Iditarod Journal:

March 4, 2004:

Mushers’ Meeting and Banquet: Enjoyed much of the mushers’ meeting. Great feeling to be in the same room for a day with the greats of the sport; a little overwhelming. Heard all about the trail, went over rules and Stu Nelson talked for quite awhile about dog care. At lunch break we met our Iditariders and shared some pizza with them. Christine, my Iditarider, is from Cape Town, South Africa. She is a hoot and we really hit it off. We drew for our starting positions in the order we signed up. Picked a sealed envelop out of a hopper and the starting numbers will be revealed tonight at the banquet. Found out that we would not be running all the way to Eagle River since the trail had disintegrated in the past few days. We would end our ceremonial start 11 miles in at the BLM. Left the meeting to go to Northern Air Cargo to ship my second sled. Got there just ahead of Wayne Curtis and Martin Buser. Our sleds were weighed and we were sent inside to pay the shipping. Both Wayne and Martin paid general shipping, were promised their sleds will be in McGrath before Tuesday and they left. I, on the other hand, was told that if I wanted to guarantee that my sled was in McGrath when I was I would have to pay priority shipping. Of course I questioned why I had to pay more money then the “vetran mushers” and I didn’t get much of an answer. Fortunately for me, Martin came back in to give me a box of sulfur powder that his sister-in-law had shipped to him for me. I told him that they wanted more money to guarantee my sled shipped on time. He said that they always ship second sleds on this day and next thing I know the manager is out front giving Martin a hug and assuring him his sled would be there, and I said “and my sled…” She told the cashiers to ship mine priority too for the general price, but that everyone coming after us had to pay priority shipping. Guess I’m getting a lesson on how rookie mushers would be treated. Thank goodness Martin is a friend and showed up when he did.

The banquet was long and boring, as usual. I really wanted to take the time and properly thank Rich, Kim and Erin and all those who have helped me get to the start line. However, I was way to nervous about the race and with 87 mushers we were there forever. I want to find a good way to say thanks to everyone.

Christine, our Iditarider, sat with us at our table. She and Rich really hit it off. I guess we’re going to visit Cape Town, Africa one of these days.

March 6, 2004

Ceremonial Start: Up at 4:30 to get the dogs fed and ready. Couldn’t really sleep well anyway. Kim showed up at 5:30 and helped load the dogs. The trailer was all packed the night before. Kim, Rich and I stopped in Eagle River to pick up Craig. He would drive the truck and trailer to the BLM to pick up Kim, me and the dogs. Got on to 4^th Ave. with plenty of time to spare. That was my plan; to get parked early, drop the dogs, get set up and have time to relax, pose for photos, sign autographs, and chat with people. Dave and Marge managed to work their way onto 4^th Ave. (I think Dave pulled his badge). Justin and John (two of my favorite students) showed up on time to help. They were awesome. Erin and the boys came to help as did Jan Houser. Al showed up with the all important hot chocolate and donuts. Wish I’d thought to bring something for everyone. Pam came to take some video. Finally, our Iditaider, Christine, showed up to meet the team. Poor Rich, with his foot still in a cast, had to sit in the truck for over 4 hours. He was pretty cold, but everyone took turns sitting in the truck and visiting with him. It was finally time to hook up and get ready for our trek down 4^th Ave. Aily Zirkle stopped by to tell me to make sure to enjoy today. I promised her I would. Tony,D, and Ellen came by to help after launching Lynda an hour before me.

We were off and running by 12:23. There was so many people for the first few miles. It was a little overwhelming. We stopped near the bottom of Cordova hill to replace all the booties which by now were just Velcro with rags. We gave all the used booties to Christine to pass out to the fans along the way. You’d think we were flinging gold the way people dove for those booties. Kim got great pleasure out of throwing booties to the kids too. There were a couple sections of some nice quiet trail with no people and we thoroughly enjoyed it. It was pretty hot so we took our time and lots of breaks. All too soon we were at the BLM and about 15 people rushed our sled to help Christine out. Then they all swept her away only to let go of my sled and 12 not tired dogs. Craig was doing his best all by himself to get the leaders to follow him across the pavement to the truck. We were way out of control and Kim ended up slamming his sled into Charlie Boulding’s truck. Charlie didn’t seem to mind. We made it to our truck in a big wad, fed the dogs a drink, then loaded them up for the trip home.

