My name is
Tyrell Seavey, I’m 16, and I live in Alaska.
My family races sled dogs. This
year my older brother is old enough to race in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race,
so he will be running a team of young dogs non-competitively. My father has raced the Iditarod seven times and will be
going again this year. My
grandfather is one of the founders of the Iditarod race and he raced the very
first Iditarod Race in 1973, and he is going to be racing as well.
We are the first family to have three generations in the Iditarod.
I had to be a part! So I am
taking a snowmachine and going along the trail to Nome, with the racers.
My traveling partner is Mike Kunz. He
is a welder, and he designed the sleds we will be pulling. Mike is an experienced outdoor traveler, ice fisherman,
snowmachiner, and a good camp cook.
The snowmachines we are driving are top of the line machines so they
should hold up well. We will both be towing two of Mike’s sleds.
That will be a pretty heavy load for our machines but they should handle
it on most conditions.
We plan to travel along with the leaders of the race and get to Nome in
time to see the winner finish. The
following entries are my notes and thoughts from along the trail. Enjoy!
The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race “Ceremonial Start” takes the mushers
from downtown Anchorage, through the suburbs, and out to Campbell Airstrip.
The time does not count on this eight-mile stretch so the whole thing is
just for show. This takes the
stress out of it for the mushers. I
have the honor of leading the race out of the starting chute, because I am this
year’s Jr. Iditarod winner.
My “Iditarider” is Miss Bowers, sister of the
late Don Bowers who is this year’s honorary musher.
Don was a mushing legend who died in a plane crash this summer.
The trip out of the starting line is awesome. I’m having so much fun,
cruising through town with all the fans yelling their congratulations and good
wishes to all the mushers. We make
it to Campbell Airstrip in good shape, and only one musher passed us!
I load the dogs back up into the truck and a friend of mine takes them
back home.
This evening is consumed with last minute
preparations for tomorrow’s Iditarod Race “Official Start.”
With our family entering three teams in this year’s race, there is
plenty to be done. All of the
dogs are being fed a special high calorie dinner tonight.
A light snack will be all they need in the morning so they don’t have
too much food riding in their stomachs.
All the food for the dogs and mushers has been sent
to the checkpoints ahead of time so it will be available when the racers arrive.
The average bag contains horse meat, beef, chicken, salmon, and
commercial food. Also, many of the bags contain such delicacies as lamb,
beaver, or poultry skins. A musher
will also send out vitamins, booties, spare runner plastic for the sleds, sweat
wraps, and his or her own personal gear to all the checkpoints.
When a musher arrives at a checkpoint, they try to
feed their dogs as quickly as possible. That
way the dogs can digest the food and absorb the nutrients for as long as
possible. On a six-hour rest break
the mushers will spend at least four hours doing chores.
These chores include unbooting the dogs, putting out straw, starting your
cooker to heat water, feeding your dogs, putting ointment on their feet,
massaging any sore joints, mailing home extra equipment, rebooting your dogs,
cleaning up the acre of garbage you somehow seem to accumulate, and lastly
harness you dogs for the next run. Somewhere
in there they need to feed themselves and try to sleep a little. It is not
uncommon for a musher to go the first half of the race without sleeping at all.
As for the mushers food, most of them cook up a couple of their favorite meals
at home then seal-a-meal them in plastic so they can be easily reheated in their
cooker.
Our dogs seem to be in good shape.
I think we have gotten them over the flu that we have been battling this
past month. I take a few minutes to
go over the gear in the sleds as we load them on the truck.
I know I’ve checked, rechecked, and double rechecked, but this is not a
good time to forget something. Once
we get to the start line tomorrow there will be no time to get any forgotten
item. We finish tying the sleds on
top of the truck and we all go inside to have a cup of hot chocolate before
throwing our sleeping bags out. See
you on the trail tomorrow!
Day
1: Willow
At 5:30 in morning we are mustered out of the bunk.
We have to get to the staging area in time to feed our dogs, unload the
sleds, and turn in our final list of 16 dogs per team.
The vets then perform their prerace exams and check the microchip numbers
that are implanted in the dogs. Although
this first day is a lot of show there is still enough to do to keep us busy all
morning. I feed the dogs and we put
them back in the truck. There is no
need for them to get all excited way ahead of time, they may as well be relaxing
in their boxes.
