January 19, 2004

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  SNOTCICLES

  
  

  If you’ve been reading my stuff for more than a year, you may know what season this is:  dog racing season.  Sled dogs, to be precise.  Remember?  They’re sled dog races, not dog sled races.

  
  

  This photo was on the front of the sports section in the Anchorage Daily News today.  I had two reasons for posting it.  One is that it goes along with the recent series of blogs on Alaskan winter that Greyfox and I have been doing, and of course the other is that it leads into the annual Iditarod obsession.

  
  

  The Kuskokwim 300 (that’s 300 miles) is a long-distance dog race like the John Beargrease and the Yukon Quest.  Some people have begun thinking of those shorter races as qualifying races for the thousand-mile Iditarod.  True, the Iditarod committee won’t enter a musher unles he or she has experience in another long-distance race, but those races are stand-alone challenges sufficient for any team and musher.

  
  

  Okay, for starters, technically those are not entirely snotcicles hanging in Ed Iten’s mustache.  Moisture from breath condenses in facial hair and that’s what most of it is.  But that big one… cold air does make the eyes water and nose run, too.  We just call them all snotcicles generically in the same jocular sense that we refer to the fecal stalagmites in the outhouse as shitcicles:  Alaskan humor… so sue me. 

  
  

  This winter is the first that my son Doug’s beard and mustache have been long enough to collect visible frost.  My boy is growing up.   That was the thought I had the other day when he came in from his trek to take warm water to the feral cats across the highway and there was frost on his parka hood and his beard.  Maybe this is kinky, but I find something oddly attractive about frost in a man’s beard.  I just like facial hair in general (on men, not on women, girls or little boys) and the frost enhances it.

  
  

  Expert speculation is that the cold snap gave underdog Iten the edge in this year’s race.  For those not up on Alaskan geography, his home town of Kotzebue is ‘way up north, above and to the right of Nome on a map.  His dogs know cold.

  
  

  
  

  BETHEL — Arctic training paid dividends for Kotzebue musher Ed Iten, who outran a strong field in temperatures dipping below minus-40 to claim victory in the Kuskokwim 300 sled dog race.

  
  

  Iten (rhymes with “sweeten”) won $20,000 for his 40-hour effort but gave the credit to his dogs.
  

  “These guys are not real pretty, but they’ve worked together for two years now, so they just clicked,” he said.

  
  

  Greyfox’s favorite musher Charlie Boulding, below, (my favorite changes from year to year, but he’s a more loyal fan) came in third, after Su Valley resident Martin Buser, right, one of my perennial favorites for the way he obviously loves his dogs (Marty has won the veterinarians’ Humanitarian Award in the Iditarod more than once, and that’s Josie with him there, not one of his dogs.) and his generally sweet and humble disposition.  I ran into him once in the Salvation Army store in Wasilla.  The clerk asked him to sign a Martin Buser trading card someone had donated, so they could put a higher price on it.  He blushed as he complied, with that shy smile of his.

  
  

  Boulding is not shy, nor is he sweet.  He is a cantankerous old coot, the epitome of his breed.  He doesn’t mush dogs for fun.

  
  

  
  

  The race for third was one of the most exciting of the weekend. Just minutes from the finish line, Kusko veteran and recent chemotherapy patient Charlie Boulding, 61, pulled around rookie Dallas Seavey, the 16-year-old son of Iditarod veteran Mitch Seavey.
  

  As the two raced for the $10,000 prize for third, both mushers started running. In this case, age defeated beauty as Boulding held on to win by two minutes.
  

  Boulding wasn’t racing for vanity. “It was seeing a stack of twenties about that high,” he said, holding his fingers an inch apart.

  
  

  Dee Dee Jonrowe, who has won the Kusko before, was still running in tenth place out of Akiachak when the paper went to press.

  
  

  There’s lots more in the story.  You can read it for yourself.  There’s also a link to a sound clip of Denali National Park Ranger and multiple Iditarod champion Jeff King talking about the role the cold played in this race.

  
  

  Anchorage Daily News | Kotzebue’s Iten chills the field

  • 7:55 pm
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