March 7, 2004 Restart:

Got up really early today (4:30AM). We knew parking at Willow was going to be very tight so I wanted to get there and stake our territory. Kim showed up at 5:00 and we were off by 5:30. We were so early that all the security wasn’t there yet and they weren’t sure where to park us. They finally found our spot and we backed the trailer up. We were parked next to Ellie Claus and got to know her a little. All the crew showed up on time and things went very smoothly. I was so nervous about launching off that start line with 16 crazy dogs that I couldn’t think about being nervous about anything else. As the countdown started all I was thinking was….’please, Lord, let me make it across this lake without a crash and losing my team.” We made it and off we were….finally on the most challenging adventure of my life. After all the training, planning, worrying, packing….. we were finally on our way. Every mile now was a mile closer to Nome.

There were tons of people all the way to Yentna. I saw many of my students and soaked up their good luck wishes. After about 4 hours we were into Yentna Station for a 4 hour break. There were plenty of teams there and I spent some time talking with Lynda and Doug Gilliot after the chores were done and the dogs were resting. After watching some mushers have major problems getting their dogs tugs hooked back up to leave and many teams pulling the hook way before the musher was ready, Lynda gave me some good advice. She said if you’re not wearing your parka make sure it’s strapped onto your sled good. If not, you’ll lose it. Lucky for me Bill and Brenda Borden were there and I had Bill stand on my hook while I hooked up.

On to Skwentna. It took us about 3 hours to get to Skwentna where we were going to take an 8 hour rest. This rest was more for me than the dogs. I knew I’d be exhausted by this point. After struggling to get my checkpoint routine down, I finally headed up to the lodge for a nap. Ellie was parked next to me and was lamenting the fact that her dogs would not eat and mine gobbled up everything in sight. We ended up only staying 6 hours and then were on our way to Finger Lake.

March 8, 2004 Finger Lake and Rainy Pass:

The trail to Finger Lake was well marked and relatively easy running. I did, however, manage to crash. The trail wiggled through some tight trees and caught me by surprise. Somehow I laid the sled on it’s side then proceded to do a slow motion front flip over the sled, added a twist and wound up being drug behind the sled. The dogs were not interested in stopping, but eventually did. Took me awhile to upright the sled because everytime I would get it almost upright they would take off dragging me behind again. I think they were enjoying that game. It was sunny when the sun came up and beginning to get pretty hot when we were nearing Finger Lake. I came over this little hill to find a huge divot in the trail left by an ultralite that set down there. I got one runner in the divot and crashed. Held on to the team, but lost one of my big mitts. Got to Finger Lake about 10:30am and it was beautiful. After surveying my dogs I realized the soft, punchy trail had taken a toll. My worst fears before the race were confirmed. I would have to drop Bossy and Atlas (two of my three leaders). Bossy has been nursing tendonitis for the past couple of months and Atlas has had some really sore feet for months that the vets and I just can’t seem to heal. Both were not very comfortable so both got a free ride home. Now I’m freaking out. I’m only 120 miles into this 1150 mile race and I’m already down to relying on one leader. On top of that, Io (one of my two year olds) regurgitated some food and aspirated. She didn’t look quite right to me so I had the vets listen to her chest. After hearing some unsettling sounds in her lungs I decided she needed to go home. I was not willing to risk the life of any of my dogs. Turns out she was fine by the time she got home. We rested in Finger Lake until 5:00pm. Melinda Miles and I decided we would leave together. We wanted our dogs to rest as long as they had run, but we also wanted to get through the infamous Happy River Steps before dark.