As it gets closer to our starting time we get the
dogs out and start putting booties and harnesses on. As usual we get in a big hurry thinking we are late and then
realize we are really fifteen minutes ahead of schedule so we get to sit around
and wait. All our dogs are nuts to
go, and we are trying to keep them calmed down and keep them from chewing up the
lines. They are really hyped.
After we finally do get moved up to the starting
chute and my dad gets sent on his way, I find Mike, my friend I am traveling
with for the next ten days. He had
brought the machines and sleds down on to the lake where they were starting the
teams, so as soon as we stow the rest of our gear and take the obligatory
pictures, we start off down the trail. I
am so excited! I have never done
anything quite like this before. I
think we are a little crazy, going out into the wilderness for ten days, neither
of us really knowing what lay in store for us.
I was confident we would make it to Nome just fine as long as the
equipment holds up.
Upon leaving Willow the trail travels down the
different river systems in the area going through the checkpoints of Yentna and
Skwentna. These are small outpost
lodges, which serve as race checkpoints for the Iditarod.
We stop only briefly at each of these checkpoints.
On these rivers we are capable of traveling a lot faster than the dogs so
we are in the front when we leave Skwentna.
Historically one of the worst parts of the trail lay
a short ways past Finger Lake, so we plan to camp there and head up into Rainy
Pass in the morning. Hopefully we
will be ahead of the teams so we will not slow their progress if we get stuck
climbing the mountains in the Pass. On
the trail to Finger Lake I am surprised to see so many “tailgate parties”
along the way. This is a
great way for the people who live out here to enjoy the race.
We stop at several of these huge bonfires to warm up and talk with the
people. A lot of the people out
here say they have been attending these parties for twenty years.
One person even tells us he had watched the Iditarod racers go by every
year except one, since the race started in ’73.
When we arrive at Finger Lake we talk to the checkers
for awhile about the conditions in the Pass, and I am pleasantly surprised to
find out it was groomed this year, thus eliminating many of the rough moguls and
hummocks. Though tonight is not
cold, it should still put to the test these sleeper sleds Mike designed and
built. Both of them are padded and
insulated, so we should be warm and dry tonight.
Day
2: Finger Lake
Though we get an early start this morning we are behind maybe a half
dozen teams. I am amazed at the speed they are traveling.
Our hope was to be ahead through the infamous Rainy Pass, but it’s too
late for that. After a brief chat with the volunteers we begin the climb up
off of Finger Lake. Even with the
double trailers we have relatively easy going for the first couple of hours.
Our luck is bound to run out somewhere.
It does.
The trail going down onto the Happy River is littered
with broken sled parts. The trees
are scarred by the racer’s sleds ricocheting off of them.
“The steps” they are called; three near-vertical drops, one after the
next. I am again surprised by the
trailers, which handle beautifully. The
only problem we have is the fact that the sleds want to go faster than we do,
and they start to pass us in the trail! Not a good deal!
We are forced to let off the brakes to keep the trailers from running
over the snowmachines. Thus, by the
bottom of most of these substantial hills, we are flying completely out of
control, but make it to the bottom alive and with only a few gallons of cold
sweat.
It’s the other side that catches us off guard.
The trail climbing off of the Happy River is very similar to the trail
dropping on to it. We get stuck.
About three-fourths of the way up this monster hill I can tell Mike is
losing precious speed and momentum, his track slipping with his heavy load in
the soft snow. It doesn’t take
long for him to grind to a halt, and having no way to go around him in the
narrow trail, I stop behind him, thus joining my friend in his predicament.
Thankfully, we are able to unhook the sleds and pull them to the top one
at a time, reaching the summit in a mere fifteen minutes.
After a quick break, we return to the trail.
The rest of the trip to the Rainy Pass checkpoint is
“uneventful.” My dad is one of
the teams that has been ahead of us so we pass him camped here.
We shout a few words of good luck as we go through but we want to keep
going. We still have the Dalzell Gorge to get through before dark.
“The Gorge,” as the mushers call it, is another one of the
Iditarod’s “unfriendly places.”
To get out of the checkpoint we climb a steep hill
while maneuvering through a large herd of free-range packhorses.
Though they are a little ornery we make it through okay.
A few hills later we break out into the actual pass.
Wow, it is beautiful. You
can see across miles of gentle, rolling hills boxed in by savagely rugged
mountains.
