One of the problems with the severe sleep deprivation that can occur during Iditarod is that you can start making bad decisions, sometimes really bad decisions. Actually you can make bad decisions without there being any underlying issues caused by sleep deprivation: sometimes ego can contribute; or overestimating the ability of the team and so either running too long or resting too little; underestimating how much training is required and so coming into a race with dogs that are underprepared; thinking a dog is OK to carry one to the next checkpoint because you think you need that dog to keep going when really it should be dropped and then finding that you have to carry the dog into the next checkpoint or it slows your progress considerably; developing a race strategy that is either unattainable before the start or unsustainable as the race progresses but sticking to that strategy because, well, because it is your strategy; running dogs way too fast at the start of a race and then finding their speed drops off significantly as the race progresses. I have often been sat in the early checkpoints in a race wondering why we are so much slower than other teams or seeing teams, that I think we should be in front of, being way ahead of us; as the race progresses we often reel these teams in and find ourselves finishing quite a bit ahead of them. These are all bad decisions that you can see play out in almost every mid and long distance race. Bad decisions are, however, definitely compounded a lot but lack of sleep; your judgement definitely becomes clouded; you think dogs are performing badly when in fact they are performing consistently but your judgement is way off. I remember Jodi Bailey talking to me in the checkpoint in Dawson during the 2013 Quest about the roller coaster of emotions you go through on the trail: one moment you are on a high, the dogs are cruising and the whole world is perfect, the next moment you are depressed, the whole world is black and you think the dogs are sluggish, maybe even finished. The reality is that often times the dogs are just running consistently, sleep deprivation is severely impacting your judgement and often times this can lead to bad decisions. As I said previously it is pretty common wisdom that you should never scratch when first arriving at a checkpoint, always sleep on the decision; it is amazing how food and even a couple of hours of sleep can reset ones judgement. Sometimes however you make bad decision after bad decision, each compounding the last until, ultimately, there is no way out other than to pull the plug on your race. For me the 2018 Iditarod was just such a situation.
You could say that the bad decision making in 2018 happened way before the Iditarod start line, back in July to be exact when we signed up for the race. Running Iditarod had never been a life’s dream, it was never even really a goal until after we had finished the 2013 Quest. It is hard to say why you keep signing up for 1000 mile races. I, like many other mushers, spend large parts of the race claiming that we will never, ever do this again, longing for the finish line, wanting the torture to be over. Even at the finish line I have been quoted, on more than one occasion, that ‘I am never doing this again’ only to find that by the finish banquet the sense of achievement, the plaudits, the fading memories of the bad times all add to the thought that maybe the race wasn’t so bad and next year we can come back and do a bit better. For me also there is something about the personal challenge, overcoming obstacles and against all odds, beating the race; I have said on many occasions that I am not actually competing against the other entrants in a 1000 mile race, rather competing against the wilderness, the elements, maybe against the darker sides of my personality. Our rookie Quest had not been so tough (at least that is what my aging and failing memory keeps telling me) and so pretty much as soon as we had finished I starting to think about upping the challenge and not just return for the 2015 Quest but also see if we could complete the Iditarod in the same winter. Having completed the feat in 2015 the side of my personality that encourages an inferiority complex was telling me that we had got lucky in finishing both races (although considering how the weather had been on both of those 2015 races I am not quite sure how I allowed myself to be convinced of that). I felt that we needed to run both races again in 2016 just to prove to everyone that it hadn’t been just a fluke. There was also a part of me that wanted to run the traditional Iditarod route as well; whilst the Fairbanks Start route was not without its challenges and we ran on about 500 miles of the usual trail, for me Iditarod is the Happy Valley Steps, the Dalzell Gorge, the Farewell Burn and the Buffalo Tunnels and we traversed none of those in 2015. And so in 2016 we made the decision, rightly or wrongly, to do it all again; and we did.
Neither the Quest nor the Iditarod had gone that well in 2016. On the Quest we had got stuck in a storm on the Top of the World Highway coming in to our 36 hour layover in Dawson. Well more accurately, we ran right the way through the storm and as the storm died away, and only 12 downhill miles from Dawson and very close to being back in the treeline where the trail would be more clearly defined, the dogs decided that I had no idea what I was doing and made the decision for me that we were going to rest up for a few hours. On Iditarod we had been having a good race right up until I made a series of poor decisions coming through the community of Golovin: firstly stopping to sign autographs, in a manner that resembled signing into a checkpoint and then, even before we had left the community, and again replicating our checkpoint routine, I stopped to snack the dogs. It wasn’t really a surprise then that when I asked the team to run out of the community and back onto the white, featureless expanse of Golovin Bay they balked somewhat, wanting to know why we were leaving a checkpoint. It took following first Matt Failor and then Lisbet Norris to get the team moving sufficiently well enough that we made it into White Mountain. We did however finish both races and, in the case of Iditarod, finished with, IMHO, a great looking team but I was still determined that that was it, there really was no requirement to run both Quest and Iditarod in the same winter ever again; as I was told after the 2018 debacle – I had nothing to prove to anyone so why even bother to do both races in the same year again.