Since I was leaving Finger Lake with young leaders I told Melinda I would follow her out to make sure my dogs got out of the checkpoint OK. They did fine and we had a fabulous for the next hour and a half. The trail was a blast!! Windy, twisty, lots of snow. Only dumped the sled a couple times. Then we stopped and Melinda asked where we should snack the dogs. I told her we should snack on the river after the steps since we knew the steps were coming up soon based on the time we’d been on the trail. Shortly after Melinda took off again she disappeared over a cliff and we followed suit. I didn’t see Melinda again until the bottom of the first step. We made a sharp right turn then were screaming down this side hill straight for a huge tree. At the tree was a sharp left turn. The dogs made the turn as I was free falling right towards the tree. All the time I am running over Sandy, one of my wheel dogs. I was scared to death that I was going to kill the dog. I slammed that tree going mock and somehow managed to get my foot caught in my brake so the dogs were dragging me down this steep hill. Near the bottom I could see Melinda standing in the trail. I hollered at her to stop my team. I remember her looking a little shell shocked as she stared at me, but she finally jumped on my sled, which was on its side. We got my team stopped and as I’m moaning in agony at the pain in my leg and crawling out from under my sled she says “my team is gone.” To my horror I looked up at her sled which was a mangled mess and looked like she had run head on into a train. Then I saw one of her dogs hiding beside the sled looking scared to death and another sitting in front of the sled. Her gangline had broken in front of her wheel dogs and 14 of her dogs were gone. She seemed OK so I told her I would keep heading down the trail looking for her team and she would try to limp along with her banged up sled and her two dogs. I told her I’d tie her team off if I found them. I still had two of the three steps to get down and I managed to bang off a few more trees and have the dogs drag me to the 30’ vertical drop to the river below. It took me a few minutes to gather my senses before I could continue down the river looking for Melinda’s dogs. After a short time on the river the trail climbs up the other side with a really steep climb. My dogs, having been trained to pull me up hills with no help from me, did awesome up the hill out of Happy River. I’ve heard more than one musher say that the climb out of the river can be worse then the drop to the river. Thus, I was relieved when my big, strong dogs made it seem so easy. We carried on through some really tough turns and descents in a dense forest with a very narrow trail. Of course the same problem that plagued the Happy River steps was plaguing me now. There was so much snow this year that when the front runners go through their breaks leave an 8 inch wide three foot deep trench where they were braking for all they were worth. This trench can be up to 4 foot deep. Unfortuately for us “back of the packers”, this presents a real problem. Since our sleds are 22 inches wide and the trail about three and a half feet wide, one of our sled runners will be in the trench and one won’t. This creates a massive nightmare and pretty much the impossible task of keeping the sled upright. Needless to say as we wound through more steep downhills with tight turns on a narrow wooded trail my sled slammed more trees than I can count. Finally I came upon a small open area and ran into Al Hardman, a veteran musher. He was sitting on his sled eating something while his dogs were in front of him in one big knot. I asked if he’d seen a dog team with no sled. He said that the team passed him while he was still down on the river. He then proceded to say “I was hoping no one would see me like this”. Thinking….”how wieird” I moved on down the trail in a hurry to find the dog team before someone was injured. Shortly after my encounter with Al I ran across this lake and saw a sign that said “Dog Water. I looked to my right and saw a cabin with some lights on. Since I had two young dogs in lead I could not get them to veer off the trail towards the cabin so I proceded to stand on my sled and yell. Two people came out of the cabin, I told them where Melinda was and that she could use some help and they were off on their snow machines. Now that I knew Melinda would be OK I continued the search for her dogs. It was –25 degrees at the time and just getting dark so I was glad there was someone on the way to help her. Seven miles before Rainy Pass checkpoint I came across three people standing on this lake holding those 14 dogs. They said the dogs were all fine and they would tie them off to something. I asked what these people were doing on this lake in the middle of nowhere and they said they just happened to be out for a hike. I was now realizing that God was going to take care of me by placing angels just where I’d need them. I got to Rainy Pass at 8:30pm. I asked for a race judge as soon as I arrived and explained Melinda’s predicament. They assured me they’d get her a sled and get her to her dogs. For some reason it would take them until midnight to get a piece of junk sled to her. Melinda pulled in at 5:15 am, just as I was getting ready to leave the checkpoint and head over Rainy Pass in search of the infamous Dalzel Gorge.

March 9, 2004:Rainy Pass to Rohn:

I’m not sure where I found the nerve to leave this checkpoint alone, in the dark, at –30, with a storm on the way, but I did and off we were. The first few miles were easy enough. We got going and the dogs and I both warmed up. As we began to climb up near the summit of Rainy Pass (the highest point in the race)it began snowing and blowing. It was near whiteout when we reached the top. The dogs kept losing the trail. They would turn off the trail and down some gullies. I would have to stop the team, unhook all the tuglines(so no one got hurt if we tangled turning around) get them back to the trail and try to get them moving in the right direction again. They would then wander off the trail again and we’d repeat the scenario. It was getting increasingly more difficult to stop them once they turned off the trail into the deep snow. I was getting very frustrated and the dogs were getting confused. Finally, they turned down the wrong gully again and I would turn them around. They would cross the trail and I’d turn them around then they’d cross the trail again. I could not get them to go into the wind and up this hill where the trail was. A few mushers came by and I just yelled at them to make sure they got the trail over the hill. All of the teams wanted to turn down the same gully. I got these teams going straight, but could not get mine to follow them. Finally, Ellie Claus came by and got up the hill and my dogs fell in behind hers and we were finally off. As we were heading into the wind and over the pass we looked up on the hill beside us and both Ellie and I saw a fox running along side our teams. It was odd how it stuck out so clearly in this white out. We continued over the summit and then began the descent into the dalzel gorge. This turned out to be miles of winding, twisting, steep trail in and out of the trees. We were doing well and even keeping the sled upright until my dogs missed a sharp left turn across a creek. Instead they ran straight into what looked like a little slough. However, it dead ended into some thick alders. I could see the teams had done this before me by the tracks. My sled was jammed into this alder thicket and the dogs were in one big ball. The only thing I could do was to take each dog off the gangline and tie each one to a tree. Then I worked my sled out of the thickets. I had to find a place to tie off my sled that was out of the way of other teams coming behind me. Then I had to build a snub line to tie off to a tree. Now I had to go back into the thicket and get each dog, one at a time and bring them out to put back on the gangline. As I was doing all this 3 teams came flying by and the last two got tangled with my team so we had to work to undo the trangles. I finally got all the dogs on the line, pulled the snub line and off we were. Now the dogs are well rested (it took an hour and a half to get that mess undone) and the trail is now really steep and windy and we were then in the trees. I proceded to smash into a number of trees. Finally, near the bottom I had no strength left to hold on after we hit yet another tree. I lost my grip and consequently, my team. The sled was on its side so I knew that they weren’t too far away since they would soon hang up on a tree. Along comes Tolif Monson. This is a 20 year old kid, too naïve to be scared. He sees me and asks if I want a ride to my dog team. He honestly thought I would sit on is sled bag and let him drive me down this maze of trees. I asked if he was for real and he said “sure, I’ll tie you on”, and he holds up a neckline. Now he’s scaring me. I reiterated my no thank yous and he finally moved down the trail a few feet until he came to my dog team. They were fine and the sled was even upright. The snow hook had fallen and stopped them. I let Tolif on by and continued our slalom and tree bouncing down to the gorge itself. Once we got to the gorge itself I was exhausted and hurting. I stopped my sled, prayed to God to give me the strength to drive the sled through the gorge without flipping and without getting wet. The trail works back and forth through the gorge over running water on these perilous looking ice bridges. For the next 15 minutes I drove that sled like I never had before and we miraculously didn’t flip and didn’t get wet. When we were finally out on the ice of the Kuskokwim River I was so relieved. The next 6 miles to the Rohn checkpoint were uneventful, thank goodness. The only problem was I had not taken a drink since before leaving Rainy Pass hours before and I was so thirsty. Going over these ice bridges with open water was making it worse. The bottles of water I had in my sled were mostly frozen but I could get some chunks of ice to at least suck on.

I finally checked into Rohn at 11:00 am.

After taking a few deep breaths,trying to get my wits about me, and making sure all major body parts were still in place, I began the chores. After hearing that water was only a 6 minute walk to the river, I began to melt snow. No way were these exhausted legs going on a 12 minute hike. The chores seemed to take a little longer than usual. I was absolutely as exhausted as I’ve ever been in my life. I finally finished and the dogs were resting nicely. They seemed no worse for wear after the day’s adventures. Once inside the warm, little cabin I realized that Rick Swenson was there. How could I possibly be this far into this race and be at a checkpoint with Rick? Turns out he broke the runners on his sled in the gorge and was waiting for another sled to be flown in. I sat around a table with Harmony Barron, Mark Moderow, Ellie Claus, Jacob Lysyshn and Jim Conners. Us four rookies couldn’t help but discuss our calamities of the past 2 runs; sharing war stories and comparing injuries and broken sled tales. After a quick bite to eat I dutifully pulled out my Don Bowers trail notes. Being the good little rookies that we were we thought we should read about the next section of trail we were about to embark on. As I read the first line to myself I laughed out loud. When asked what was so funny, I read that sentence out loud and we all agreed that the “trail notes” needed to go into the fire. Considering how beat up and exhausted we all were this was too much to believe. The sentence read…”the next 20 miles of trail is some of the consistently worse of the race.” Although we all had a laugh that was our way of not crying. Rick was listening in on this conversation and found it quite humerous.

After we ate Mark, Ellie and I all crawled onto the only bunk left and fell asleep. We got almost an hour nap before it was time for chores again. We wanted to leave Rohn by 5:30 so we could get past the “glacier” before dark.

