My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [89]
We were hit climbing a steep sidehill. Herman’s team shrugged off the frigid breeze rushing up the bare slope, and he made it through the pass. But several of the teams directly behind Sepp balked. The delay caused the dogs to start digging for shelter, shutting the rest of us down like toppling dominoes.
We struggled for maybe 30 minutes—through steadily increasing wind—trying to get the convoy moving. Mushers in the front switched their leaders. They tried dragging dogs forward by hand. Finally, half a dozen of us got together and attempted to walk those teams that were willing past those that wouldn’t budge. It was slow difficult work. The trail’s slippery groove, cut sideways into the slope, was impossibly narrow. The hill, terrifically steep. Heavy sleds kept tipping over and slipping, dragging drivers and wheel dogs downward; while other mushers grappled to arrest the slides.
Our attempt at hand-guiding teams up the sidehill was abandoned when we heard Catherine Mormile cry out.
“Don, help me. Help, help me please,” she pleaded. “I’m cold.”
Wind piercing Mormile’s sweaty snowmachine suit had turned its clammy interior freezing cold. Shivering, she had fumbled for her sleeping bag, then panicked when she couldn’t get it open.
Cooley took charge. “Has anybody got hand warmers?”
We clustered around Catherine Mormile’s sled, blocking the wind with our backs. Kneeling within the ring of parkas, Cooley stripped off the stricken musher’s boots and wet socks. He slipped on dry socks, loaded with fresh warmers. Then we guided Mormile into her sleeping bag. Daily stripped off his own gloves and fitted them on her hands. Through it all, Don Mormile stood by looking rather helpless.
Feeling the warm glow of the chemical heaters, Catherine was stricken with another sort of fear. “Does this mean I’m disqualified because I can’t take care of myself anymore?” she asked, sobbing.
We laughed with relief. “Catherine,” someone said, mock-seriously, “We’re going to have to confiscate your promotional mail packet.”
The crisis derailed our efforts to escape the hill.
Daily crawled inside his sled bag in full gear, spreading his sleeping bag over the top as a blanket. He was warm, but spent a miserable night racked by cramps.
Determined to feed my dogs a decent meal, I carved a hole in the side of the hill and formed a windscreen over the cooker with my body and the sled. It was only marginally successful. Although I burned twice the normal amount of alcohol, it only produced a tepid pot of water. The dogs didn’t seem too impressed by my hillside cuisine.
Frustration set in as I sought refuge in my sled bag for the fifth time. Nibbling on a salmon belly cheered me a little, but gloom invaded the cocoon. What a screwed up run. Fifteen miles and we were shut down again. At this rate, Nome would be another 20 days away. The novelty of the convoy action had worn off, and Terhune’s grumbling was making a lot of sense. I might not have the fastest team, but the Coach and I had trained our dogs better than to quit midway up a hill.
Atop the pass, Sepp Herrman mushed through a churning white-out. The German woodsman had never seen anything like it: as fast as his leaders might break a path, the surging drifts filled it back in, pressing inward against the dogs and sleds following behind.
That didn’t stop his team. Sepp’s dogs were accustomed to breaking their own trails through untraveled back country. The team dogs kept moving, carving their own footholds, and his sled crashed through the amassing barriers.
The trail here served more than occasional racers. This was the Kaltag Portage, an ancient transit route linking Yukon River villagers with residents of the Bering Sea coast. The route was marked by a line of tall wooden tripods, closely