The Quest has always been, first and foremost, the race that I have wanted to be a part of. The finishing team in 2017 were amazing, the best looking and happiest team I had ever finished a race with; it was no real surprise when I decided to sign up for the Quest in 2018. What was a surprise, certainly to me, was that I chose to make bad decision number 1 for 2018 when I decided to sign up for Iditarod as well. Looking back now I am still not sure why we signed up, possibly some psychological weakness, thinking that we had got lucky again in 2016 and still, for some reason, thinking we had a need to prove ourselves – although to whom I am not sure. Certainly a part of it was I thought that we needed to run the Iditarod Southern Route before we could truly say we had finished Iditarod, much like some say you have to have run Whitehorse to Fairbanks and Fairbanks to Whitehorse to truly have finished the Quest. Whatever the reasons March 2018 saw us back in the Anchorage area and ‘ready’ to run our third Iditarod. The Quest, just a few short weeks prior, had been another tough go: brutally cold and physically draining for the first 700 miles; too warm, fresh snow and deep, long overflow, and a demoralising run on Lake Labarge, for the final 300. By the time we got to Iditarod I was physically, emotionally and mentally finished; again the dogs were looking great but I had not recovered at all. I was telling anyone who would listen that I really did not want to take part in Iditarod: in many cases my comments were greeted with ‘you always say that’, others just gave knowing looks, some reminded me that I had never scratched from a 1000 mile race and we would be fine. Even on the morning of the restart I had a huge sense of foreboding and I was still physically exhausted; as we were making the final preparations to the sled and getting the dogs ready I confided in James that I really did not want to start the race – he admitted later that he thought I was joking but in fact I was deeply earnest.
Despite the reservations about myself the dogs were going well, I had planned to stop just after Yentna but ended up having to do a 60 mile first run because the dogs just did not want to stop. We made Finger Lake pretty much on schedule, the dogs were looking good and my pre-race apprehensions had disappeared below the surface.
Getting food poisoning and the ensuing sickness and poor decisions from Rohn to Takotna certainly did nothing to keep those apprehensions at bay. By the time we left Takotna, and our 24 hour layover, I was already back to thinking that I no longer wanted to be in the race. By the time we made it to Don’s Cabin I was exhausted again, any benefits drawn from the 24 hour layover were gone, and by Iditarod I was into a very, very deep low. The dogs were still however looking great and we came in to Iditarod with 16 dogs on the team but then bad decision number 2 occurred and I dropped Lucy for no other reason than she was coming into season; she had been running well, and was one of the many leaders on the team but rather than keep her in the team for the relatively straight forward run to Shageluk why I planned on taking the 8 hour mandatory that teams need to take somewhere on the Yukon and then reassess how she was doing, I decided not to risk the males in the team losing their heads, and appetites, and dropped her with some degree of hesitation. Unfortunately in making this poor decision I shaped my thinking for later in the race when I would make a decision to drop a dog that would ultimately herald the end days of our 2018 Iditarod.
One of the very big differences between Quest and Iditarod are, in my opinion at least, the nature of the checkpoints. Other than in the remote checkpoint of Eagle you tend to be greeted, and looked after, in the Quest checkpoints by your handlers and this usually gives a big boost to your morale. With only 9 checkpoints on the route, and often staffed by the same volunteers every year, and often seeing the same vets and officials in each, there is a real family feeling about every Yukon Quest checkpoint. What is more every checkpoint provides free drinks, tea and coffee and as much food as the musher can eat, free of charge – there is something very special about the Quest checkpoints. Over our three runs at Iditarod I have found the hospitality in the checkpoints very different, somewhat colder and a lot more impersonal; with shorter runs between checkpoints, and many more checkpoints, you seem to spend less time in each, availability of food can be very sporadic going from the excellent and plentiful in some such as Unalakleet, to others where there is not even any coffee on offer and even a bottle of water can be hard to acquire. With very few exceptions I never seem to get the same lift in Iditarod checkpoints as I do with the Quest and so if I enter a checkpoint feeling down, I can leave feeling equally down or even worse; this can then be compounded checkpoint to checkpoint, at least this is what I experienced on the 2018 Iditarod. Although there was coffee and a warm place to sleep in Idiatrod I left the following morning dispirited, in no small part because I had dropped two dogs and wasn’t really sure that I had made a good decision in dropping either. In Shageluk we were parked right alongside the out-trail which limited how much rest the dogs were getting; I also found the checkpoint itself very inhospitable and for whatever reason I made the very bad decision to make no attempt whatsoever to even find the sleeping area let alone grab a few hours rest (with hindsight it was probably not a good choice to take my 8 hour mandatory rest there); my decision making process was definitely going down the pan. Shageluk to Anvik is only 25 miles and with only another 18 miles to Grayling, and coming off an 8 hour rest, I decided that we would do a single run to Grayling. A beautiful and cold night run into Anvik saw the dogs literally screaming and dragging us through the checkpoint, I could barely control the dogs enough to sign in and out, and as we dropped onto the Yukon river to begin the 150 miles of river running that would eventually see us arrive in Kaltag and the portage to the coast, I began to feel better about how the dogs were performing.