We have spent this whole day climbing, but now we are
at the top; the top of this mountain range, the top of the trail, heck, the top
of the world! The only way down the
other side is a narrow gorge that twists its way down out of sight.
As we ease our rigs forward into the abyss, we peer up the jagged
shale-rock walls. Gulp!
The next ten miles are like a continuous roller coaster with no stops to
get off. One of the more difficult
elements of the descent is the creek that criss-crosses the trail, forcing us to
repeatedly cross it on shaky ice bridges. If
we break through one of these ice bridges, the ten or twelve-foot drop won’t
be that bad but it would be impossible to get a machine back up to the trail.
When we finally hit the bottom we come out into the
open on the Rohn River. Boy am I
glad to be on a ten-foot wide trail again!
The river itself is amazingly beautiful. All the snow has been swept off the river by a persistent
north wind, leaving just the dry, polished ice.
I stop my machine on the river and get off, and I am surprised to see
myself looking back at me. The ice
is so smooth I can see my reflection in it.
We skate down river a few more miles to the Rohn checkpoint.
We can tell the race workers here at Rohn are
surprised to see us coming through with these big rigs.
But they caution us there are some long stretches coming up with no snow.
Just out of the checkpoint we come across one of
these stretches. The trail goes
back down on the snowless frozen river for another couple of miles, and we
repeatedly cross sand and gravel bars. I
hope we don’t have to go on much more bare dirt. It really makes the sleds
hard to pull which in turn triples your chances of getting stuck.
We come to a steep, bare hill about three miles out.
After getting stuck just a short way up when pulling doubles (two sleds
behind each machine), we decide to try singles (one sled) with Mike’s machine
since he has a studded track, which is better on this icy dirt.
Even with just one sled he can’t make it up the half-mile grade, but he
can get close. When he spins out
with the first sled he is about thirty yards from the top so we unhook the sled.
I grab a line, and using trees for pulleys we inched the sled over the
top. It takes us nearly three hours
to get the sleds and all our junk to the top, but we make it.
Night has fallen now but we press on, wanting to go
as far as we can before camping. The
trail is awful. There are bare
hummocks and moguls sticking up everywhere and they catch the sled runners as
they go by, making for an extremely rough ride.
We don’t make it three miles before we are stopped again, this time by
a short but glare icy hill. It is
obvious we are not going to make it up this one tonight, so we are going to camp
here. Only one problem - we are
standing in a lake! The water is
overflow coming off the nearby river, but we don’t have a lot of choice in the
matter, so we just try our best to keep some things dry.
This is a hard time for me.
I don’t know what will happen tomorrow.
There may be a dozen of these hills for all I know, but one thing is for
sure, there will be no turning back because we could not possibly make it back
up The Gorge. I am tired, and the
best thing I can do now is rest. We
have scouted the hill and it is obvious that we will be pulling the trailers up
by hand, so we have our work cut out for us in the morning, that’s for sure.
Day
3: A few miles out of Rohn
When we awake we get the “pleasant” surprise that the little lake we
had camped in has risen and is now well over two feet deep in many places.
So much for staying dry! Knowing
there is no way to pull the sleds up the hill with the snowmachines we begin the
task of unloading the trailers and pulling them up the hill by hand.
As each sled reaches the top of the bank we hook onto it with a machine
and pull it the rest of the way up the hill.
At the top we load them back up with our supplies and after hooking them
all back up we continue on. We
started climbing this hill at 8:00a.m. and by the time we get going again it is
after 2:30p.m.
We are able to travel a mere three-quarters of a mile
before we come to the Post River Glacier. This
is the “big one.” We get off
our machines and walk up the trail on foot. This is the steepest, iciest, muddiest hill we have come to
yet. From the top we can see that
this trail is a bypass that gets you halfway up the glacier. From here you have
to go out onto the ice and go another five hundred yards uphill.
It is obvious we are not going to make it up the bypass trail so that
leaves us with one option - go right up the face.
By now we are so tired of carrying everything up the hills by hand that
we decide to take our chances and go for it.
Mike wants me to film him going up so I go to one of the worst parts and
get set up while he unhooks the trailers and hooks just one to his machine.
I cross my fingers as he starts up the face of this steep, glaciated
river. He makes it four times in a
row, with all four sleds. We are
elated!
