The Ophir checkpoint pulsated with life. Inviting smoke rose from a cabin nestled in a grove of tall spruce. A neat line of supply sacks rested outside the cabin, near an assortment of snowmachines, freight sleds, and a small mountain of trash and surplus gear. The checkpoint was staffed by veterinarian Mary Hoffheimer, a radio operator, and the owners of the cabin.
“I was beginning to wonder if you would ever get here,” said Mary, whom I knew from covering past races. She frowned with mock indignation.
The veterinarian carefully examined Cricket, feeling for sore spots and manipulating her legs. Like me, Mary couldn’t find any cause for the limp. The dog’s leg might have been asleep, she said, or possessed some other kink that worked itself out. There was another possibility, Mary suggested, smiling. My little Cricket might have faked the whole thing — in hopes of hitching a free ride.
“Could you also check that bandage on Skidders?” I asked, and went on to tell her about my harrowing plunge off the cliff in the Burn.
“Wait a minute,” she said, peeling the bandage from the staples. “I’ve heard about this dog. You’re the one!”
Hoffheimer said she’d run into the vet who treated Skidders in Nikolai. He’d described a semihysterical rookie who had dragged him out of bed to treat an old dog who was mending just fine. “I put in a few staples,” the vet told Mary, “more to calm the musher than anything else.”
“That rat bastard!” I said.
We compared notes on the race as Mary changed Skidders’s bandage. Working this, her third Iditarod, the New Hampshire veterinarian had the opportunity to watch the entire field pass through checkpoints. The general condition of dogs appeared excellent, she said, in teams traveling in both the front and the back ends of the race field. But the vet was appalled by what she had seen in several of the middle teams.
Inside the cabin, Mary raided the checkpoint supplies and heated me a bowl of stew. I studied the checker’s log while I ate. Four teams had departed Ophir within three hours of my arrivaclass="underline" Linda Plettner, Urtha Lenthar, Mark Williams, and Gunnar Johnson. But those mushers had all rested here for at least 13 hours, and most had stayed closer to 19 hours. Worse, the Poodle Man was reported already out of Iditarod, meaning that he had a lead of at least a hundred miles. But Suter’s speed was deceptive. The fool hadn’t yet taken his 24-hour layover, a strategy that had the vets increasingly concerned. The damn poodles hadn’t beat us yet.
I could have used a nap, but I didn’t plan to linger long in Ophir. I was in a hurry, determined to press on before Lee and the others caught up. Such foolishness shaped my thinking as I rushed into a series of stupid mistakes.
King was sleeping off his big dinner. Butcher mushed into Anvik, paused just 12 minutes, then led a wave of veteran teams up the Yukon River.
By the time King resumed the chase, three hours later, Butcher was resting at the next checkpoint, Grayling, with eight other mushers on the way. The front pack held no surprises to those familiar with the race: Barve, Jonrowe, Garnie, Buser, Tim Osmar, Runyan, Swenson, and Matt “the Miner” Desalernos from Nome.
Butcher paused six hours in the village of Grayling, resting her dogs through the heat of the day. The champ then set the pace again, leaving on the 60-mile trail to Eagle Island at 3:20 P.M. on Saturday.
Adkins mushed into Grayling as Butcher pulled out. The Montanan paused just five minutes and then gave chase. By dusk, ten teams were streaking up the Yukon behind Butcher, with half a dozen others preparing to follow.
The forecast called for a blizzard with possible temperatures of 30 below on the windy river. “I’m just going to wear everything I’ve got,” former champion Rick Mackey told reporters.
The predicted storm didn’t materialize, but strong winds and drifting powdery snow slowed Butcher to a crawl.
At 11:30 A.M. on Sunday — at approximately the same time I mushed into Ophir, 200 miles south — Joe Runyan parked his dogs in the ravine below Ralph and Helmi Conatser’s cabin on Eagle Island. Coming from behind, Runyan had beaten Butcher, Barve, and Quest veteran Kate Persons to the remote island checkpoint by nearly half an hour.
Nome remained more than 400 miles away. No one wanted to break trail to Kaltag, a tough 70 miles farther up the Yukon. Front-runners bedded their dogs in the snow, built crackling wood fires, and nervously eyed each other, daring someone, anyone, to make the first move.
Ralph Conatser had checked in 23 teams before the first musher left. The deadlock was broken at 6:30 P.M. on Sunday by Jeff King. Within an hour, the chase was resumed by Barve, Runyan, Buser, Swenson, Jonrowe, and Butcher — whose 18-dog team remained the largest and best rested among Iditarod’s lead pack.
Logic was left out of the equation as I repacked for the 90-mile haul to Iditarod. I was obsessed with cutting weight in the sled. Speed. Speed was all-important. With that goal in mind, it was time to improvise. For the upcoming run, one of the longest in the race, I sought to maximize speed by carrying less dog food than I had originally planned.
Checkpoint volunteers were sorting the surplus left by other teams, salvaging what they could, burning most of the rest. As I dragged over a sack filled with spare bags of lamb, liver, and beef, an uproar broke out over another musher’s castoffs.
“Eels?” cried one of the volunteers, dropping the bag and jumping backwards. The exotic fare was left by Chase. The light-traveling Athabaskan had passed through Ophir the previous morning.
The sun remained high. My dogs had only been resting about three and a half hours. They were groggy as I put on their booties. Most recurled and fell back asleep as I moved down the line.
Then I heard the word I’d been dreading: “Team!”
It was Daily.
I began chucking my gear in the sled, preparing for a fast getaway.
Mary stood on the brake as I guided Harley and Chad over to the trail. The dogs were balking; none were happy about leaving so soon. I lifted Screech, Scar, even Rainy, off the ground by their harnesses and stood them upright.
“You’re leaving?” said Daily, parking his team nearby.
“That’s right,” I said in a false, bright tone. “These dogs smell poodle meat.”
Mary didn’t say anything, but the vet side of her must have been appalled watching my team wobble out of Ophir. The dogs moved stiffly. I’d never seen them looking so discouraged. Even Raven hung her head, uncharacteristically quiet. Life in a chain gang obviously wasn’t something she cared to bark about.
Roughly halfway to Iditarod was an old uninhabited shelter known as Don’s Cabin. My plan was to push straight through to it. The distance was about 45 miles. We had clear weather, and I figured the team could do that in six or seven hours, easily.
Cutting short the team’s rest backfired on me. Any benefits of leaving early were sapped by traveling for hours in the blazing sun. The team’s speed faded in the heat. Thirsty Harley led the crew in gulping snow at every opportunity.
By midnight, there was no sign of Don’s Cabin, and I was losing the battle to stay awake. We had covered plenty of ground. That was evident from the changed landscape. The trail was rising over a barren dome of tundra, rock, and ice. This was a harsh and menacing place, a desolate end-of-the-earth setting. And if I thought it was bad — outfitted in my space-age gear, driving dogs fueled by the best nutrition money could buy, tapping caches of supplies flown in for my convenience — what must it have been like in 1910? Those cheechakos, stampeding toward the new strikes reported at Iditarod, had protected their hands with rags and had stuffed newspapers under their coats for insulation.