I have said before that the worst time of the day for me is in the period from 0200 to 0600; I find this by far the hardest period to focus and stay awake; decision making is not always the best and my judgement on how the dogs are performing is at its worst. This was the time of day as we made our way towards Grayling.
When it comes to poor decision making there is one habit that I seem unable to shake off after all these years and that is my inability to leave things alone when things aren’t broken. In particular this habit has been around since at least the YQ300 in 2012 when I took Maddie out of lead only 6 miles from the finish and we very nearly stalled, and manifests itself mainly in me swapping leaders around when there is really no need. I get it into my head that maybe if I change out one leader I may get the team to speed up by ½ mph or more; when that change makes no difference, or more likely will result in a drop off in speed (probably accountable in a non-sleep deprived mind as the new leader getting used to being back in front), I will then swap the other leader. It is not unusual that over the next mile or so I will go through 3 or 4 different leader combinations ultimately ending up back with the original pairing in lead that had done nothing wrong in the first place.
Out of Anvik and onto the Yukon, as daylight crept up so it seemed the team’s speed dropped away. Having convinced myself earlier that I wasn’t going to fall into the ‘leader swap’ trap, I stopped the team and took Whizz out of lead, replacing her with Loonie. As Whizz was now coming in to heat, Loonie seemed much more interested in turning around to see where she was as opposed to leading. Several changes later I was back with Whizz and Maddie in lead, and making OK progress, but now, not only had I slowed our progress towards Grayling, I now had it in my mind that if I kept Whizz in the team the other boys would start taking an interest in her. I started to think, not very clearly I must add, that with Whizz in heat I could only run her next to a female, and as Whizz does not always get on with other females, that could start causing real problems (not thinking clearly meant that not once did I consider the option of adding in another gangline section and either running Whizz on her own or creating a buffer between her and the boys when she was in lead). As we got ever closer to Grayling all I could think about was the fact that Whizz was coming in to season and as a consequence she could really mess up the team and the race – Whizz, the leader who was performing the best out of all the leaders, was slowly but surely coming into contention to be dropped.
Coming in to Grayling I was truly exhausted, I had had about 2 hours sleep over the last 180 miles, approximately 48 hours. I needed sleep desperately so having fed and bedded the team down, I found my way into the school gymnasium and lay on my sleeping bag on the hard floor. As I lay there all I could think about was Whizz and should I do as I had with Lucy, and drop her for no other reason than she was coming into season. With hindsight it is abundantly clear that I had made a mistake dropping Lucy; with four females in the team, I could have kept rotating them through lead to keep them mentally fresh and still kept them well away from the distracted males; I had run, and finished races, with females in heat on many occasions. At this point the whole team were eating well, and to be honest females in heat rarely cause these boys to stop eating, so other than Loonie appearing distracted by Whizz on the river I really had no reason to drop her. I lay awake for the next two hours pondering my options.
The weather was not helping my ability to make good decisions. We had been told that a storm was coming down from the north and with the southern route on the Yukon already with a reputation for being a bit blustery on a calm day, there was potential that we would be running into strong headwinds for most of the 60 miles from Eagle Island into Kaltag. To make matters worse cloud cover was very low, and visibility poor, and so the Iditarod Airforce were having lots of difficulties landing at the small airports and landing strips that were associated with the majority of checkpoints. Being more remote than most, planes had not been able to get into Eagle Island and so there was no straw nor drop bags there and the race had made the decision that it would no longer be a checkpoint rather a dog drop/hospitality stop. This meant that we would now be doing a 120 mile leg from Grayling to Kaltag without resupply. Iditarod had however managed to get our Eagle Island drop bags into Grayling so we would have plenty of supplies for the trip. Coming off the Quest, an unsupported run of 120 miles was actually pretty common place and so I was not too bothered with this change. As Eagle Island was around half way, and convincing myself, wrongly as it turns out, that the team were used to doing 60 mile runs by now, I made the (poor) decision to make the run from Grayling to Kaltag in two runs, stopping off for a few hours in Eagle Island. Having spoken to a number of people the perceived wisdom was that good camping spots on the windy section after Eagle Island were few and far between until just before Kaltag and so this reinforced my (poor) decision to only rest once over the 120 miles.