The next twenty miles takes us the rest of the day,
because one of us has to go out and scout the trail ahead and then come back and
report on the trail conditions. The
average report goes something like this: “I don’t know Mike this is the
worst I’ve seen yet. No snow at
all, big hills, and a lot of ice.” To
make matters worse there are several more creeks to cross, which are a real
hazard because of their steep muddy banks and slippery ice bridges.
We go late into the night, but I know it is time to camp when I come back
from a scout and find Mike sound asleep on his machine.
We are both exhausted. What a day!
Day
4: Somewhere in the “Buffalo Tunnels”
This is a much better place to camp than last night.
In the daylight I can see a spring that feeds the little creek we’re
next to and I can also see there is no snow for a long ways!
Anticipating another slow day, we get up early and try to dry out our
gear that got soaked in yesterday’s “bath,” with a roaring bonfire.
If you’ve ever camped, you know you either end up with wet gear or
burnt, wet gear. I end up with more
of the latter, so I decide to use my tennis shoes for awhile and see if they
will keep me warm.
After dousing the fire we start up our
“snow”machines and take off down the snowless trail, each of us pulling our
light sled and leaving the heavy ones. This way we can scout the trail without
the risk of getting stuck. We are
really happy when, after only two more hills, we hit a frozen lake!!
Though this is bare too, the sleds pull a lot easier on the ice, so we
run back and get the other sleds, hook everything together again and take off
across the lake. Finally we are
making good time!
After maybe eight miles of these lakes we hit dirt
again, but there are not so many hills here so we make fairly good time and
managed to pull doubles the rest of the way to Nikolai.
After nearly three days of grinding along in dirt, mud, dust, and ice we
are now back on snow!
Nikolai is the first native village used as a
checkpoint in the race, and the friendly people here greet us warmly and offer
to help us fix our sleds and invite us into their homes for coffee and tea.
As for repairs, we have had various things break going through that
horrible trail and someone here has a welder so Mike is working on fixing them.
I find out that my brother, Danny is one of the
mushers camped here and I’m disappointed to find out he is pretty sick with
the flu. In spite of this he seems
to be having fun and his equipment and sled are holding up to the elements.
A lot of other mushers wore through the sliders on the bottom of their
runners, thus mangling the quick-change system and leaving them with a very
hard-to-pull sled. I hear someone offer $500 for a new system, but all the
mushers have already given away their spares to others in need.
Danny joins me in the school, where the locals have
set up food and beds for the mushers. He
eats and we call home for the first time. It’s always fun for the people back home to hear how it is
going out on the trail. Mike has
come back from the repair shop and it is getting dark fast so we are going to
run on up to McGrath yet tonight and sleep there.
The trail over to McGrath is flat and the ride an
uneventful one, except for one river bank.
I’ve gotten used to these sleds pulling really hard on the hills coming
over here so coming up off this river I gave it a bit too much gas and hit this
20 foot near vertical bank doing about 30, and I think my machine and both my
sleds were airborne when I came over!
At McGrath we again are surprised by their
hospitality. They even have a warm
place for the media and public to sleep and eat for free, at any hour of the day
or night. I still need to get my
gear drying out and find out where we can get fuel in the morning before I can
hit the sack.
Day
5: McGrath
Another
warm day today; the morning, which is the coldest time of the day, is +10 F, so
I decide to continue on with my tennis shoes.
After firing off some calls from their satellite
phone and fueling up, we get a chance to chat with my grandpa who is now camped
here. He seems to be having fun,
especially now that he is on snow again. He
had a spare sled shipped here so he switches over before he leaves.
Mike and I have a lot of catching up to do so we once again hit the
trail.
The 20-mile ride to Takotna is down an old mining
road so the going is easy, and after a short while we are parked in front of the
Takotna village.
Here we are advised by some of the Iditarod
volunteers that we have more bad conditions coming up, and that we would be
better off to take the northern route instead. (The race alternates routes every
other year on the Yukon River. This
year the race goes on the southern route.)
The trail from Ophir to the ghost town of Iditarod is deemed nearly
impassable by the trailbreakers that are traveling ahead of the racers.
So, we are faced with a tough decision.
If we go south we grind through another 100 miles of rough trail, then,
when we hit the river we are stuck behind teams that we have to slowly pass.
Yet we are still on the trail traveling with the racers which we would
like to continue doing. Our other option, the northern route, is said to be like a
highway after the Iron Dog snowmachine race went through two weeks ago.
So we could gain a lot of time, something we really need to do right now.
