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Rookie’s Journey –White Mountain to Nome
July 25, 2006
I had eaten fairly well in Elim, but the bug was back with a vengeance
in White Mountain. Nothing I had even looked edible. I was going
through the stuff left behind by earlier mushers and found some
slim fast shakes. They were still frozen, but I cut the top off
and ate them with a spoon. Ensure would have been better, but this
beat the heck out of nothing. After my eight hours I went out to
leave and felt so poorly I came back to bed hoping another hour
or two of sleep would make me feel better. The next time I went
out I threw up in the snow. Back to bed one more time. Finally after
14 hours and 30 minutes I felt good enough to leave White Mountain.
The race judge was making comments about my looking for real estate
in the area. Just before I left Katrina Pawlaczyk came into the
checkpoint. I was the first musher she had seen since they withdrew
Ben Valks and she was tickled to have caught me, even if I was leaving
and she was starting her mandatory 8 hour rest.
As we left the checkpoint moving down the river things looked pretty
good, but one hour out of the White Mountain, just as we got to
start of the Topkot hills the wind picked up to about 50 mph direct
from our right side. Thank heaven I had Bass in lead because things
were about to get ugly.
For the next 6 hours we fought our way up and down those interminable
hills. The wind was 50 mph with higher gusts howling from our right.
The snow was blowing so bad that I frequently couldn’t see
the next trail marker. There was no loose snow on the ground; it
was all in the air. If I looked straight down I could see the tracks
of the snowmachines that preceded us (the dog sleds were too light
to leave a mark on this hard wind swept trail).
The blowing snow would land and thaw on the right side of the dog’s
faces and then freeze their right eyelids shut. I stopped every
15 to 30 minutes to go down the team thawing their faces with my
bare hands. I had my parka hood pulled up and the wolverine ruff
tunneled to cut the wind on my face. Even then I frequently had
to look down to open my eyes in the storm. As tough as it was, Bass
never quit. He just lowered his head and kept moving.
The dogs were getting tired and starting to stall climbing the hills.
I would walk to the front of the team, grab Bass’ collar,
and get them moving again. After a while I realized that Bass was
still working, it was the dogs behind him that were stopping. Then
I started to grab Bass’ tugline and help him pull from there.
The wind was so bad the sled was hanging 15 to 30 degrees downwind
from the direction of the gangline. That made it even harder for
the dogs to pull. Many times the wind would blow me completely off
the trail as we crossed some knob. Once I pulled the sled back up
to the trail only to have the wind blow it back down. I pulled it
up again and braced it with my foot, but the wind blew it over.
I had to stand on the runners and get the dogs pulling me off the
exposed knob to get back on the trail.
Finally I had just about had it. We were climbing one more hill
in this darned wind and I prayed to God to let it be the last one
because I didn’t know how many more we could take without
rest and there was nowhere to get out of the wind. God answered
my prayer. As we crested the hill I could see the flat plain stretching
out in front of us with a shelter cabin below. When we left White
Mountain I told the dogs that if it took over 6 hours to reach the
cabin I would stop, feed them, and give them a rest before we went
on to Nome. It actually took about 7 hours to get there, fighting
the wind for 6 of those. I was sure we had crossed the famous Topkot
blowhole and was amazed to find the 4 teams that left ahead of us
waiting at the shelter cabin.
It was about 4:30 in the afternoon and Randy Cummins had gotten
there about 7:30 in the morning. He told me the worst was yet to
come. The famous Topkot blowhole was ahead of us and he had tried
and failed to cross it. He had been holed up in the cabin since
7:30 AM waiting for the storm to ease. The winds were blowing about
35 mph at the cabin with higher gusts. Being first to arrive, Randy’s
team was pretty well sheltered by the cabin; the next team was mostly
sheltered. The next two teams were kind of sheltered, but there
was no place to get my poor dogs out of the wind. I unhitched neck
line and tug lines and moved the dogs around so they could at least
huddle in a group. 6 of them did, but Platinum and Basil didn’t
want to be in the pile and lay down alone on the snow.
I went to gather snow to melt to fix the dogs a hot meal. The snow
was packed so hard I couldn’t dig the edge of the pot into
it. I tried to break some with my boots, but still no luck. Finally
I got my axe out of the sled and used it to break off chunks to
put in the pot and melt. There was a fire in the cabin and I brought
the snow inside and put it on the wood stove along with the pots
from the other mushers. I was sheltered from the wind, but worried
about my dogs. I had heard tell of storms like this where the falling
snow covered the dogs and protected them from the wind, but there
was no falling snow here. The snow at the cabin was only inches
deep so I couldn’t cut a trench for the dogs to lie in. Picard
was starting to shiver and I moved him into the dog pile to a more
protected spot. I broached the idea with the other mushers that
we might need to bring the dogs into the cabin. This is against
the rules, but we were 5 of the last 6 mushers on the trail. The
safety of the dogs comes first.