None of these thoughts were helping me sleep or decide what to do about Whizz; if anything the thought that I could have a sex-crazed team all the way from Grayling to Kaltag probably mired my thought processes even more. As I lay there I knew that if I put the decision off until I was close to leaving I was unlikely to get any sleep at all and I would still probably make the wrong decision. I made a double snap decision: I was going to drop Whizz and I was going to do it now rather than wait until we were getting ready to leave in the hope that with the decision made and action taken I would be able to sleep. I got up and walked across to the checkpoint location to find a vet and official and drop her. As I was walking across I met up with Magnus Kaltenborn who had just arrived, as we passed each other he made a comment as to how slow progress had been after Anvik and how his dog team had appeared to be a lot slower than they had been before Anvik – the comment did not register until about an hour later.
Having completed all the paperwork to drop Whizz I went back to the gym to try again to sleep. As I lay back on the hard floor I thought about Magnus’ comment about how his team had also seemed slower coming into Grayling, I thought about how I could have added a gangline section to keep females and males apart and I thought about how Whizz had been my best and most consistent leader so far on this race – I had just made a monumentally bad decision in dropping her. I contemplated getting up and pleading with the officials to allow me to change my decision but by now Whizz had been taken out of the team, and besides which, maybe I had made the right decision, to be honest I was way too exhausted to know what was right and wrong any more.
As we pulled out of the checkpoint and dropped immediately back onto the Yukon I was overcome by waves of depression; emotionally I had dropping dogs for any reason and I knew deep down that I had made a very bad decision; I just hoped it wasn’t going to come back and bite me. To add to my very sombre mood, the weather was extremely warm and we were leaving into the hottest part of the day, yet another very bad decision, I would have been better either leaving earlier or resting another couple of hours and leaving into the cooler evening.
As afternoon turned to night however, and we made our way along the seemingly ever widening Yukon river, slowly we started to pass other teams camping, breaking Grayling to Kaltag up into three easily achievable 40 mile runs – I started to doubt my decision to do it in two runs. Pulling into Eagle Island late in the night, temperatures had dropped somewhat and the dogs had started to perform better, and with it my mood had lifted slightly. Although there were no official checkpoint services, there was a warm arctic oven to sleep in and good coffee to drink. Word was that the storm was still coming but if we didn’t hang around to much we could be through the more exposed sections of the river before it hit; I decided to grab two hours sleep and be back on the trail 4 hours after arriving. By far the majority of teams around me were doing the run in 3 and so going by Eagle Island, only two other teams were there and so the Arctic Oven was not only warm, it was spacious; I fell into my first sleep since Iditarod. As I slept I heard a couple of teams coming and going and when I awoke I realised that a) it was daylight and b) I had the tent all to myself. I groggily stared at my watch in disbelief: 6 hours, I had been there 6 hours – I had lost the two hours I had hoped to use to get upriver ahead of the storm.
As we dropped back onto the river the wind was increasing already and by the time we were making good progress again, and passing a few of the teams on their second camp, we were running into some good headwinds and getting battered by wind and blowing snow whenever we had to cross the river from one bank to the other. After a few hours I passed another team having difficulty making one of these crossing due to how strong the wind had now become however working together the two of us made it across to the sheltered bank. As the other team said they were going to use the sheltered spot to rest for a few hours I started to consider doing the same but whilst I had enough food to rest again, I had used the last of my straw at Eagle Island. I figured we were now between 15 and 20 miles out of Kaltag and despite the fact that we passed a couple of piles of straw where we could have rested for a few hours, the dogs were looking okay so I decided we should push on to the checkpoint. As daylight started to fade, the wind had dropped away but snow was now coming down thick and fast and I was watching the trail disappear before us. We were starting to see some signs of civilisation, the occasionally hunting or fishing camp but I was also starting to notice that the dogs were slowing down in the fresh, deeper snow and Fram in particular, was occasionally looking back at me. By the time I figured we were no more than 3 miles from the checkpoint, and I could actually see a red beacon in the distance, we had slowed to a crawl. I started messing around with leader combinations again but it seemed the dogs had had enough of my poor decisions and just stopped. Thinking it was only a few miles to go I tried walking in front of the dogs but whilst the dogs would follow, and despite it now being well after dark, it was so warm that pretty much any exercise had me sweating profusely, soaking my inner layers. Worse than that, having been over 24 hours and 120 miles since our last checkpoint I was pretty much out of personal food and drinks and already succumbing to dehydration. I knew there were at last three teams that had been camping not too far behind us and so decided that I would wait and get a tow off one of them. After a couple of hours the first of these teams passed and although my team would not initially chase, as the second team passed we did pick things up and covered the last couple of miles at a reasonable pace and looking, dishonestly, in pretty good condition.
Checking in to Kaltag I was surprised to see Ryan Redington still there; Ryan said he had had exactly the same problem as me but, frustratingly, almost right in front of the checkpoint – he had decided to scratch as a consequence but had been unable to get his team out yet as the visibility was still very poor and so no aircraft were able to land at the tiny airport.
