch about 8:30 p.m. Monday to an enthusiastic crowd of dignitaries and fans, where she blew out the widow’s lamp, which is left lit while there’s a team still on the trail. It took her 15 days, 5 hours and 36 minutes, almost six days slower than winner Lance Mackey.
“I was planning on not being last,” the 62-year-old daughter of a longtime mushing family said.”My dog team is better than that.”
This is an unusual event in that it doesn’t really have losers, whether you are first or 78th, as Bicknell was. Eighteen more teams started the race but couldn’t make it to Nome for one reason or another. It’s true that anyone who finishes the Iditarod has accomplished a feat in itself.
Even with outstanding snow conditions this year making for generally smooth trail, the Iditarod is rarely without it’s hair-raising moments, and it typically dishes out a little extra punishment for those who stay out on the trail longer. This year proved no exception. The infamous Solomon Blowhole, only 27 miles from the finish line, was silent for the front runners but roared to life and pummeled the very back of the pack with howling winds and blowing snow. It was the only place that pinned Bicknell down, and with Nome practically in sight.
Bicknell lost sight of the trail and spent three hours Monday afternoon sitting in the midst of a fierce winds and snow blowing so hard that it buried her curled up dogs. The blowhole is about a five-mile long stretch of innocent looking beach front, but it’s at the foot of some treeless hills that form a kind of air funnel from the interior to the shore. It can blow hurricane force from right to left across a trail marked with reflectors set on tripods and upright pieces of driftwood. The fact that it occurs just before the checkpoint called “Safety” is no coincidence.
Bicknell had come out of the Topkok Hills from White Mountain only about 45 minutes behind Parrish, who waited for her at an emergency cabin just before the blowhole. Parrish thought they should go across together; Bicknell wanted to rest her dogs for a few hours, which she did. In hindsight, she said, she should have teamed up.
Bicknells’ leaders had a tough time staying on the trail, which Parrish described as indistinguishable except for scratch marks on the ground at her feet. They drifted right, into the wind, then shot left on command, but crossed right over the trail and kept going up a little knoll, Bicknell said. Disoriented and wanting to calm her spooked dogs, she gathered them up in the lee of her overturned sled and waited. And waited.
She was already firmly in last place by that point. Parrish had long since crossed the finish line, so Bicknell waited patiently until a snowmobiler came along to point her way back to Nome. She caught sight of a trail marker in the direction he pointed, got her dogs lined out and continued on her way.
“It was all pretty easy in the end,” she said. “I felt like a drama queen, y’know: Last year, the river and this year the blow hole.”
Bicknell would spend the day Tuesday relaxing and then partake in the second finishers’ banquet in the evening, along with Parrish, Martin Koenig, Gene Smith and any of the other mushers still in Nome. The race always holds a banquet for any finisher, and a 15-day red lantern is very respectable. The fastest red lantern finish, David Straub in 2002, was 14 days and 5 hours.
There are many, many races within the race, and this year it became obvious there was a three-woman effort to make it up the trail. Bicknell helped Parrish, who had badly hurt her hip in a fall near Rohn; in turn, Parrish helped Molly Yazwinski, who’d had the bad luck to drop key lead dogs by the Yukon River. Yazwinski worked tirelessly to keep her leaderless team moving, and would trail after Parrish sometimes so the dogs would chase.
But Yazwinski couldn’t get her team to leave White Mountain and, unhappily, had to scratch there, a frustratingly short 77-miles from the end of the race. Bicknell said she told Yazwinski, who has veterinary school waiting in the wings, she’d have to return in 2009 to finish the job. If Yazwinski does, she’ll enter the Iditarod again as a “rookie,” since only those who reach Nome are officially considered finishers.
Of the three, Parrish had best ride. “I wanted to have fun and I wanted my dogs to have fun,” said the 49-year-old, bed-and-breakfast owner from Oregon. Parrish has medical issues, which include being on blood thinners, which prompt her to wear a snowboarding helmet while she’s running dogs. Parrish keeps a small team of Alaskan huskies and the musher said her goal was to run the Iditarod before age 50. Mission accomplished.
“Other than getting banged up in the buffalo tunnels, I enjoyed the heck out of my race,” Parrish said. The buffalo tunnels are a snowless stretch of trail beyond Rohn, where dirt hummocks punctuated by slippery frozen pools of water seem to have the perverse effect of exciting sled dogs. The dogs speed up, tossing sleds and mushers. Parrish came down hard with her hip on her snow hook, sending pain shooting through her wiry frame and a deep bruise down her leg. It hurt so much that tasks such as putting on dog booties took hours instead of minutes. Parrish fell way back in the standings, but her team never flagged. “My dogs did well. I was on a magic carpet ride as far as the dogs went. they were healthy, strong and cooperative,” she said. She’d had no idea what to expect since the longest her team had gone was 350 miles. “But every time I asked them to go, they said, ‘Sure, let’s go,’ ” Parrish said.
Yazwinski, 26, may have strong motivation to come back, but don’t expect Parrish or Bicknell in coming years. They have their brass belt buckles. “As far as I know, I only have one 50th birthday,” Parrish said. “Man, am I glad I did it. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Bicknell, who now lives in Juneau, has run several major sprint races since the 1970s as well as the 1,000 mile Yukon Quest a few years ago. She’s put off knee surgery to make way for her Iditarod dream, but said she felt good most of the way, physically.
Bicknell said she always has a long “to do” list, and the Iditarod was on it. “This is what I did, I checked it off yesterday.”
(I am back home in Kasilof, Alaska, and reached Bicknell and Parrish by phone.)