“The team quit on me,” Carpenter said. “The dogs won’t go. Won’t go at all.”
I suggested that he rest them, maybe in the shade by the bank.
“No, no,” Carpenter said. He explained that he had no food, no supplies and HAD TO GET TO SKWENTNA without delay.
The Coach had warned me to stay clear of mushers who were losing it. Carpenter, wide-eyed and panicked on this peaceful morning, fit the description. Well, I was going his direction. Wouldn’t hurt to try.
“I’ll pull in front,” I said. “See if you can get your dogs to chase mine.”
The jump start worked. Carpenter’s team chased us. But, alas, his swing dogs began overtaking his leaders.
“Ride your brake,” I shouted. He needed to keep his team lined out — moving slower, perhaps, but moving.
Instead Joe screamed holy murder. His leaders faltered under the verbal abuse. I left him there on the frozen river, yelling at his demoralized dogs.
Dozens of resting dogs dotted the snow fronting Yentna Station’s big log cabin. The skies were sunny, and the temperature was pushing the 40s. And there was John Suter slipping coats on the dogs responsible for his notoriety as the one and only Poodle Man. Most Iditarod veterans were embarrassed by the presence of Suter and his poodles, whose fur was so ill suited to Arctic conditions that they stuck to the ice when they slept.
As a rookie, Suter had stunned Mowry and five other Iditarod mushers when he passed them in a storm on the final day of the race. The team’s complement of Alaska huskies made that possible, but those dogs got little credit in the publicity surrounding the three poodles who had gone the distance, or the four who made it a year later. Poodles were Suter’s ticket to network TV appearances and the pages of Sports Illustrated. As John Suter liked to brag: “There’s five billion people on the planet, and only one of them mushes poodles.”
Mowry dedicated his second Iditarod to beating the Poodle Man, which he did. I wasn’t as competitive as the Coach, but I didn’t intend to lose to Suter.
Ken Chase saw me throwing my dogs chunks of whitefish. He asked if I had any to spare. The Athabaskan from Anvik was one of the mushers who had defined Iditarod in the early days. He was renowned for racing with a light sled, trusting good dogs and a lifetime of experience to overcome any lack of supplies.
Mushing toward Unalakleet several years before, rookie Mark Merrill had been flagged down by a trapper traveling by snowmachine. “Man, you’re crazy,” the fellow said. “A bad storm’s coming this way.”
Merrill, a proud woodsman from Willow, spent several hours building himself a survival shelter.
“What are you doing?” Chase asked, mushing up from behind. He was amazed that someone would stop with a storm moving in.
Merrill told him about the snowmachiner’s warning.
“Trappers! They aren’t dog mushers,” the Indian snapped. “What do they know!” He advised the rookie to quit wasting time and get moving to Nome.
Merrill hadn’t ever heard of Ken Chase, and he wasn’t impressed by the stranger’s ragged outfit. He stayed put in his nifty shelter. Within 48 hours, Chase was mushing into Nome, beating Babe Anderson, an old rival from McGrath, by 10 minutes. The failure to heed the old veteran’s advice caused Merrill to spend 2 days pinned down on Topkok Hill, battered by wind so fierce it blew his dogs backward.
“I didn’t know who Ken Chase was,” Merrill sheepishly told me. But Merrill had come from behind to preserve his honor by beating the damn Poodle Man.
Chase’s eleventh Iditarod wasn’t going well. His dogs were bummed after cutting their feet on the icy trail out of Knik. A few whitefish might perk them up, he said. Unfortunately, I was only carrying snacks. By the time Chase asked, my one small bag of whitefish was gone.
The roadhouse radio was crackling with discussions about Carpenter, the screaming idiot “in trouble” down on the river. The musher’s wife and handler were desperate for information. Apparently this was Joe’s second flameout. Five years earlier, Carpenter had scratched in Skwentna. He had better dogs this time, “a great team,” his handler said. What was going wrong? The musher’s friends had access to a plane. They wanted to fly out and DO SOMETHING. The handler asked Dan Grabryszak to pass a message to Carpenter that there would be a meal waiting for the dogs in Skwentna.
Dan assured the callers that Carpenter was in no immediate danger. He also gently reminded them that Iditarod has rules limiting outside assistance.
Barry Lee sacked out in the frozen marsh. Back on the trail by 5:30 A.M., he quickly caught and passed Gary Moore. Two hours later, Lee camped a second time near the Yentna, building a fire and serving the dogs a hot meal. It was part of Barry’s schedule for working his dogs into shape.
He was napping on the sled when Moore found him.
“Everything all right, Barry?”
Lee smiled and waved Moore by, appreciative of his concern.
He’d hardly closed his eyes before two snowmachiners drove up. It was Craig Medred, a reporter from the Anchorage Daily News, and photographer Jim Lavrakas, who snapped a few pictures of the “sleeping musher.”
A few minutes later, Lee was disturbed yet again. A bicyclist no less! The guy was training for the Iditabike, an upcoming 200-mile mountain-bike race.
“There’s a guy a mile or two up the trail who can’t get his dogs to go,” the bicyclist told Lee. “Said he’s been stuck there for nine hours.”
Nap time was over. Lee got his team rolling to see if he could help. He found Moore rigging a tow line for Carpenter’s team.
“You know, Gary,” said Lee, as he helped Moore fashion a connector that wouldn’t drag the trailing leaders by the neck, “he’ll be out of the race.”
“I know, but he doesn’t see any way around it.”
Carpenter stood on his sled, out of earshot, awaiting Moore’s cue. With the tow line in place, Moore’s dogs ambled forward. The Good Samaritan supported the line to Carpenter’s leaders in one hand.
The incident was observed by the reporter, the photographer, as well as Carpenter’s wife and handler, who had just landed on the river in a ski plane. Lavrakas pulled out his camera and documented the rescue.
“Too bad that Joe has to scratch,” Lee remarked to the musher’s wife as they watched the two teams depart.
“Why would he have to scratch?” she asked.
“He can’t accept help like that,” Lee explained. “It’s explicit in the rules.”
Rule 26 stated that teams could only be tied together in an “emergency situation,” which had to be declared at the next checkpoint. Dogs quitting on a mild, sunny day was not likely to constitute an emergency in the eyes of the race marshal.
“I don’t think he knows that,” Carpenter’s wife said.
“I’ll tell him,” said Lee, whose dogs were anxious to chase anyhow.
The tandem pair were barely creeping along. Moore was trying to cut Carpenter loose. But every time he relaxed the rope, Carpenter’s trailing leaders faltered. Lee quickly overtook them.
“Joe, you know you’re going to be disqualified,” Lee shouted.
Carpenter protested that his situation certainly amounted to an emergency. “I don’t have any food. I don’t have any fuel,” he cried.
“OK,” Lee said, shrugging. A reformed alcoholic well versed in self-help litany, Barry recognized denial when he heard it. He’d tried. If Carpenter was too freaked out to accept the inevitable, so be it.
The Coach hadn’t wanted me to even stop at Yentna Station, let alone stay six hours. I thought I was being prudent. In covering sled-dog races, I had seen a lot of people blow out their dogs the first day. I was still there when Carpenter finally made it to Yentna — showing no signs of grasping his predicament. He was talking about schedules. Talking about those supplies waiting in Skwentna. Lee and I shared uneasy feelings listening to Joe rant. It was like watching a driver babbling about scratches on a totaled car.