The trail out of Rohn is glare ice interrupted by some dirt and rocks. The wind was blowing like crazy and it was hard to see where the trail was supposed to go. My dogs did really well getting across this ice until we neared the edge of the river bank where we would climb onto land and off the ice. We were part way across and the wind blew so hard that my sled starting skidding sideways out of control. We kept picking up this sidewards speed until my sled slammed into the dirt. I don’t know how the centrifigal force didn’t throw me onto the ground. I’m sure glad it didn’t though because it was rocks and dirt and would have hurt like crazy. Now onto solid ground we wound our way through through the buffalo tunnels. These are very narrow, twisty, snowless trails through the forest. I was traveling behind Mark Moderow and Ellie Claus. Mark had a few nasty crashes made worse by my barreling down and running his sled over while it was wrapped around a tree or two. I’m glad my sled stayed upright because once again the landing was on stumps, frozen dirt, and rocks. As it began to get dark I kept thinking…where is that damned glacier? Finally we worked our way up a steep embankment with some ice and rocks. I thought …surely that wasn’t the infamous glacier everyone feared. Next thing I knew we were in the Farewell Burn and I realized we had somehow skirted the glacier. We crossed numerous lakes that would have been glare ice were it not for a shallow ribbon on packed snow that was the trail across. Between the lakes were many hills with twisty trails with the now to be expected trench in the middle of the trail. We drove until we reached the “Buffalo Camp”. There we joined several other mushers camping for the night. There’s a great place to pull teams off the trail and up the hill was a heated cabin that mushers could sleep in. The 3 of us fed our dogs and bedded them down with the straw we carried. None of us wanted to go sleep in a stuffy cabin so we all curled up in our sled bags and slept for a few hours. This was the best rest I had had so far on the trip. We each got up and left on our own to enjoy our early morning run into Nikolai reveling in the fact that the worst of the trail was now behind us. I think we all needed to be alone with our thoughts and grateful prayers for this section of trail. We’d all been through hell and needed to come to grips with it all.

March 10^th.:arrived in Nikolai at 9:26.

Today was warm and sunny, a great day for the dogs and me to enjoy a nice nap. I knew I would sleep well since I didn’t have to worry about leaving this checkpoint and wrapping myself around trees or careening down cliffs. The run to McGrath should be rather uneventful.

After the normal chores of feeding, massaging, wrapping and bedding I set about repairing my sled runners. On the dirt and rock trail outside of Rohn I lost both sets of plastic runners when the cotter pins broke. I ran the rest of the trail on the plastic inserts. This of course destroyed the inserts and I couldn’t feed the new plastic on either side. I had an extra set of inserts thanks to Ellen, but they were only 8 feet and my runners are 9 feet. I had broken an aluminum runner a week or so before the race and all that was available was one set of heavy duty 9 foot runners. In retrospect the only reason I still had runners after Happy River and the Dalzel Gorge was because I had broken that runner and now had, not only new runners, but heavy duty runners. Anyway, now I had to figure out how to get these new inserts to be functional being a foot shorter than my runners. I borrowed a cordless drill from the principal of the school and decided the only thing I could do was to drill new holes in the inserts and attach them to the runners using the same bolt that the runners would be on. The problem with this arrangement is that if I caught something that would rip my plastic off it would take the insert too, then I’d be screwed and the likeliness of that happening was greater since there was now a foot of bare aluminum in front of the insert and plastic on which something could catch. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but the best I could come up with. I had a second sled at McGrath so if it didn’t work I’d have a sled waiting at the next checkpoint.

After fixing the sled I went into the school to enjoy a couple free hotdogs and some chips washed down with lots of tang. This was all offered by the school. Then I was off to the wood shop where they’d laid out some mats, for a nap. The sun was streaming in the window and I felt like I was back in my parent’s living room as a kid taking a nap on the floor with the sun beaming in the picture window. My knee still hurt, but I slept like a baby.

I slept for a couple hours then got up to eat some more and chatted with Dexter Kancer Karen Land, and Ed Strielstrsa. All three were taking their 24 hour here. Dexter and Karen were waiting on getting new sleds brought in and Ed was nursing a very bad knee injury. Mark, Ellie, Matt Weik, and Jacob were all still there. We had some good chats.

Rick Swenson and Kellie were still there too.

Fed the dogs another drink then we were on our way.