I knew that the right decision for the team was that we should also scratch – for whatever reason I felt that I had effectively lost the confidence of the team and this far into the race, and with 80 miles over the portage and into the next checkpoint of Unalakleet right ahead of us, it would be hard and risky to try to recover the team. Feeling really depressed I managed to convince the checkpoint staff to let me make a call back to Louise, she advised me to do what was best for the dogs but I could tell that her underlying sentiment was that I should scratch. The race, however, in the form of the on-site official had slightly different thoughts. Whenever I spoke to him about scratching he kept telling me how great the dogs were looking and how I should continue on to Unalakleet, the dogs would be fine. I went inside the Roundhouse that serves as sleeping and eating area for the mushers and mentioned this to Ryan. His thoughts were that as well as his full team there were a whole lot of dropped dogs still in the checkpoint because there had been no flights to get anyone out and so the checkpoint was getting overwhelmed. He felt that the race official wanted me to keep going not necessarily because it was the right thing to do for me or the dogs but that if I could get the team to Unalakleet under my own steam, the airport there was much bigger and allowed instrument landing and so as far as the race was concerned it was a much better place for me to scratch.
Despite the fact that Ryan’s advise was sound and based on experience, having grabbed a few hours’ sleep, I made the (bad) decision to go with the advice from the race and headed out later the following morning with 12 dogs (I discovered that Fram had a sore back hence why he had kept looking back and, potentially a possible reason the team had stopped before the checkpoint) heading over the portage towards Unalakleet and the Bering Sea coast.
There is some very sage advice, attributed to no less than John Schandelmeier, that if you lose your team, as I felt I had before Kaltag, the best way to get them back is to do a series of short runs and short rests. The 80 mile run from Kaltag to Unalakleet is normally broken up at halfway by a stop at Old Woman cabin, a small, but very welcome shelter cabin right on the trail – my plan had been to run the 40 miles to Old Woman (easily achievable given the long rest we had had in Kaltag), rest there for 5 or 6 hours, and then run on to Unalakleet; if the dogs were looking good, bury any memories of the night before Kaltag in my subconscious; if the dogs didn’t run well I would scratch and get a quicker and direct flight for the dogs back to Anchorage. As well as Old Woman cabin, the portage also has another shelter cabin on Tripod Flats, about 25 miles out of Kaltag. As we climbed up towards and over the highly exposed Tripod Flats the dogs were running really well, it was as if we had had no issues at all the night before. Schandelmeir’s words, however, kept rattling through my brain and slowly I came to the conclusion, and made the (bad) decision, that I should stop at Tripod Flats Cabin, feed the dogs a full meal, take a four hour break and then continue on for another 4 hour break at Old Woman.
Everything went according to plan EXCEPT, that when I was taking my break more snow had blown through the area. We got back on the trail after 4 hours but having pulled away from the cabin the dogs once again seemed reluctant to break trail as they had the night before. Instead of trying a more experienced leader combination, or even just putting Maddie in single lead as I had done in the past to great effect, with no hesitation at all I made the (bad) decision to turn around and go back to the cabin and give the dogs more rest.
The two cabins at Tripod Flats and Old Woman are always well stocked with wood, get warm quickly and have comfortable sleeping areas; I filled up the woodstove and crawled into my sleeping bag for a full night’s sleep.
After a very restless night I pulled myself out of the sleeping bag and ventured outside to hit the trail only to be greeted by a far worse scenario that when I had returned to the cabin the previous night. Several more feet of snow had fallen whilst I had been sleeping and now the trail had disappeared completely. Leaving the dogs to rest I wandered out onto the trail leading back towards Kaltag and all I could see was featureless white terrain; I was wading through knee deep snow but knew I was on the trail. For many minutes I stood and stared back the way we had come; everything was really deep snow, it seemed that we were now stuck. Without really trying, but with very little fresh snow on the trail, the dogs had not wanted to break trail the previous evening, how was I ever going to get them to break trail now, in either direction, with so much deep, fresh snow. The answer was I wouldn’t be able to get them to break trail, because I didn’t try. My thought process was that if we tried to continue towards Unalakleet we would be getting into ever more remote areas and further from civilisation; at this point we were about 25 miles from Kaltag and around 55 from Unalakleet, the further on we went the harder it was going to be to ‘get out’ if the team quit again. I started to realise just how bad even my most recent decisions had been, not just in leaving Kaltag for such a long run with a team that were no longer confident in my decision making process but then in stopping at Tripod Flats when the team had been ready and willing to run on well broken trail to Old Woman cabin. For months afterwards I would play this last decision over and over in my mind, beating myself up about scratching.
