My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [77]
Barry Lee was warned before he left Grayling, where he had refueled the team during a four-hour stop. “There’s decent trail for about ten miles, after that—nothing,” said the checker, who’d surveyed the river on a snowmachine earlier that morning.
“Well, I got the snowshoes, and I gotta go,” said Lee, feeling well rested and determined.
Two hours later, his confidence was ebbing. The trail ahead was swamped under two feet or more of loose snow. Lee strapped on his snowshoes. They were borrowed, of course, and he’d never tried them on. The homemade bindings were incorrectly attached. Each time he applied weight, the shoes nosed downward. Lee wore himself out trying to use them. After struggling for several hours, he returned to Grayling to regroup before trying again.
Daylight was going. Tom suggested we start looking for a sheltered camp. Doc wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted to reach Blackburn’s cabin, an unofficial rest cabin, which couldn’t be more than ten miles ahead.
We were out in the middle of the river when the sky rapidly darkened. Gusts of wind slapped at my sled bag. Cooley ordered his wolves toward a bluff that would offer some slight protection. Joining him, we all decided to wait this one out, using the delay to feed our dogs. With any luck, the evening squall would skip past before we were done.
It got colder, and the wind steadily increased. It was 14 below the first time Cooley checked his thermometer. When he checked again, minutes later, the reading was 20 below zero and falling. “Watch your ass,” he yelled.
Conditions felt deadly by the time I had water boiling in my cook pot. Standing with my back to the wind and my face shielded by the parka’s thick ruff, I carefully poured the hot water inside the cooler. Next, I lined the pans out. Then I sat on the cooler with my back to the wind, letting the food soak.
“Thirty below, boys,” Cooley shouted, chuckling.
Moving stiffly, I carried pans to the dogs, two at a time. The snow was soft, and I stumbled, splashing my gloves with the wet food. I felt my fingers burning, but it wasn’t from heat. In the brief time it took to fill a pan with steaming food and carry it to a dog, a skin of ice had formed across the surface of the pan. My wet fingertips burned from the extreme cold.
As soon as the dogs finished eating, I collected the empty pans so they wouldn’t lick them and freeze their tongues to the metal. Then I climbed inside the sled.
My hands were reduced to the functioning level of pincers as I pulled the sled-bag flap overhead. Yanking my gloves off with my teeth, I surveyed the damage. Seven fingertips were bloodless white. That was better than I had dared hope, nothing more than mild frost-nip. Huddling, I breathed on my hands until they throbbed with renewed life. I shucked the parka and unpacked my sleeping bag. Sealing myself inside the cocoon, I ate another packet of salmon, chewed on a carton of frozen juice, then fell asleep, feeling confident about my hard-earned survival skills.
As he had been for 1,000 miles, Barve, the burly 45-year-old printer, remained in the hunt, leaving Elim Wednesday night. Not that you could tell anything in the blizzard. Visibility was limited to about ten feet when Lavon halted his team to search for markers on foot. His frightened dogs yanked the snow hook. When the musher returned, they were gone. He didn’t panic. He could find the damn dogs tomorrow. Survival came first, and it was goddamn cold. Lavon started walking toward Golovin.
On the other side of Elim, Garnie lost his team in similar circumstances, but his mitts were tied to the sled. Joe Garnie, an Inupiat from the coastal village of Teller, knew the enemy he faced. He dug himself a hole in the snow and flopped inside, facedown, conserving his body warmth as he waited for the storm to break. Whenever the creeping cold became unbearable, he ran in circles, waving his arms to get the blood pumping. Then he lay back down in his hole.
Garnie eventually made his way to a survival shelter,