March 29, 2009
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One Iditarod Dog that Did Not Die
The race is long over, but one poignant story, of two mushers giving up their Iditarod dreams to save the life of a dog, has just come out.
Kim Darst had been working and saving for years to become the first person from New Jersey to compete in the Iditarod. Blake Matray had promised his wife that his first Iditarod would also be his last.
Out on the trail, the two rookies found themselves running from checkpoint to checkpoint together at the back of the pack. They made it to the halfway point, the old ghost town of Iditarod.
Only a few miles out of the checkpoint, Matray said, “we started running into drifted-over trail. We started breaking trail.”Most of the time, the dogs wallowed belly deep. When the teams got lucky, Matray said, they might find a stretch, maybe a quarter mile, of good trail where the route went through a patch of trees.
Mainly, though, they broke trail hour after hour. Darst’s team was in front. She’d wanted that position when they left Iditarod so Matray’s faster team wouldn’t pull away. They talked about trying to swap off the trail-breaking duty, but passing was difficult.
As it was, any time either musher’s lead dogs wandered off the narrow trail they’d get stuck in almost bottomless snow. When the mushers went to guide them back onto the firm surface hidden beneath the drifts, Matray said, “you’d sink up to your waist. It was a 10-to-15 minute ordeal to get them back on the trail.” It was sometimes better to get on his belly and swim out to them to avoid sinking so deep.
The weather just kept getting worse, the temperature plummeting and the wind building, swirling snow everywhere.
They stopped, fed the dogs and bedded them down in straw, napped a few hours, then got up and started preparing to get back on the trail.
”Kim came running over holding a dog in her arms,” Matray said. It was Cotton.“She was in rough shape,” Matray said. “Her eyes were starting to roll back a bit, and she was starting to convulse.”
Matray told Darst the only hope Cotton had was to be warmed by her in a sleeping bag in the tent. He fired up the butane camping stove. It only burned for about an hour, but it helped pump some heat into the tent.
“Cotton stopped convulsing,” Matray said. “Her eyes came back a little bit toward normal.”
Matray and Darst estimated they were halfway down the 65-mile stretch of trail between Iditarod and Shageluk. They discussed trying to move on, but decided Cotton wasn’t up to it.
“We stayed put because of that dog,” Matray said.
Darst was carrying a SPOT satellite signaling device. It has two buttons for calling for help. One sends a signal to friends asking for assistance; the other notifies search-and-rescue personnel. Darst and Matray knew that if either button was pushed, their Iditarods were over.
Still, Matray said, it didn’t take the mushers long to realize that didn’t matter. Cotton needed help.
Even if you haven’t read any of the other stories,
this one is worth reading in its entirety at adn.com/
Iditarod code dictates musher’s actions on the trail
Comments (7)
This is a great story. Thanks for the link.
What a sad, but valiant story! Glad that Cotton is ok!
What a great story!
Awesome story!
What a great story…
There is one to stick on PETA’s eye!
One more example of how strong the bond is between the mushers and their dogs. I’m not surprised, and I’m glad the news is making its way to the world showing how much love there is on the trail. Thanks again for sharing.
PS I watched a 3-part series on tv on an odd channel called Versus about this year’s iditarod. I understand that Lance Mackey had had a really tough time with his battle with cancer, and that his friend Burmeister visited him in the hospital, only to find Lance always had a dog or two there with him. Those dogs pulled him through, I have no doubt.