R Northbound
Dogs in the finish chute in Nome after
15 days 14 hours and 17 minutes on the trail.
Bass is in single lead. |
Previous occupants of the shelter cabin
had left notes on the walls. One of them spoke about being trapped
there for 4 days. I was pretty conservative and carried a full day’s
food in my sled just for such emergencies. Some of the other mushers
were running short of food and trying to get word to Safety where
they had more in the drop bags. But even I would run out of food after
one day.
I was trying to decide whether to unhitch my sled and see if I could
build a wind break from the wind, or feed the dogs, hook up and trust
Bass to take me through the storm. It looked bad, but not impossible
with a good leader. Then the snowmachiners came through from Nome.
They said it was pretty rough through the blowhole, but they made
it. With a little sweet talk they agreed to take Kim Kittredge back
so he could see if a dog team could make it. Kim said they went 4
miles from the cabin and the white cloud we saw in that direction
kept receding like a mirage in the distance. We would try it. I grabbed
my pot off the slow stove and moved it to my alcohol cooker outside.
The snow had melted, but I wanted to give the dogs a hot meal in these
conditions.
Race Marshall
Mark Nordman
congratulating Eric on his finish. |
The hot meal made a real difference.
Picard quit shivering and as I started hooking up, the dogs seemed
as eager to get out of there as I was. We left at 7:30 PM and I was
so grateful that I hadn’t gotten out of White Mountain on time.
I would have been stuck longer at the shelter cabin with my dogs exposed
to the wind. God was watching out for me.
It was just like Kim said, the trail was flat (finally) and the white
cloud that looked like blowing snow kept receding. After 4 miles (where
Kim turned around) the cloud quit moving away and before I knew it
we were right back in blowing snow and couldn’t see the next
stake. The winds were howling, but we had gone through that on Topkot,
and at least the trail was flat. After 45 minutes we punched through
the worst of it and were back to 30 mph winds, but I could see the
markers again.
Just before Safety the winds died down completely. I was amazed. We
arrived at the Safety checkpoint 30 minutes after mid-night. Stu Nelson,
chief vet, was playing checker, vet, and race judge. The race was
taking longer than the staff anticipated and the other volunteers
had to get back to work. Two of my buddies from the shelter cabin
were camped at Safety feeding and resting their dogs, but it was only
22 miles to Nome and we pushed on.
Eric delivering
the mail. Eric's dad was third generation letter carrier in
Fort Collins, CO.
Now Eric joins the group. |
We had one more tough climb over Cape
Nome where I had to get off and help Bass lead the team, but from
there we could see the lights of Nome. I was doing pretty well, but
as we got to Nome they sounded the siren announcing my arrival I lost
it. With tears running down my face so hard I could hardly talk I
stopped and told Bass that siren was for him. I may have been the
guy on the runners, but Bass was the Most Valuable Player.
We came up off the sea ice into a parking lot and Bass was confused.
He kept looking for the dog truck amongst all the cars. I helped him
out of the lot and he tried to go down the sidewalk. It was the closest
thing he could see to a trail. There was a stripe of snow left down
the middle of the street and as soon as I showed it to Bass he knew
that was the trail and off we went to the finish. After 15 days, 14
hours, and 18 minutes on the trail we crossed under the Burled Arch
in 68th place. Man, what a trip!
I had planned to finish on Sunday, not Tuesday morning. I knew Marti
came up to celebrate with me, but wasn’t sure she could change
her schedule and stay the extra days. It felt great to see her out
there in the 0 degree weather waiting for me.
My father was a 3rd generation letter carrier in Fort Collins, CO.
My generation broke the string. So it was extra special to me to carry
the mail in memory of my dad.
The finishers at the Red Lantern banquet in
Nome. |
After the ceremony at the arch the dogs
are led another two blocks or so to the dog lot in Nome and volunteers
helped me unhook the 8 finishers and put them on the tie outs. I looked
quickly around as I came in and saw the teams that finished just ahead
of me already sleeping. But there was a dog barking. I thought that
dog sure had a lot of energy to be barking at me after just running
1000 miles. The barking became more intense. I was trying not to bother
the poor animal, but he was becoming frantic. Not only that but he
sounded debarked, just like my dogs. Finally I turned around to see
who was making all that noise and there was Dukat, the dog I had dropped
in Koyuk. The poor guy just knew I had sold him to the gypsies and
was just about ready to turn himself inside out to get my attention
to rescue him.
By the Red Lantern banquet I
was running a low grade fever and had had almost all the Iditarod
fun I could manage. If the race had been 100 miles longer I might
not have been able to make it. But, while there were several very
intense moments, there was never a time I wanted to quit. In fact
I told Marti what I really wanted was a month to recover and then
I wanted to do it again. I can do better!
Keep ‘em Northbound
Eric
© 2006 All rights reserved
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