The Road Less Traveled
The Iditarod trail is 1,150 miles long. We made it to the 194th
mile.
. Illustration by Red Nose Studio.
Lance Mackey is making the rounds. His team
of 16 dogs, including the leaders ("Larry, the brains of the
outfit, and Hobo, the speed behind the team"), dive into the food
and bowls of water he sets before them. "They're very aggressive
eaters," says Mackey. After inhaling the meal, some return to
rolling in the snow to cool off from their run, while others work
the hay under their paws into a comfortable spot to rest. Like
human athletes, each has his own postrun routine.
For Mackey, the pack of mostly related look-alikes has more in
common with a top-ranked high school
soccer team than with pro
players. The spirited black-and-beige dogs are "basically a bunch
of adolescents ... a bunch of high school kids with minimum
discipline." But he's not complaining - he breeds his dogs to have
strong appetites and even stronger can-do (and rather chipper)
attitudes. "Without either one, you're not going very far," he
says.
It's 6:30 a.m., but the sky is still blue-black with night. Even
the snow, piled high on and around the foot-thick lake ice, looks
inky blue. The moon does little to help Mackey with his tasks, but
there's enough of a glow from headlamps and TV cameras. Besides,
Mackey, 36, has been mushing all his life and has twice won the
1,150-mile Yukon Quest. He could do all of this even without a
sliver of light. As he works his way down the line of dogs, he
checks each one with his eyes and his hands, finishing with a kind
word or a good head scratch.
They deserve the attention. After all, they're already 194 miles
into the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
IT'S EARLY MARCH IN ALASKA. While residents
of the Lower 48 are pulling out their bicycles for spring overhauls
and thumbing through flower catalogs, Alaskans are still committed
to winter. Snowmobiles - or snow machines, as they call them up
north - remain in heavy rotation. The ice that owns Finger Lake,
the fourth checkpoint along the Iditarod trail, won't break up
until at least six weeks from now.
The race was first run in 1973, to commemorate the 1925 dog sled
run that delivered medicine that saved Nome from a diphtheria
outbreak. It is now one of the most popular sporting events in
Alaska and usually draws national attention. Top teams take about
nine days to cover the 1,150-mile distance and reach the finish
line, a burled wooden arch in Nome. Rookies may spend more than two
weeks on the trail, which has 25 or 26 checkpoints, depending on
which route is being used in a particular year. "The Iditarod is my
vacation," says 11-time Iditarod finisher Lynda Plettner, 56. "I
work all year to go out there and half kill myself. I'm not the
type that wants to get on a bus and watch a glacier calving. I
could watch that on a video and get almost the same effect. Not so
with the Iditarod. That takes planning and timing and hard work.
Then you get to go across
Alaska - with a dog team, which, in my
case, are my best friends."
These best friends are no fancy show dogs; they're mutts. Though,
as Plettner makes clear, they're mutts with a pedigree that goes
back about 60 years. Some dogs become legends. "You can just say a
dog's name, like Sailor or Pluto or Granite, and everybody knows
who you're talking about," she says.
The canine athletes are "the best-bred mutts in the world. There is
no purebred dog suited for the task," she adds. "A Siberian is like
having a little
Volkswagen with pinstriped paint and mag wheels. It
looks real cute, but it's slower than slow and not very personable
- no work ethic, but suited for the environment, and anybody can
drive them. But you can't win with a Volkswagen at the Indianapolis
500."
Plettner trains her dogs "to go really far with a lot of small
breaks [to play with them and give them a snack] and then a giant
break. I never drive them really, really hard for 10 hours. I'm
kind of a believer in the long-run, long-rest theory." And she
makes sure the breaks set her team's tails a-wagging - literally.
"I have a little thing I call the jolly routine. It's just all
about making every dog wag his tail. If you feel really good about
your job, you don't feel too bad if the boss has you work a couple
hours' overtime," she says.
Still, it's Mackey's team that arrives first at Finger Lake, at
6:30 a.m. and after 45 miles of mushing. Eighty-one more teams,
most with 16 dogs still running, will pull in throughout the day
and into the evening. Races are won and lost at the checkpoints.
Some mushers, anxious to find a pace that will serve both the dogs'
needs and their own desire to finish well, constantly shift their
run-rest strategies. "I judge the dogs on what they look like
they're capable of doing that day," says Mackey. "Today I might be
able to do a 100-mile run, and if tomorrow they look like they can
only do 40, that's what I'll do."
During the early days of the race, it's not the getting ahead that
matters much; it's all about helping the dogs settle in to the pace
of the race. "The dogs are pretty amped up; they're excited," says
Mackey. Some teams stop at Finger Lake to rest and fuel up. Others
hand over their race logs for the obligatory vet check and blow on
through.
"TEAM ON THE LAKE!"
The yell goes out every time a race volunteer spots a new team
emerging from the woods. After leaving the maze of spruce and birch
trees, the teams turn left on the trail and skirt the edge of the
frozen lake. Though thick skies and low visibility have kept many
of the expected day-trippers from flying in by ski plane to watch
the racers come in, there are still plenty of people waiting for
each musher's arrival, including the volunteers, journalists, and
guests staying at Winterlake Lodge, which sits just above the
trail. The noise and activity provide a sudden shift from the quiet
the teams experience between checkpoints. "You have the sound of
the dogs' panting and the sled runners underneath. There's not a
whole lot of sound. That's maybe some of the reason we do this
sport," says Mackey. "It's so peaceful, and you just have time to
think."