We decide north. I have a
burger while discussing trail conditions on the next leg with a local trapper.
When you leave Takotna you climb this huge hill.
It’s pretty gradual but it’s still long!
We see a couple of ptarmigan on the ride to Ophir as well as a bunch of
old mining equipment broken down everywhere.
Just before Ophir, a one-cabin checkpoint, they have a tiny airstrip,
it’s small size emphasized by the people salvaging a plane that ran off the
runway the day before. This is
where the routes split so we will be off this years race trail for approximately
the next 250 miles. This leg should
be our longest without a village or checkpoint, nearly 160 miles.
The
trail here meanders through the high country valleys mostly, and is another good
fast ride, the only real hazard being the icy creek bottoms the trail suddenly
drops into. We have to dismount and
go check some of these out to make sure they are safe.
It took us so long at these past checkpoints to gather information that
we have to ride the rest of the day and half the night to get to Ruby.
Here we get our first look at the Yukon River.
Even in the dark one can feel its mightiness.
This is one stop where I was thankful for the sleeper sleds.
We just stop, open them up and drop inside. See you tomorrow!
Day
6: Ruby
We are awakened this morning by curiosity seekers looking at our sleds,
not knowing that we are inside. When
we come out, I think we suprise a few people, but they are still really friendly
and we find a place to warm up and thaw out our food in a big warehouse.
The workers tell us that a man had died down river at
Nulato and that is why there is so much traffic on the river today.
The gas station is busy as well and we have to wait in line for the first
time since we started. After Mike burns some more “food” on the camp stove we
pull out and go on down the river.
The trail here is really good, mostly flat, and we
are headed down wind so we cruise right along.
We make the 50 miles down to Galena in just more than an hour,
undoubtedly the best time we’ve made yet.
My cousin Gabe Jones is going to boarding school
somewhere here in Galena, and since it’s not a very big place, I don’t think
he will be too hard to find. A
local tells us to go to the airstrip and look for the old Military barracks
where the school kids stay. We do
this and after almost two hours of paperwork we have him signed out.
Gabe has been “around the block” before, so I’m
sure he will be a welcome addition to our expedition. He is big and tough and learns fast, so he’ll be especially
useful when it comes to getting unstuck. While
he packs his bags, Mike and I shoot a game of pool at the local hang out, and
after gathering a little more info on the trails from the locals, we take off
down the river again.
Just out of Galena I see the biggest flock of
ptarmigan I’ve ever seen. There
are hundreds of them, like a huge white cloud circling around in the air.
On this ride we pass the villages of Koyukuk and Nulato, but don’t
stop.
We did stop once though, to put on more gear.
There is definitely a bit of a chill in tonight’s air.
It’s too cloudy to see northern lights tonight but the conditions feel
right so I’m sure we would be getting a real good display on this ride if it
were clear.
When we arrive at Kaltag we find the villagers at a
big shindig at the bingo hall. The
Stick Dance they call it, and from what we can gather, the potluck is to honor
all the dead from the area villages. Many
gifts of fine furs and food are brought and exchanged all through the night.
They are constantly dancing and singing too.
This is where the two race routes tie back together
and we have gained a day on the front teams by going the northern route so the
official checkpoint has not yet been opened.
So we find the superintendent of the school and he lets us into the
middle school, shows us the kitchen, showers, computers, and phones all of which
we are in desperate need of. I eat
smashed Pringles and a frozen soda and go to sleep.
Day
7: Kaltag
We really sleep in this morning. No
mushers are expected until late tonight so we have time to shower and rest up
and go in search of food. There are
no restaurants here in Kaltag but they said we can cook in the cafeteria.
There is not much going on here so Mike is going down
to the river to try some ice fishing with some people he has met here.
I think Gabe and I will run down the race trail and look for some
ptarmigan in a little while. They’re
all hooked up to the internet in the school, so I take this opportunity to write
to my friends and also get a complete race update, since it may be awhile before
we see another computer.
The Stick Dance is still going and you can hear the
singing and dancing from all over the village.
We decide to walk down to the fire hall, which is the official
headquarters for the race volunteers, some of whom have come in on flights
throughout the morning, so it’s getting to be a busy place.
We had better go back to the school and check the update to see if it has
been refreshed yet. I’m getting really curious about how the race is turning
out.
When we get back to the school we find Mike waiting.
