My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [72]
“Are your dogs still moving?”
The dogs are fine, the sleepy musher assured Lee.
Barry shrugged and continued on. He came across Kuba, a few miles later.
“What about the other guy?” the German asked. “He seemed to be in pretty bad shape. And his dogs won’t run.”
Lee was perplexed. Should he go back? Garth said he was all right, and he was in his sleeping bag. It was not as if he was collapsed on the trail back there. Barry Lee mushed on.
Fresh snow was blowing. The team’s speed slipped as Lee’s dogs plowed through half a foot of powder. The musher’s low-budget approach was also costing him. He had tough white plastic on his sled runners. The white-coded material lasted longer than the softer black or orange plastic favored by most racers; it was optimum for traveling over bare, rocky terrain. In these conditions, white plastic created friction, which made Lee’s sled harder to pull. Most racers would have changed their plastic, but Lee had long ago used up the few spares he had bought in Knik.
Barry wasn’t packing much dog food either. He didn’t plan for a dinner stop on the 65-mile run to Shageluk. Forced to camp, the musher tossed out snacks. His dogs would just have to hold out until Shageluk for a full meal.
The checkpoint was closed when Barry mushed into the village on the morning of March 13. He found a veterinarian, but the volunteer’s plane was already revving for departure. The vet made no effort to hide his eagerness to get to Nome for the finish of the real race.
Lee’s anxiety was heightened by the Iditarod official’s impatience. Catching Daily and me was becoming absolutely urgent, or so the musher decided. Making a snap decision, he scrapped plans to cook his dogs a meal here and—minutes after arriving in Shageluk—Lee bolted for Anvik. Barry thought the Yukon village lay a mere 18 miles ahead. But he was confusing the upcoming run with the short hop to Grayling. The distance to Anvik was closer to 30 rugged miles.
Up and down the Iditarod Trail, Lee and other weary mushers were making costly mistakes. The grace period was over. Alaska, ever remorseless, indifferent to mortal ambitions, was about to remind us that the games played here are hers alone to call.
Peele found the cabin at Iditarod stifling hot. He slept poorly, wishing he could speed up dawn’s approach. He, too, felt rushed. But it didn’t make sense trying to leave the old ghost town in the dark. Late in the second week of the race, the tape on the trail markers was often so frosted that it was no longer reflective, or it was torn off entirely by the wind. Assuming, of course, that a particular marker was standing at all for the Iditarod’s Red Lantern musher.
Morning brought the light Peele wanted. It also brought wind, and the team smacked into drifts soon after leaving Iditarod. Seeking a boost, Peele dug out his personal stash of caffeine tablets. “This is worth one or two cups of coffee,” the musher told himself, swallowing the first pill.
Radio operator Rich Runyan was supposed to close down the checkpoint at Iditarod, then follow the last team over to Shageluk on a snowmachine, towing a sled packed with his electronic gear. He was going to accompany the rear teams through to Unalakleet, a distance of about 350 miles.
The plan had sounded reasonable back at race headquarters. The radio operator from Anchorage hadn’t given it much thought while mushers were still on the way to his remote post. His attitude changed after Peele had mushed away Wednesday morning. Listening to the wind, Runyan felt growing flickers of dread. He was alone. Left behind out in the wilderness. Runyan knew his fears were foolish. If he needed to, for any reason, he could fire up his generator-powered radio and talk to the world. This knowledge wasn’t enough to dispel the camp’s eerie silence, or the whispers from the dark corners of his mind.
By late afternoon, the demons were gaining strength, adding urgency to the volunteer’s packing. He keyed the big snowmachine to life. After an agonizing