By Joe Runyan
The trail leaves Unalakleet on glare ice, which is a challenge for the team leaders. If the leaders are not well-trained to resist a natural temptation, the team will bolt to the margins of the freshwater slough. Instead of the easy pulling on the ice, the team struggles to pull the sled through snow and over gravel, rocks and driftwood. The team with lots of experience will casually trot on the glare ice. Occasionally, a dog will awkwardly spraddle-leg itself and slip on the ice, but the veterans keep on pulling, and the sliding team member gets pulled to its feet by the neckline. Compare this to the inexperienced team, which panics on the glare ice and soon wraps itself in a pathetic ball of cowardly huskies.
The trail follows the coastline through tundra and willows, then goes on an inland portage over some significant hills. I remember this section very well from my first Iditarod. The team and I crested the summit of this portage in late afternoon. The sun was setting on the Bering Sea and the ice pans were shimmering with the oblique light. The wind was uncharacteristically mild. The total effect was very peaceful. For the first time, I thought about the race as an experience, and knew it would end in several days.
A steep descent off the portage to the beach can be dicey in a low-snow year, but fortunately, the dogs are now manageable and trail-hardened. They take it easy on the downhill. Emerging from the hills, one can see the effects of the wind as it hammers a long spit which runs out into the ocean. Ground storms of snow blow at right angles to the spit. Far out on the spit, discernible only occasionally, is the village of Shaktoolik.
After a seven-mile run on glare ice and thin patches of wind-packed snow, the musher reaches Shaktoolik, one of the most inconceivable communities in the world. The wind always blows in Shaktoolik. It is notorious among mushers as the “blowhole of the world.” The name itself is synonymous with wind. Here the musher begins one of the biggest tests of the race. Will his leaders knife into the wind and stay true to the trail, or will they hesitate and weave from one side of the trail to the other? Or worse yet, refuse to quarter into the wind and actually stop?
Over the years I have met many of the Eskimos in Shaktoolik and have had a lot of fun laughing about the wind with them. The residents accept the wind as a daily element of their life, and like children who learn the subtleties of a language, the Eskimos grow up to understand the wind in ways that go beyond an academic understanding. I love to listen to their predictions: “Oh yeah, it’s blowing hard, but it won’t get worse if you get going. You’ll make it across the ice, no problem.”
Many times I have eaten caribou stew at Lynn Takuk’s house. One time I arrived and noticed some beautiful rounds of dry firewood stacked in front of his house. The bark was still on them, so I knew it was from some big, dry, standing spruce. “Lynn, where did you get the firewood? There must be some big stands of spruce on the mainland.” “Yeah, the boys go over there with their machines and get a lot of good wood.” By this time, some of his boys were listening to the conversation. “Lynn, why don’t you go to that big grove of spruce and get out of the wind? You could build a great cabin from those big logs.” I thought I was speaking and thinking cogently. Lynn and his boys chuckled politely. “We like the wind. It brings us fish, and the animals like to be in the wind. The wind is the Eskimo’s friend.” And there is the truism that makes life in the wind sensible. T-shirts with “The Wind is the Eskimo’s Friend” are very popular with Iditarod mushers and fans.
Most mushers will prudently take at least a four-hour rest in Shaktoolik to make sure their team is strong for the next run to Koyuk. Keep in mind that the mushers are now starting their push to the finish. Instead of the customary 50-50 run/rest schedule, most of the mushers will probably only rest a third of the time, and run the other two-thirds. The Alaskan husky is now ready to put on a show. Crossing mountain ranges and breaking trail to the Yukon only established credibility. Now the teams demonstrate their skill with the wind. The wind is like heights. For some mushers, the wind is exhilarating and exciting, while others are cautious and tense in this strange environment of blowing spindrift snow.