By Joe Runyan
Strategically and symbolically, the run from Iditarod to Shageluk is important because it demonstrates which teams have the strength and staying power to win the Iditarod. Experienced race fans begin to watch for a team to emerge as the dominant competitor. Mushers in the lead pack begin thinking seriously about making a move to shake the weaker teams from the front.
A musher might consider, for example, shortening rests en route to Shageluk and hope that the team’s resilience and speed will leave others behind. If the other mushers don’t play the cat-and-mouse game with a risk taker, they could find themselves falling too far behind for a victory.
The mushers begin to notice and identify the competition so that they can squelch any attempts to capture the lead with a countermove of their own. Generally speaking, the lead mushers have been running their own race, oblivious to the tactics of other competitors, but now they pay closer attention and make decisions to modify their own strategy.
The trail leaves the Iditarod River slough in a couple of miles and then seems to undulate up and down mountains without any logical reason. The musher asks nobody in particular, “Why are we continuously going up and down hills, why don’t we just summit out on this range or at least put the trail up a valley?” From the air, I have seen why the trail breakers were not able to do this. The earth, for whatever geological reason, is folded and wrinkled randomly, and the only way north toward the Yukon is to take on the hills.
Running behind the sled up a hill seems to the musher like running in place in a bowl of sugar. This section of trail is known for soft trails of granular snow that do not harden up. Part of the reason is that the snow machines’ tracks spin going uphill and break the crust on the top of the deep trail. For that reason, a musher may try to sneak out of the Iditarod checkpoint early in the morning and try to catch the trail when it does have a little hard crust. Later in the day, the following teams will break up the crust, wallow in the sugar snow, and possibly lose a lot of time.
Finally, the trail crosses the Little Yentna and then continues on to the Big Yentna at about Mile 34. The creek bottom is shielded from the wind - a constant feature ever since leaving Iditarod - by big spruce and groves of willow and birch, and is a favorite place for mushers to give their dogs a break, change their booties, and offer them a snack. Cooked food, prepared in the Iditarod checkpoint, is kept thawed in a foam cooler that fits perfectly into the sled bag.
Sometimes half-a-dozen teams are parked on the stream’s frozen surface. By now, the dogs are so accustomed to the chaos of teams parking and departing that they scarcely notice a new dog team. Five days earlier they might have gotten off their bed and barked at a strange intruder.
The trail continues west over more hills, hits an old Cat trail which meanders through some bigger timber, and then descends gradually into the Innoko River Valley and the small village of Shageluk, population about 130. The dogs have traveled close to 200 miles since leaving the last outpost of civilization at Takotna.
The smell of smoke from the cabin stoves and the howling of village dogs ignites the teams into outbursts of speed. Teams gradually work into a high-speed trot, and some teams become so animated they alternately lope as they get close to Shageluk and hit the well-used, hard-packed and fast village trail.
The village school is the main hub of activity as well as the checkpoint. Mushers who had a hard time sleeping outside in the cold quickly feed their dogs, lay out straw for bedding, complete their chores, grab a sleeping bag out of the sled, and make a beeline to the gymnasium for a deep nap in a warm building.