My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [78]
On the ice between Shaktoolik and Koyuk, half a dozen mushers were lost for nearly 24 hours, including Barron’s 21-year-old son, Laird. Pinned down by the storm, mere yards from a shelter cabin he couldn’t see, the young musher’s bid for rookie-of-the-year collapsed. All he’d take home from this rite of passage was a partially frozen foot.
Terry Adkins’s bold ambitions perished out on the ice fronting Koyuk. He was reduced to huddling with fellow racer Gary Whittemore, who was shivering, badly hypothermic. Whittemore probably would have died without the Montanan’s help.
In Shaktoolik, two race volunteers shared the suffering, frostbiting their eyelids loading dropped dogs on a plane. In Nome, Thursday’s temperature was 20 below zero, with winds of 55 miles per hour.
Race marshal Kershner sounded beleaguered as he discussed the known injuries and reports of missing mushers. “I feel like a mother who’s trying to gather her chicks,” he told reporters.
Jeff Dixon fired up his snowmachine and left Shageluk on what he believed was a simple dog-food delivery mission. His duties kept expanding. First, he helped that fool from Anchorage, Rich Runyan, free his snowmachine from the drift. Next he found the Englishman with the starving dogs. Then Dixon had to go save Peele, whom he found sleeping on the ground outside his sled.
“You know those Iditarod people don’t care about you at all,” Dixon told Peele, shaking him awake. “They left you to die out here.”
Runyan didn’t spend long regrouping in Shageluk. He had ground to make up. At first light, he left for Anvik on his big snowmachine, towing the freight sled loaded with radio gear. Conditions worsened and, before long, Rich was lost again. Cruising atop a ridge, he glimpsed what appeared to be a marker in the valley below. Descending for closer inspection, he plowed into a deceptively large drift. He wrestled with it for a while, but it was no good. The snowmachine was stuck again.
Rich Runyan hadn’t eaten for hours. It was miserably cold, and hypothermia was becoming a definite threat. True, he still had that big radio, but he lacked the energy to assemble it. Unpacking his sleeping bag, the ham operator from Anchorage placed a call to the Lord.
Butcher’s dogs were reluctant to leave their cozy beds of straw. The air at White Mountain carried an angry scent that night. The calm when she arrived had given way to a heavy wind blowing snow across the trail. It didn’t bother Susan. She had an appointment to keep in Nome. At the precise minute her six-hour waiting period expired, 1:31 A.M., Thursday, March 14, she had her dogs on the march.
Iditarod’s defending champion got off to a rocky start. Before her team faded from view, spectators saw Butcher jump off her sled several times to lead her team back to the trail. Her husband, Dave Monson, wasn’t particularly concerned as he watched her exit. Dogs facing such a crush of media and fans had good reason to act skittish. His wife was still driving the best team in the race.
Minutes after the champ’s departure, a snowmachiner roared into the checkpoint.
“You can’t see anything out there,” he said.
The storm rolled in as Swenson packed to go. It was 30 below, snowing and blowing hard, as he mushed out of White Mountain, one hour, seven minutes behind Butcher. The final chase was underway.
Joe Runyan was the third musher out. Susan had the fastest team. Nobody could catch her. Joe accepted that, but he fully expected to catch Swenson. And he did, passing far to one side of Rick’s team, which had obviously strayed from the trail. That was understandable. Conditions were unbelievably bad. Runyan hoped the trail ahead was decently marked. His sled was stripped for a sprint to the finish line. He wasn’t packed for camping.
Peele collapsed on the floor of the Shageluk village school.
“What do you want to do?” asked a checker.
“I can’t leave, because I can’t get my hands to work,” the musher said, feeling morose.
Peele stalled through the day. He nursed his