By Joe Runyan
The departure from White Mountain is a ritual, particularly for the top 20 mushers who are in the money. About two hours before the official departure time, the mushers go to their dogs and set to work on the last business of the race. All unnecessary gear is stowed in gear bags to be mailed back home. In go frozen gloves, used booties, extra batteries, and unnecessary gear. The sled bag is detached and shaken to dislodge pounds of frozen snow. Plastic on the runners is changed. In short, the sled is made ready for the final push. The veterinarians thoroughly check the dogs. Even the veteran healer of animals who has seen many Iditarods is awed by the Alaskan Husky. Running their hands over the animal is a natural, human thing to do, and they are inwardly amazed to feel the hard muscle molded by the past eight days and 1100 miles.
Mushers with a big lead of two or three hours can relax and act nonchalant. Still, they bring their teams to the start line early, and casually banter with the crowd and the official checker who will count down the remaining seconds of the eight-hour rest. Some of the dogs put on an uncharacteristic display, and whine and even bark to go. The veterans know the trail and understand the finish is less than nine hours away. This is clearly an advantage over the rookie teams, who have historically never given a veteran front-running team a challenge.
The trail to Nome is essentially two parts. Departure from White Mountain begins on the river and portages over to the ocean beach by way of a series of rolling mountains, which summit on Topkok Hill. The trail abruptly descends off Topkok to a shelter cabin just off the beach. The second run along the beach communicates to Safety, a perfunctory 30-second stop in which mushers quickly sign in, grab a number bib, and head back on the trail for the final 22 miles to Nome.
The run from White Mountain to Nome, and the inherent dangers and risks, can be described ad infinitum. Combine the lore of the Nome gold miners, real and apocryphal, with the Iditarod, and you have an endless collection of adventures, occurrences, and twists of fate. Put this in the Iditarod context, in which both the hyperbolic and the understated are seen through the eyes of the truly fatigued, and you have quite enough of the northern experience to ponder.
People have died on this section of trail. The wind is the cause. The most notorious and infamous blow holes are the top of Topkok Hill and a wind tunnel that comes out of the mountains near Solomon. Topkok is barren tundra with the occasional patch of brush. The people of Nome have placed spruce-pole and even metal-pole tripods as markers on the trail. Despite their best efforts, a storm comes along and knocks a few out, therefore requiring yearly maintenance. The Iditarod trailbreakers also put lath into the wind-packed snow as best they can to mark the trail. With all these precautions, however, the biggest worry of the musher is that a ground storm will be so severe as to make progress impossible.
Two things can happen. The first is that visibility at any distance is almost zero. Imagine that you are unable to see past the first set of dogs in your team, much less discern a trail. The second is even worse. Despite the best efforts of the leaders and mushers to solve the puzzle of the trail and find the markers, the wind has cheated and blown out the markers. A blow-out, even for a short section, usually bring things to a halt, and the musher and team hunker in the wind until the storm lulls.
Joe May, an Iditarod winner, advocated changing the rules on the coast. Instead of carrying snowshoes, as required by the rules, the logical thing to do would be to replace them with a shovel. In some places, it would be handy to dig into a drift and at least get out of the wind. In other places, it would not be worth more than the snowshoes. Fortunately, the weather can also be benign, and in this case the run to Nome is pleasurable, particularly if the musher can enjoy it without the added tension of pushing to avoid being overtaken.
For the musher who is running tightly in a pack, one of two powerful emotions is likely to be experienced. These are questions that children love to ponder. Just how bad is it to be passed in the final miles coming into Nome? Pretty bad, a real classic bummer, especially when the disappointment is exacerbated by indescribable fatigue. How good does it feel to pass someone in the final miles? Great, but not nearly as intense as being passed.
Finally, the musher and team climb up a slip off the beach and head down main street Nome. A squad car with a siren meets each team and slowly moves down main street toward a burled spruce log arch. The leaders follow the squad car, and the musher usually jumps off the runners and jogs, a final show of energy for the sake of the crowd that has been alerted to an arrival.
Traditionally, most of the crowd is composed of fans who have tumbled out of the many bars that line the finish chute. Some lead dogs will unhesitatingly trot into the finish chute, a fact mushers will brag about in future recountings of the race. Others will balk, the musher then runs to the head of the team, grabs the necklines of the leader, and walks with them across the finish line. In either case, the crowd applauds loudly, and family and friends greet the musher. The mayor of Nome shakes hands with every arriving musher. Then the musher mounts the podium and fields questions from the press, while veterinarians and handlers examine the dogs. The answers are conveyed to the crowd by a speaker system and directly linked to KNOM radio, which covers the Iditarod finish of every musher.
From the finish chute, the dogs happily trot the last 150 yards to a dog yard set up amongst empty container vans. Stout gang chains running between the vans are allotted to each team. Dogs are unharnessed and put on the gang line, bedded down with straw, fed, and left to rest. In two days the dogs will be barking and lunging at their chain, prompting kennel volunteers to ask if proper arrangements have been made to fly the dogs out of Nome and back to Anchorage.
Wives or husbands or friends who have come to the finish are relieved that their musher has arrived safely, and inwardly hope that this adventure has satisfied all mysterious callings to the wild. Somewhere in the dog yard, a voice can be heard: “Next year I am going to make a few changes. Definitely, I am going to do a few things differently.” An awkward hush silences the dog yard. Even the huskies hold their breath and are still. Dozens of eyes belonging to relatives, friends, handlers and counterparts roll upward to stare momentarily at the blue arctic sky.