I returned to the cabin, snacked the dogs and took stock of what was in the sled. I had enough food to last at least another 24 hours if necessary; if I attempted to run to Old Woman and we stalled I would certainly have enough food to last until snowmachines could get to me and rebreak trail. I had more than enough dog food to make it back to Kaltag; my main concern was how warm it now was, how hard I would have to work, how dehydrated I would become and how little fluids I had left; I set about melting snow in order to fill my flask with water. For the next hour or so I wandered from the cabin, to the dogs, to the trail; now I was incapable of making any sort of decision whatsoever, good or bad. One thing I was sure about and that was that we couldn’t just sit here and eat our way through the dog food, I had to make sure that whatever we did it would be in a timely enough fashion that the dogs would be fine. I went back out to the sled and pulled the tracker out from the bootie used to secure it from the sled, walked back into the cabin, sat at the bunk and just stared at the tracker. For the next hour I just sat there staring at the buttons on the front of the tracker. We were not in a life threatening situation so the SOS button was never an option. I felt that the Race Marshall knew me well enough that if I hit the assist button he would know that I was not in trouble but that we could do with some help; despite the ignominy and the embarrassment it was going to cause me, I would not be setting off any panicking at Iditarod Headquarters or subsequent and unnecessary emergency rescues. I also felt that people would have been spending long enough watching me sat at Tripod Flats to know something had gone wrong, but it would be something that was not an emergency. As my fingers toyed with the cover that prevents inadvertent operation of the assist button, I could feel tears rolling down my cheeks. With my stream of poor decisions I had completely failed the dogs, not just in leaving Kaltag but in everything I had done since leaving Rohn, if not even the start line. I also thought about everybody following on the tracker, and all our amazing sponsors who get us to the start line in the first place and I realised that I was letting them all down too. But I also came to one other, very big and very important realisation: I no longer cared if we finished Iditarod, the determination that had got us to the finish line of five Yukon Quests and two previous Iditarods was gone; I just didn’t care any longer, I just wanted to get the dogs back to safety. I hit the button, my failure was complete but at least, at the last, I had made one correct decision, not a good decision, but the correct decision.
I fed the dogs again in preparation for an attempt to run back to Kaltag in the hope that eventually we would run into trail breakers coming out to check on me, repacked the sled and started to ready myself to leave. About 1 ½ hours after I had hit the button I heard snowmachines in the distance and was very relieved not only when two machines pulled up but when one of the riders revealed himself to be Mark Greene, a long time Iditarod volunteer who had provided me with a great deal of advise and assistance in Kaltag and who was to become, for a short time at least, a very good friend.
Mark took me back into the cabin and he immediately apologised that I had been stuck here for so long; the weather had been so bad, and the internet and communications so patchy in Kaltag, that he had had no idea I was stuck at Tripod Flats, he said he would have come out much sooner if he had known. He then asked what I wanted to do, should they rebreak trail for me to Old Woman so I could continue? I knew the score, in pushing the button, either button, I was effectively withdrawing myself from the race. Even if I had wanted to continue, which I most certainly didn’t, there would have been a fair amount of controversy that I didn’t want to deal with. I knew the rules but more importantly, I no longer cared about finishing Iditarod and with me having such a poor attitude, it would be picked up by the dogs (if it hadn’t already been) and we would never make it up the coast, traditionally the hardest part of the race.
For months, if not years afterwards, I played the race over in my mind, over and over and not in a healthy way. There was so much that I could have done differently; I made so many mistakes; so very many bad decisions. At one point I decided that I was completely done with long distance racing; I actually thought I no longer had the drive or the mental strength to ever race again and so it was with a mixture of trepidation, and ultimately relief when we signed up for, and finished the 2019 Quest and in doing so went through a few very tough situations that fully tested my resolve and decision making abilities. I do feel that I have unfinished business with the Iditarod; it is not nice to leave on a scratch (the race very generously listed me as a scratch as opposed to a withdrawal which is in fact what it should have been) but I have made one decision that I know is the right decision - I will never run Quest and Iditarod together in the same year again …. (maybe).
I don’t often, if ever, dedicate stories to individuals but this one is for two people. Firstly for Ruth Bethea who asked me on numerous occasions why we had scratched from the 2018 Iditarod and I could never overcome the embarrassment to tell her despite the fact that she was a long-time supporter and friend of the kennel. Ruth passed away a few weeks ago and I will never now have the opportunity to tell her what had happened. Secondly this is dedicated to Mark Greene. I first met Mark on the 2015 Iditarod and came to like him immediately, a very strange occurrence for me; he was dedicated to the race but you could also see his love and passion for the dogs; you could see that he was just a very, very kind and good person. By the time we had loaded the dogs onto the very small aircraft to get us out of Kaltag in 2018 Mark and I had become very good friends and I knew I had a friend for life. What I didn’t know was how short that time would be; Mark suddenly passed away just a couple of months later; I will forever be in his debt not just for his friendship but how he got me out of a situation that my very bad decision making had got us into.
