Iditarod provisioned each checkpoint with dozens of cases of bottled Blazo alcohol fuel, or a similarly flammable equivalent. I collected my share of fuel bottles and carried them back to the team. Placing a roll of toilet paper in the cooker’s bottom pan, I dowsed it with fuel. A flick of a Bic lighter sent blue flame jetting from the toilet paper, which served as the wick for the fuel pooled in the pan. Next, I inserted the pot, suspended several inches above the roaring torch.
Boiling four gallons of frigid water took a good half hour. While waiting, I chopped meat and mixed it with dry food in two 16-gallon coolers. After pouring in the hot water, I resealed the coolers and let the meaty stew soak.
After feeding the dogs, I checked their feet and dabbed ointment on any that looked sore. Rainy’s feet were unblemished, but I wrapped her sensitive wrist in a special rubberized wrap to keep the joint warm and loose. Foot care alone probably consumed 45 minutes to an hour, a routine that would be repeated at almost every stop on the trail to Nome.
I was tired but pleased as I climbed the hill to Delia’s cabin. Hadn’t been that many years since I had climbed this same hill to interview others. This time this adventure was mine. Inside the warm cabin, I grabbed a bowl of chili and sat down with Delia and Iditarod photographers Jim Brown and Jeff Schultz.
Brown, a graying Iditarod mainstay, greeted me with a twinkle in his eye. “I’m tired of chasing the crybabies in front,” he declared. “This year I’m going to follow the teams in the rear. That’s where the good stories are.”
The bodies of sleeping mushers and race officials were scattered across the cabin’s floor. The man responsible for all of this was snoozing in a chair: Joe Redington — a slightly shrunken 73-year-old grandfather, with rumpled clothes and a gray day-old beard.
I remembered interviewing Redington in 1988, down on the river below this cabin. People had been saying that he ought to give it up. That the race was too tough for a man of his age. For three years running, Redington hadn’t been able to prove them wrong. Twice in a row he had scratched with injuries. The year before Old Joe had finished, but thirty-third place was quite a comedown for a three-time fifth-place finisher, and the man said to own the best racing dogs in the world.
Redington looked terrible that day. He was leaning on his sled, sipping hot Tang with a sour expression. It wasn’t the juice — he swore by that sugary powder. It was his head. “’Fraid I’m coming down with a bad case of the flu,” rasped Old Joe, who didn’t believe in fooling with aspirin and those other pills.
The front-runners, indeed, most of the field, had cleared out of Skwentna hours earlier, postponing their required 24-hour layovers for another 100 or 200 miles, and eliminating the risk of a storm sealing off Rainy Pass. Redington was left nearly alone on the Skwentna River with Herbie Nayokpuk, another aging legend. Both men were taking their extended break here, out of necessity: Old Joe, hoping to recover from the virus; Herbie, praying that his coastal dogs would bounce back after wilting in the first day’s heat.
I spent a long time talking to Redington. I figured the chances were good that he wouldn’t make it much farther up the trail, and I had a lot to learn about the Last Great Race and its founder.
Tonight I was ready to discard another illusion. Getting all of my dogs to Nome was a fantasy I couldn’t afford. Not if I wanted to make it more than a mile between tangles. I filled out the paperwork required for dropping Gnat and Daphne from the team.
Written explanations were required for each dropped dog. Mushers were supposed to note any medical problems or special instructions about handling, such as “This dog bites strangers.” I provided a detailed account of Gnat’s mishap with the tree in Anchorage, the comments from vets, and his whimpering behavior after Knik.
My explanation for dropping Daphne was not so sympathetic. “Queen of tangles, never pulls, chews harnesses by the box.”
Reading the form, the Skwentna veterinarian chuckled. “So why did you bring her?”
“Been asking myself that question for a hundred miles.”
During my 12-hour stay in Skwentna, I napped just two hours. Sunrise found me on the river, changing my runner plastic and repacking. Four hours later I was busying myself with the sled. My dogs were getting anxious. Raven and Spook were barking. Digger was leaping in place. I had my back to the sled when the team jerked the hook free and bolted. The team dragged my empty sled about a hundred yards before Redington and two other guys caught the dogs.
“I don’t think they need more rest,” Old Joe said.
Barry Lee had been warned: Expect a long 45 miles from Skwentna to Finger Lake. “It doesn’t look like it, but it’s all uphill,” Bobby told him. “You’re rising toward Rainy Pass.”
With his brother’s comments in mind, Barry tried to ignore his team’s plodding pace, but disappointment was gnawing at him. Though his dogs acted happy, the team was just crawling.
I caught Lee right after he finished changing booties. Aware that my dogs were faster, he ordered his team over to a parallel snowmachine path, clearing the way for me to pass.
Behind me, Lee’s dogs broke through the crusty side trail. While he struggled to pull the team back to the packed snow, many of his dogs took advantage of the distraction to kick or pull off the booties that had just been placed on their feet with painstaking care. Politeness had just cost Barry another 20 minutes of work.
Early Monday afternoon Joe Redington, Sr. completed his required 24-hour layover in Skwentna. I had my dogs off to the side and was tossing out snacks when the old racer barreled past.
“Go get ’em, Joe!”
He flashed a familiar weathered smile.
Sparks shot upward from a roaring log. Heat had melted a circular wall, six feet high, in a surrounding snow drift. Dewey Halverson, his face lit by flames reflecting off the glassy walls, had the other Finger Lake volunteers in hysterics with his impressions of other mushers.
The checkpoint consisted of a cluster of tents in a clearing between tall spruce trees. Accommodations for mushers were sparse. We had a floorless tent, heated by a small sheet-metal stove. Spruce boughs served as bedding.
After tending my dogs, I headed for the tent carrying a fat ice wad of used booties. Most were castoffs from other teams, which I’d snagged en route. My own booty situation was approaching a crisis. The icy trail had already shredded several hundred, wiping out my reserves. Examining my frozen assortment in the mushers’ tent, I picked out several dozen booties in good shape and burned the rest.
Alan Garth, Chase, and I talked by the stove, which hissed with drying gloves and booties. Mark Williams was sleeping soundly nearby.
Chase mentioned that he had never, in all his Iditarods, drawn a decent starting position.
“Yeah,” I said, “I got lucky, but I didn’t know what to do with it.”
Herrman was off in the woods by himself. He couldn’t bear for others to witness his distress. First it had been the heat. Now his dogs were sick. Only 11 dogs left, and 9, NINE, had bloody diarrhea. It looked to Sepp like they had swollen tonsils as well. The German had a theory about the cause. Living at his remote cabin in the Brooks Range, his dogs hadn’t been exposed to the viruses common in populated areas. They had never had a chance to build immunity to the diseases carried by the other teams. Up north, the trapper depended on no one but himself. He didn’t need or want any help now. Those nosy Iditarod officials could just mind their own business.
For 36 hours Sepp kept the fire going under his cook pot as he camped near Finger Lake. Using snow melted by the gallon, the trapper nursed and hand-fed his poor sick puppies.