He had caught a huge Northern Pike, almost 19 pounds, so he wants some
pictures before he fillets it. Once
he starts cooking that fresh fish, people start showing up from everywhere, so
pretty soon Mike is feeding a crowd, but there is plenty for everyone.
Around ten o’clock p.m. the race officials send
Gabe and I out on the machine to see if Doug Swingley, the expected first
arrival, is within a couple miles. We
go out eight miles, and don’t spot his light, so we turn around.
After fueling up and waiting an hour we go out again and this time about
seven miles out, we see his headlamp. We
speed back to the checkpoint and report that he is about an hour out.
A lot of the volunteers go back to sleep for a few minutes, knowing that
once the mushers start coming, rest breaks will be few and far between.
Someone spots his light moving up the river so we all hurry outside into
the biting wind to wait. We realize very quickly though, that the river has tricked
us. You can see forever down river.
We estimate he is still three miles out.
Finally at 12 o’clock midnight Doug Swingley pulls into Kaltag.
After signing in he moves his team up by the school to bed them down.
After watching him perform his chores for awhile I go inside to sleep.
Day
8: Kaltag
It’s really windy when I get up this morning so I
have a miserable walk down to the fire hall to see how many teams have come in
throughout the night. Only five,
which means Swingley already just about has this thing won. Swingley leaves Kaltag, well rested, around 6:30 in the
morning so any team not out of here by 11:00 does not really have a chance of
winning.
We are pretty worried about my Dad. He got in to
Grayling around 8:00a.m. yesterday morning and the stats don’t show him out
yet. This can’t be good.
The race judge lets me use the satellite phone to call back to Grayling,
about a hundred and twenty miles back down the trail, luckily my Dad is inside
the checkpoint building so it doesn’t take them long to find him.
From what he says it sounds like he left Grayling at 1:00p.m., right on
schedule, but shortly out of the checkpoint he realized one of his leaders was
really sick and a dog farther back in the team was limping pretty badly,
presumably from a handler stepping on his foot.
Being unable to carry both dogs all the way to Eagle Island he decided to
turn around and return to drop the dogs. By
then he was far enough out of the competition he decided to wait for Danny and
my grandpa to catch up. They would
travel the rest of the trail to Nome together.
He wants to see me and talk about it, so I fuel up the snowmachine, strap
on an extra tank of fuel, and Gabe and I go on down the trail towards Grayling.
Without the sleds to tow we make really good time,
covering the 120 miles in less than three hours. We have to keep stopping and telling the mushers how far it
is to the next checkpoint. They are
tired and disorientated in the windstorm we are traveling in.
Upon arrival we hunt my Dad down and I am surprised
to see what good spirits he is in, considering the circumstances.
He is having fun now that the stresses of racing are off; it has always
been his dream to run the Iditarod in a non-competitive style.
My Grandpa is here as well. He
is really tired and sore but he is also very determined.
I do think this long rest will do him a lot of good too.
Dad has already done his chores for the afternoon so
he is just hanging around socializing with the other racers and checkers.
Among the other racers here resting are greats like John Barron, Rayme
Redington and Ray Redington Jr., and Russel Lane, a native from Point Hope.
I think all of these mushers had higher hopes than sitting here in
30-something place with a tired dog team, but the conditions are harsh this year
and a lot of people are having to make adjustments to their strategies.
After a few hours with my father we head back up the
road toward Kaltag as we leave the checkpoint we notice a musher chasing after a
spooked, loose dog, obviously trying to catch someone else’s loose dog.
We assist on the snowmobile and we soon have the dog back to its musher.
The trip back up river is a little rougher, since the
wind has filled the trail in with hard drifts, so we’ll be cruising along and
all of a sudden we’ll hit a four-foot cement jump, launching us in the air and
often times off the trail. Once we
do get back to Kaltag, we find all the cooks asleep, so we do a little cooking
ourselves. I just pity the person
who has to clean up.
There are a couple mushers who are hibernating here
too. Martin Buser has been here
about twelve hours. After one last
check of the standings I’m going to get some rest.
Day
9: Kaltag
We want to get going this morning so we pack up quickly and after a quick
meal in the cafeteria we head for the gas depot.
It takes awhile with their slow pump but eventually we get our tanks and
reserve full. We should make it to
Nome with our fuel on hand.
On the trail just out of Kaltag we are forced to go
really slow because of moguls or small bumps created by machines spinning their
tracks. This kind of terrain is
really hard on the equipment. After
fifteen miles of these conditions we break out onto the Tripod Flats.