You could say that the bad decision making in 2018 happened way before the Iditarod start line, back in July to be exact when we signed up for the race. Running Iditarod had never been a life’s dream, it was never even really a goal until after we had finished the 2013 Quest. It is hard to say why you keep signing up for 1000 mile races. I, like many other mushers, spend large parts of the race claiming that we will never, ever do this again, longing for the finish line, wanting the torture to be over. Even at the finish line I have been quoted, on more than one occasion, that ‘I am never doing this again’ only to find that by the finish banquet the sense of achievement, the plaudits, the fading memories of the bad times all add to the thought that maybe the race wasn’t so bad and next year we can come back and do a bit better. For me also there is something about the personal challenge, overcoming obstacles and against all odds, beating the race; I have said on many occasions that I am not actually competing against the other entrants in a 1000 mile race, rather competing against the wilderness, the elements, maybe against the darker sides of my personality. Our rookie Quest had not been so tough (at least that is what my aging and failing memory keeps telling me) and so pretty much as soon as we had finished I starting to think about upping the challenge and not just return for the 2015 Quest but also see if we could complete the Iditarod in the same winter. Having completed the feat in 2015 the side of my personality that encourages an inferiority complex was telling me that we had got lucky in finishing both races (although considering how the weather had been on both of those 2015 races I am not quite sure how I allowed myself to be convinced of that). I felt that we needed to run both races again in 2016 just to prove to everyone that it hadn’t been just a fluke. There was also a part of me that wanted to run the traditional Iditarod route as well; whilst the Fairbanks Start route was not without its challenges and we ran on about 500 miles of the usual trail, for me Iditarod is the Happy Valley Steps, the Dalzell Gorge, the Farewell Burn and the Buffalo Tunnels and we traversed none of those in 2015. And so in 2016 we made the decision, rightly or wrongly, to do it all again; and we did.
Neither the Quest nor the Iditarod had gone that well in 2016. On the Quest we had got stuck in a storm on the Top of the World Highway coming in to our 36 hour layover in Dawson. Well more accurately, we ran right the way through the storm and as the storm died away, and only 12 downhill miles from Dawson and very close to being back in the treeline where the trail would be more clearly defined, the dogs decided that I had no idea what I was doing and made the decision for me that we were going to rest up for a few hours. On Iditarod we had been having a good race right up until I made a series of poor decisions coming through the community of Golovin: firstly stopping to sign autographs, in a manner that resembled signing into a checkpoint and then, even before we had left the community, and again replicating our checkpoint routine, I stopped to snack the dogs. It wasn’t really a surprise then that when I asked the team to run out of the community and back onto the white, featureless expanse of Golovin Bay they balked somewhat, wanting to know why we were leaving a checkpoint. It took following first Matt Failor and then Lisbet Norris to get the team moving sufficiently well enough that we made it into White Mountain. We did however finish both races and, in the case of Iditarod, finished with, IMHO, a great looking team but I was still determined that that was it, there really was no requirement to run both Quest and Iditarod in the same winter ever again; as I was told after the 2018 debacle – I had nothing to prove to anyone so why even bother to do both races in the same year again.
The Quest has always been, first and foremost, the race that I have wanted to be a part of. The finishing team in 2017 were amazing, the best looking and happiest team I had ever finished a race with; it was no real surprise when I decided to sign up for the Quest in 2018. What was a surprise, certainly to me, was that I chose to make bad decision number 1 for 2018 when I decided to sign up for Iditarod as well. Looking back now I am still not sure why we signed up, possibly some psychological weakness, thinking that we had got lucky again in 2016 and still, for some reason, thinking we had a need to prove ourselves – although to whom I am not sure. Certainly a part of it was I thought that we needed to run the Iditarod Southern Route before we could truly say we had finished Iditarod, much like some say you have to have run Whitehorse to Fairbanks and Fairbanks to Whitehorse to truly have finished the Quest. Whatever the reasons March 2018 saw us back in the Anchorage area and ‘ready’ to run our third Iditarod. The Quest, just a few short weeks prior, had been another tough go: brutally cold and physically draining for the first 700 miles; too warm, fresh snow and deep, long overflow, and a demoralising run on Lake Labarge, for the final 300. By the time we got to Iditarod I was physically, emotionally and mentally finished; again the dogs were looking great but I had not recovered at all. I was telling anyone who would listen that I really did not want to take part in Iditarod: in many cases my comments were greeted with ‘you always say that’, others just gave knowing looks, some reminded me that I had never scratched from a 1000 mile race and we would be fine. Even on the morning of the restart I had a huge sense of foreboding and I was still physically exhausted; as we were making the final preparations to the sled and getting the dogs ready I confided in James that I really did not want to start the race – he admitted later that he thought I was joking but in fact I was deeply earnest.
Despite the reservations about myself the dogs were going well, I had planned to stop just after Yentna but ended up having to do a 60 mile first run because the dogs just did not want to stop. We made Finger Lake pretty much on schedule, the dogs were looking good and my pre-race apprehensions had disappeared below the surface.
