March 13, 2006

• so trivial

  What with wind-driven wildfires in Texas and New Mexico, and people
  picking up the pieces after Kansas and Missouri tornadoes, not to
  mention really big longstanding hunger problems in Ethiopia, Somalia,
  and Niger, the Sunnis versus the Shiites in Iraq, and serious trouble
  elsewhere, the Iditarod is seeming ever and ever more frivolous and
  trivial to me.  With that said, I also feel that this would not be
  the best time to drop the subject, now that I’ve come this far with it.

  With straw for bedding and baled straw as protection from the wind,
  
  Jeff King’s and Doug Swingley’s teams rest in Unalakleet Sunday.
  Photo credit: official Iditarod photographer Jeff Schultz.
  The
  race is becoming more intense, as the leaders (Jeff King, Doug
  Swingley, Paul Gebhardt, and DeeDee Jonrowe) are out of Shaktoolik,
  heading across the sea ice of Norton Sound toward Koyuk. [UPDATE: 
  Jeff King checked into Koyuk at 11:24 AM and out at 3:51 PM.  Doug
  Swingley checked in at 2:09 PM, Paul Gebhardt in at 3:23, and DeeDee
  Jonrowe in at 4:34.]   King,
  Swingley and Jonrowe, coming in about three hours apart, each rested
  their dogs about five hours in Shaktoolik this morning.  Between
  Doug’s departure and DeeDee’s, Paul Gebhardt blew through the
  checkpoint pausing only long enough to exchange signatures with the
  checker and vet.

  Steve Heimel, reporter for APRN,
  talked to several mushers in Unalakleet about the race so far and the
  effects of fatigue.  DeeDee had lost the trail and lost time
  getting back to  it.  She said then that she was hoping and working to
  maintain third place, which she lost to Paul Gebhardt in
  Shaktoolik.  Aliy Zirkle says that she’s finding herself walking
  in circles, forgetting what she’s doing as she packs up her sled to
  leave the checkpoint.  She’s worried about the winds on Norton
  Sound, saying that wind tends to panic the dogs.
   

  DeeDee taking care of her dogs in Unalakleet, captured by Roxy Wright.

  Hallucinations
  are one thing they all have in common.  Aliy says that out on the
  trail she keeps seeing characters from Roger Rabbit coming at her out
  of the darkness.  DeeDee keeps dodging tree branches that aren’t
  there, which is sorta weird.  She has a strong reputation for
  running into the ones that are there.  Maybe the hallucinations
  are easier to duck.

  Martin Buser told about one year when he was far in the lead and had a
  vivid hallucination of being passed by Rick Swenson, who was many miles
  behind him.  Then he waxed philosophical, saying that
  hallucinations bring out the best and worst of what’s inside, that they
  reach down into one’s soul.  “People who don’t
  like what they’re seeing, they don’t run the Iditarod year after year.”

  A third dog has died:  Cupid, a four year old female from Jim
  Lanier’s team.  This is the largest number of dog deaths since the
  1997 race when five dogs died.  There doesn’t seem to be any
  pattern or any connection between the deaths.  The first two were
  from inexperienced puppy-training teams taking it easy back in the
  pack, and Lanier was maintaining a competitive pace.

  Details of the first death, of Yellowknife from Noah Burmeister’s team, were in the Anchorage Daily News today:

  At Rainy Pass in the Alaska Range only two
  days into the race, he asked veterinarians to look at a dog he didn’t
  think was performing properly. They cleared it to go on.

  Noah, who was trying to get all 16 of his
  dogs to Nome for the experience, decided that with the vets OK he’d
  keepYellowknife in the team instead of dropping it at the checkpoint
  to be sent back to Anchorage. Yellowknife faltered on the way to the
  next checkpoint at Rohn.

  Burmeister carried it in his sled. From there, the dog was taken by medevac to Anchorage for treatment, but died.

  That ADN link goes to a longer story about the dog deaths.

  Sonny Lindner and team leave Unalakleet at dawn.
  

  Photo credit:  Jon Little.

  There
  are persistent mutterings of discontent from mushers over the way that
  the snowmachiners set the trail this year.  The following is from
  Roxy’s trail reports on ramybrooks.com.

  
  Paul Gebhardt and John Baker were waking up, eating, looking at times,
  talking about the trail and thinking about leaving. Paul said that
  since Anchorage, all the trail markers have been on the left (opposite
  side of the throttle on a snow machine). Paul thought the markers ought
  to go on the opposite side of the trail as the prevailing winds, so the
  mushers wouldn’t be knocking them down with their sleds.
  

  A village dog in Kaltag watches the action as Ramy Brooks mushes out of town behind him.
  
  Photo from Associated Press
  …also from Roxy:

  “DeeDee got off the trail, and her dogs bogged
  down in deep snow. She had to snow shoe a path to get back to a trail
  with a base. She saw some snow machines, so she knew where to go back
  to the race trail. She said that she lost at least an hour. She was
  trading out sleds here, and said that she had a horrible time with the
  trailer sled, bogging down in the drifts.

  “All the mushers were
  experiencing whirling, drifting snow, where at times visibility was
  diminished. Jeff King stated he had taken out a few markers with his
  sled, which might make it difficult for those behind, as every marker
  was critical for staying on the trail.”

  
  

  Bryan Mills was carrying one of his dogs in his sled when it jumped out. 
  
  He’s shown retrieving the escapee in this photo from the AP.

  The pack is spread out from
  Kaltag to Unalakleet, with a lot of slower mushers moving down the
  Yukon in that direction.  The Red Lantern is still held by Ben
  Valks, out of Cripple on his way to Ruby.
  

  ---

  
  Doug is back on night shift
  now, and has gone to bed, leaving me the computer for the rest of the
  day.  I think I’ll get something to eat and then come back and
  work on a memoir segment.  Later, all.

  
  

  • 5:35 pm
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