Along the way, experienced mushers usually leave the trail watching
to their lead dogs. "I'm watching the dogs. I know where I am on
the earth, and they know where they are on the earth," says
Plettner. "I'm watching them to see if their gait changes any. A
tired dog goes from trotting to loping. I'm watching to see the
slightest change in their normal traveling pattern." When something
goes awry, it's time to stop and "check their feet, check their
boots, give them a
massage, move them farther forward in the team,
make life better for that animal, and see what happens. If they
don't come out of it, they're going home."
The snow around the lake is deep and soft. While most of the
Iditarod trail has been packed down by snowmobiles, including those
used by competitors of the Tesoro Iron Dog snowmobile race two
weeks earlier, the trail around the lake is cut fresh for the
Iditarod. "You really don't want the dogs falling through these
nasty, punchy soft trails. It doesn't take very long before the
teams break through and they're wallowing in sugar out there," says
Plettner, "but it's the same for everyone, and that's the way it
is." Both she and Mackey shrug off the extra challenge. It's not
easy going, but "anytime you have snow that time of year and an
abundance of it, no less, you have to be pretty happy with it.
There are times when there's minimal snow, and it's miserable,"
says Mackey, who is racing his fifth Iditarod.
To those watching from the checkpoint, it seems that the teams
across the lake are moving in slow motion. Piles of snow hide their
feet. They look like they're floating forward. The dogs' excitement
over hitting a checkpoint overtakes them as they get closer. "They
can smell them for miles, smell the smoke, and they know when
they're almost there," says Plettner. "They speed right up. Even if
your team looks slow, they speed up before they get to a
checkpoint." They're all forward motion. At the checkpoint, the
mushers dig the metal brake on their sled into the snow - it has
more in common with the anchor of a small boat than with the brakes
on any other land vehicle.
"Whoa!"
Volunteers step in to grab the dog leads to keep them in place. Or,
as in place as you can keep a team of 16 dogs that were bred to run
all-out while pulling hundreds of pounds. Teams that stop for a
rest are directed toward a slot on the ice. The ones that are going
through turn left, go up a hill, and disappear behind the lodge.
Mackey's team gets a lot of company as the frozen lake is converted
to a dog lot. "They love to lie down and play in that straw. And of
course they love to eat and drink. It's a party," says Plettner.
Soon enough, hay, frozen meat, and dried dog food litter the
once-pristine snow.
While feeding her dogs, Plettner has the first of two meals she'll
eat at the checkpoint simmering in her portable cooker. It's her
routine. It never changes. "You're no good to your dogs if you
don't take care of yourself," she says. Though she usually cooks
the second meal herself, as well, at Finger Lake, there's one
waiting in the lodge kitchen for every musher. For many, it's a
welcome chance "to sit on a real chair and talk to real people in a
real, dry atmosphere," says Plettner. Mackey stays at the
checkpoint more than eight hours and works two lodge meals into his
day.
As mushers walk into the kitchen, they shed their heavy parkas.
Gossip and banter come easy as they eat. Rookie mushers, with a
look on their face that makes it clear that they're starting to
understand what they've gotten themselves into, gather information
from the veterans. Plettner and the others offer what they can,
but, by this point, it won't do much. "It takes so many years to
get good at this. If you handed [a rookie] the top winning team
from last year, they would not make it to the finish line. It's
like giving a little kid a Ferrari," she says. "It's not possible
to verbally give somebody information that will do anything but
improve the quality of dog care."
After the meal, the mushers head back down to check on their dogs.
Some ready their teams for the next section of the trail; others
settle in for the night. Past Finger Lake, the terrain gets
tricky. It's hard enough by day, but at night it can be disastrous.
Teams turn into living pachinko balls as they hit the switchbacks
and plummeting downhills that tumble them toward the Happy River.
Then it's two more hours of narrow, winding trails. A place for
taking a break is hard to come by.
"It's one of those stretches that you don't get to see a whole lot
of except for what's right in front of you," says Mackey. "You have
to be on your toes and riding your sled. There's no time for
checking out the scenery."
He adds: "This sport isn't for everybody, but it's sure right up my
alley."
Power Trip
The 2007 race starts on March 3 at 10 a.m. The easiest place to get
up close to the dogs is at the ceremonial start in
Anchorage. While
the stretch between downtown Anchorage and Campbell Airstrip
doesn't count toward the teams' final times, it's a perfect route
for spectators to watch the mushers and their powerhouse teams work
together. Since there is a staggered start, the mushers depart over
several hours, meaning you can watch a few teams take off, grab a
reindeer sausage from a street vendor, warm up in one of the city's
numerous coffee shops, take a nap, and still have time to head to
the airstrip to watch teams finish their first day. If you prefer
to amp up your Iditarod adventure with some rustic luxury and
gourmet meals, fly out to Winterlake Lodge (907-274-2710,
www.withinthewild.com). Or opt for a
day flight to Finger Lake with Rust's Flying Service - and
keep your fingers crossed that the weather holds
(800-544-2299,
www.flyrusts.com). For
more information on the race, visit
www.iditarod.com.