This is caribou country up here!
High open valleys with tussocks and tundra grass.
We have caribou tags and the limit is five a day so we are on the
lookout. About thirty miles out we
run into a pair of travelers who we talk to and find out they are forest service
rangers. We are pretty surprised to
see them way out here that’s for sure.
A few miles down the trail we come to “Old
Woman,” a shelter cabin for caribou hunters and travelers. The main caribou activity is supposed to be just a few miles
ahead so I’m starting to get a bit excited.
Gabe and I come around a corner and are surprised to
see Mike stopped and off his machine. He
is looking at his rear sled’s ski. This
can’t be good. Sure enough the
aluminum ski is smashed, broken in several places.
It just couldn’t take the continuous abuse.
The plastic ski-skin is still intact so I think we can continue on with
just that, but it will be a bit shaky for sure.
We just get going again when we run into some more
travelers. Two old native people
who tell us that the man is 93, and his wife 89, and despite their age they are
out here living in a cabin by themselves surviving on the meat they hunt.
These are some tough people! After
chatting some more with these amiable peosple we continue on.
Not five hundred yards down the trail Gabe spots a
band of caribou, so we drop the trailers and drive closer.
Mike doesn’t see us take off so he continues down the trail.
I have never shot a caribou before so I am really excited.
The herd really isn’t spooked so I manage to shoot two of them before
the herd disappears into the woods. One
goes down in the field and the other a short ways into the woods.
My first two caribou! For
those of us who live here in Alaska this is real highlight.
Mike also shoots one so it takes us the rest of the afternoon to clean
them and load them on the sleds. Gabe
didn’t get a chance this time but we will try to get him one tomorrow.
The rest of the trip to Unalakleet is uneventful.
Upon arrival we are glad to find a restaurant that is open, even at
10:30p.m. That is the first place we go.
After a really good burger we go to the bingo hall, the place they had
set up for the mushers to sleep. It
looks like we are in approximately 12th place and a few more will get ahead of
us through the night so I don’t think we will catch Mister Swingley, but we
will be close, assuming all goes well. Tomorrow
we will have to fix that sled with the broken runner and that may be a challenge
considering we are in Unalakleet, Alaska. Well, signing off for now.
Day
10: Unalakleet
From here you can almost taste Nome.
It is just 250 miles away, and had we gotten an early start we might have
done it in one day. But we can’t
do that, since we have to fix this sled first.
Mike has contacted the principle at the school here and she said we can
use their welder but they’re out of rod, so while he is off looking for rod,
Gabe and I start talking to some of the teachers.
Come to find out one of them has heard a lot of good reports about
Mike’s sleds and is in the market. So
Gabe and I do a really hard sell on the guy and when Mike gets back we just
about have the sled sold. Mike puts
on the finishing touches including getting the guy’s address to send him a new
set of skis, while Gabe and I clean the spilled two-cycle oil out of the front
compartment of the sled.
Mike decides to mail home one of the gas tanks,
leaving us with forty gallons of capacity, which should be plenty to get to
Nome. By the time Mike gets done at
the airport it is after 1:00p.m.; not exactly an early start.
So, it looks like we will be camping one more night.
I’m having a ton of fun out here but I’m starting to look forward to
a shower and a warm house.
Out of Unalakleet the trail climbs into the
“foothills” as the locals call them, though I’m not sure what they are
foothills to. The trail just kept
going up and down all afternoon until about eighteen miles out of Shaktoolik
where the trail comes to its last descent and you can see out over the ocean.
You can see a spit sticking out into the sea fifteen miles or so.
We presume Shaktoolik is on the end of this spit.
This land is very beautiful here but also very cruel.
This is the most unforgiving terrain I have seen yet.
You can't trust good sunny weather up here, because it can change so fast
into a windy, terrible blizzard. One
has to be prepared for everything.
It seems like we travel down the leeward side of that
spit forever. Finally though, we
come to Shaktoolik and are surprised to see how small it is.
Shaktoolik is really just a small group of buildings huddled together in
the wind. We just drove through
this checkpoint, as I don’t think any mushers were camped here anyway.
On the trail to Koyuk we experience one of the most
beautiful sunsets I have ever seen. It
just goes on forever. You can see
the lights of Koyuk almost twenty miles before you get there, so this is one
stretch I was glad to be on a snowmachine.
