Butcher had mushed from Shaktoolik holding a 45-minute lead over Swenson. He, Osmar, Buser, and Barve caught her at a shelter cabin, where she spent six hours waiting for the wind to drop.
King and Jonrowe left Shaktoolik together, about four and a half hours after Butcher. The storm, moving inland, made for slow going. The pair hadn’t got far before they were overtaken by Joe Runyan, whose swift, strong dogs were refreshed after a long rest. Jeff and Dee Dee spurred their teams to chase the tall musher from Nenana, but his team was faster and vanished into the swirling tempest. The storm intensified, at last forcing the pair to turn back.
Joe Runyan spied the camping teams as he approached the shelter cabin at Lonely Hill just before dark. If I can slip by here, he thought, I just might take it. He quietly crept past. For a moment, the wily former champion thought that he might actually escape unnoticed, but then he saw someone — probably from a news agency — running for the cabin door.
Out on the exposed ice, Runyan’s breakaway was hampered when his headlamp blinked out. The musher shed his gloves to fix it. Wind instantly burned his moist bare hands. He knew he had to watch it or he’d get frostnipped. Cursing himself for such unprofessional carelessness, Joe put his gloves back on and dug out a spare headlamp. He beat the others to Koyuk, but Joe Runyan’s appetite for risk was tempered by that close call.
Nature was keeping the game close. But Susan’s team remained unquestionably the strongest. The Butch led the pack out of Koyuk at 7:30 A.M. on Wednesday.
The storm rolled backward along the Iditarod Trail. John Barron left Unalakleet in eighteenth place, behind the same pair of young leaders who had guided his team to victory in the balmy Klondike 200. In the village whose Eskimo name means “where the east wind blows,” his leaders were overmatched. Frightened by the gale, they swung his team back toward the shelter of the village, spinning his sled in a circle. Barron’s fourteenth Iditarod ended with that futile dance in the wind, less than 300 miles from Nome. This was his best dog team ever, but the dogs’ coats were just too thin for a storm like this.
Barron grew protective when a reporter asked for the names of his reluctant lead dogs. “I don’t want to say their names,” he said. “Put John Barron. It’s John Barron’s fault. Dogs don’t make mistakes. The dogs don’t quit. It’s always the musher. If there’s a problem, it’s me.”
The radio operator found Garth still wrapped in his sleeping bag. The Englishman hadn’t budged since Lee had passed the previous day. Garth had been stuck in the same spot more than 36 hours and accepted that his race was finished.
The Englishman assured Rich Runyan that he wasn’t in any immediate danger of dying. But he was critically low on dog food, and his team still wouldn’t budge. A previous snowmachiner had promised to send back a rescue party from Shageluk. Garth asked Runyan to make sure that the word got through.
The radio operator pulled back on the throttle and shot into the darkness. He was tired and hungry, but Shageluk couldn’t be more than a few hours away.
It was blowing in the hills, covering the trail with loose snow. Runyan repeatedly strayed off course. Each time he got lost, he circled in a widening arc until he found new markers or some sign of the packed trail. It was hard work. The radio operator grew sweaty muscling his big machine through the soft snow. But he was, at least, making progress. Then he smacked a deep, soft drift, firmly planting the nose of the big machine in the snow. The radio operator settled down to await the rescue party Garth had summoned earlier.
Wind, snow, more wind, Peele felt that he was holding his own — until the weather went completely crazy. Rain suddenly poured from the sky. It lasted about 30 seconds, ending as the temperature dive-bombed from zero to 20 below in the time it takes to flip a coin.
Peele was dripping wet, exhausted, and feeling feverish — not to mention cold. His hands were stiff. He couldn’t make them work. He was beaten, temporarily at least, and tried to unzip his sled bag, intending to climb inside and warm himself. The zipper was jammed with ice. The musher realized he had to get out of the wind. The only shelter available was the sled itself. Huddling on the sled’s lee side, Peele wondered if he was going to die. Getting out the tape recorder he carried in his suit, Bill Peele recorded a message to his wife.
“C’mon, Barry, it’s only eighteen miles,” I told Lee. “Come with us.”
Lee could only wish. He knew too much about sled dogs to risk pushing his exhausted, dehydrated bunch any farther. Daily and I weren’t planning to leave Grayling before morning. Lee figured that gave him time to rejoin us for the long Yukon passage. Daily wanted to stay longer, but felt that he had better run for it while there was a strong team ahead. He’d lost all faith in Bogus.
“Can I follow you?” he asked me. “The only way I’ll get to Nome is behind you.”
The temperature was above zero. Cool, but nice. The gray light was dimming as Barry pulled Rainy and Harley by the neck line toward the street.
“It’s supposed to be blowin’ pretty hard out on the river,” a villager said, while Lee waved good-bye to us.
I was wearing the snowmachine suit over my bibs and about three inches of inner vests and pile garments. The warm layering was standard procedure by now. My parka remained stowed in the sled. The Burn was the only place I’d needed the heavy coat. Leaving Anvik, which was nestled between sheltering hills, there didn’t appear to be any cause for taking unusual precautions. Night was approaching, but I didn’t notice so much as a breeze.
It was as if the Yukon sensed our presence. The wind rose like an angry grizzly and howled in our faces. Harley and Rainy dropped their ears and looked for a place to escape. The entire team sagged under the wind’s terrific onslaught. My dogs were on the verge of curling into balls. Running to the head of the team, I threw Harley, then Rainy, into the wind.
Steeled by my demands, Harley clawed forward on the rock-hard snow, dragging along his more reluctant comrades. Rainy did her part as well, nudging the big dog toward the faint marks left by previous teams. The short 18-mile run became a hellish five-hour march. When I wasn’t terrified by the weather, I was appalled by Skidders’s torturous limp. The old dog never let up for an instant, pulling like a champion, but at what cost?
At least it wasn’t snowing, or the trail would have vanished in drifts. And, thank God, it wasn’t any colder. Smarting from windburn, I parked my team across from the Grayling community hall. Daily skidded to a stop close by and staggered from his sled. It was near midnight. There was plenty of straw from the earlier teams. My dogs sniffed through it, pawing together satisfactory nests, then plunked down. In seconds, most were calmly licking their paws. I was reeling myself. That tiny chunk of the Yukon had beat us up, and we faced 130 more miles on that river. The thought made me shudder.
The only Iditarod team in the village belonged to Doc. Williams and Lenthar had apparently left Grayling at roughly the same time that we had pulled out of Anvik. Well, let them go. I’d seen all I wanted of the river that night.
Cooley was ensconced on the carpet of the local kindergarten classroom, one of his perks as an Iditarod official. He was disappointed to hear that Lee had stayed behind. The three of us were rooting for Barry to catch up, but we knew his chances were slim against that wind.