After the race you hear all kinds of stories from the mushers about the
lights of Koyuk in the distance, looking so close, yet they are still so far.
Twenty miles on a dogteam can take a really long time.
Plus, to complicate matters, it always seems to be really cold on this
stretch. I think it is only about
–25 F now but that’s still cold enough to require a little extra gear.
After what seemed like a decade we made it to the village.
We are going to camp here tonight.
It is only 160 miles to Nome so we can do that in one
day, so we may as well enjoy the hospitality one more night.
Several mushers are in the checkpoint building when we go inside.
Dee Dee Jonrowe had just arrived and Paul Gebhardt was just leaving.
Once again they are going to let us stay at the school, which is really
nice of the superintendent. After a
diner prepared by Mike, ( I can only take a wild guess at what it is), we turn
in for the night. I am sure I will
sleep soundly.
Day
11: Koyuk
Gabe and I are getting really antsy to get going. We want to get to Nome, the finish line. Mike insists on cooking breakfast, and it’s probably for the best so we surrender to one more of his “meals.” But it’s hard to be patient when you’re this close. The weather outside has gotten nasty. A real ground blizzard is brewing, creating poor visibility and a serious wind chill factor. Even a little wind makes everything a lot colder.
We have the sleds loaded up really fast and the machines fueled and oiled shortly thereafter. I have to go back inside real quick and add an extra layer of clothing. I can tell its going to be cold today.
The trail is really well marked so as we leave Koyuk we are not worried about finding the way, but we know it will be slow going. This stretch over to Elim is one of the windiest in the race. Just out of the village we are overtaken by a man and a woman on a single machine, and they ask if they can travel with us. We agree (the more the merrier), plus its a lot safer for them with just the one machine in case of mechanical trouble.
The snowdrifts in the trail are bad but the worst part of the ride to Elim is the wind in my face the whole time. It somehow manages to come around the windshield and right through my fur ruff making my face numb the whole time. I have somehow avoided frostbite thus far, but I do get a little on my cheeks and nose on this stretch.
In Elim there are a couple of mushers resting, and we leave before they do so we are ahead of some more teams. I’m guessing we can still be third or fourth in to Nome, if we hurry.
There is a man selling shed caribou antlers here and Mike is interested, so we go have a look. I have never seen so many antlers before. The man had piles everywhere. He was really good at finding them. I guess he knows just what time of year to look and just the right places. We don’t buy any but we get his address and Mike will contact him as soon as we get home.
On the trail again we travel along these strange rock cliffs; the trail has been pushed right up against the face by broken-up sea ice which created a wall on the other side. As we negotiate this odd canyon I am awed by its rugged beauty.
Once in the clear we pick up the speed again and head for Golivin, the next checkpoint. The wind is still keeping our progress down but we are getting there. Golivin was just another tiny village hunkered down in the wind so we keep on going. The trail over to White Mountain is the best-marked trail I’ve ever seen. There is a marker every twenty feet across one open bay, which seems like overkill but in really, really bad weather I guess you need all those markers. White Mountain is the last big checkpoint. There is one more, but not very many of the racers stop there. We pass a few more mushers here and after fueling up we point our machines towards Nome once again and give her some throttle.
I am surprised by the size of the hills you climb on this part of the trail. Some of them must have ascended for nearly a mile before dropping back down to sea level. I was really happy with how my snowmachine performed. For awhile, a couple of days ago, I was getting a bit worried on the hills, but today in these conditions, I’m not a bit worried about getting stuck. We make good time to Safety, the last checkpoint. I’m so excited-we have traveled the roughest trail Alaska has to offer for the last ten days, and we have survived. In fact, we have come through in really good shape in my opinion.
The trail on in to Nome is a road, snowed over and packed down by a ton of snowmachine traffic, and we are able to hold the pace at 35 mph. I can’t describe the feeling that I experience as I see the lights of Nome except to say, I am happy. Once you get to the outskirts of the town the trail goes right up onto Main Street so we cruise on in under the burled arches (the famous finish line marker) and off the street. Mission completed. There where only three dog teams that came in ahead of us so we are happy about that. I think I’m going to spend the next week while we are here in Nome resting and relaxing. A lot of my friends from the Jr. Iditarod are here so I will try to find them tomorrow. For tonight though, it’s a hot shower and a good night’s sleep.