Getting food poisoning and the ensuing sickness and poor decisions from Rohn to Takotna certainly did nothing to keep those apprehensions at bay. By the time we left Takotna, and our 24 hour layover, I was already back to thinking that I no longer wanted to be in the race. By the time we made it to Don’s Cabin I was exhausted again, any benefits drawn from the 24 hour layover were gone, and by Iditarod I was into a very, very deep low. The dogs were still however looking great and we came in to Iditarod with 16 dogs on the team but then bad decision number 2 occurred and I dropped Lucy for no other reason than she was coming into season; she had been running well, and was one of the many leaders on the team but rather than keep her in the team for the relatively straight forward run to Shageluk why I planned on taking the 8 hour mandatory that teams need to take somewhere on the Yukon and then reassess how she was doing, I decided not to risk the males in the team losing their heads, and appetites, and dropped her with some degree of hesitation. Unfortunately in making this poor decision I shaped my thinking for later in the race when I would make a decision to drop a dog that would ultimately herald the end days of our 2018 Iditarod.
One of the very big differences between Quest and Iditarod are, in my opinion at least, the nature of the checkpoints. Other than in the remote checkpoint of Eagle you tend to be greeted, and looked after, in the Quest checkpoints by your handlers and this usually gives a big boost to your morale. With only 9 checkpoints on the route, and often staffed by the same volunteers every year, and often seeing the same vets and officials in each, there is a real family feeling about every Yukon Quest checkpoint. What is more every checkpoint provides free drinks, tea and coffee and as much food as the musher can eat, free of charge – there is something very special about the Quest checkpoints. Over our three runs at Iditarod I have found the hospitality in the checkpoints very different, somewhat colder and a lot more impersonal; with shorter runs between checkpoints, and many more checkpoints, you seem to spend less time in each, availability of food can be very sporadic going from the excellent and plentiful in some such as Unalakleet, to others where there is not even any coffee on offer and even a bottle of water can be hard to acquire. With very few exceptions I never seem to get the same lift in Iditarod checkpoints as I do with the Quest and so if I enter a checkpoint feeling down, I can leave feeling equally down or even worse; this can then be compounded checkpoint to checkpoint, at least this is what I experienced on the 2018 Iditarod. Although there was coffee and a warm place to sleep in Idiatrod I left the following morning dispirited, in no small part because I had dropped two dogs and wasn’t really sure that I had made a good decision in dropping either. In Shageluk we were parked right alongside the out-trail which limited how much rest the dogs were getting; I also found the checkpoint itself very inhospitable and for whatever reason I made the very bad decision to make no attempt whatsoever to even find the sleeping area let alone grab a few hours rest (with hindsight it was probably not a good choice to take my 8 hour mandatory rest there); my decision making process was definitely going down the pan. Shageluk to Anvik is only 25 miles and with only another 18 miles to Grayling, and coming off an 8 hour rest, I decided that we would do a single run to Grayling. A beautiful and cold night run into Anvik saw the dogs literally screaming and dragging us through the checkpoint, I could barely control the dogs enough to sign in and out, and as we dropped onto the Yukon river to begin the 150 miles of river running that would eventually see us arrive in Kaltag and the portage to the coast, I began to feel better about how the dogs were performing.
I have said before that the worst time of the day for me is in the period from 0200 to 0600; I find this by far the hardest period to focus and stay awake; decision making is not always the best and my judgement on how the dogs are performing is at its worst. This was the time of day as we made our way towards Grayling.
When it comes to poor decision making there is one habit that I seem unable to shake off after all these years and that is my inability to leave things alone when things aren’t broken. In particular this habit has been around since at least the YQ300 in 2012 when I took Maddie out of lead only 6 miles from the finish and we very nearly stalled, and manifests itself mainly in me swapping leaders around when there is really no need. I get it into my head that maybe if I change out one leader I may get the team to speed up by ½ mph or more; when that change makes no difference, or more likely will result in a drop off in speed (probably accountable in a non-sleep deprived mind as the new leader getting used to being back in front), I will then swap the other leader. It is not unusual that over the next mile or so I will go through 3 or 4 different leader combinations ultimately ending up back with the original pairing in lead that had done nothing wrong in the first place.
Out of Anvik and onto the Yukon, as daylight crept up so it seemed the team’s speed dropped away. Having convinced myself earlier that I wasn’t going to fall into the ‘leader swap’ trap, I stopped the team and took Whizz out of lead, replacing her with Loonie. As Whizz was now coming in to heat, Loonie seemed much more interested in turning around to see where she was as opposed to leading. Several changes later I was back with Whizz and Maddie in lead, and making OK progress, but now, not only had I slowed our progress towards Grayling, I now had it in my mind that if I kept Whizz in the team the other boys would start taking an interest in her. I started to think, not very clearly I must add, that with Whizz in heat I could only run her next to a female, and as Whizz does not always get on with other females, that could start causing real problems (not thinking clearly meant that not once did I consider the option of adding in another gangline section and either running Whizz on her own or creating a buffer between her and the boys when she was in lead). As we got ever closer to Grayling all I could think about was the fact that Whizz was coming in to season and as a consequence she could really mess up the team and the race – Whizz, the leader who was performing the best out of all the leaders, was slowly but surely coming into contention to be dropped.
Coming in to Grayling I was truly exhausted, I had had about 2 hours sleep over the last 180 miles, approximately 48 hours. I needed sleep desperately so having fed and bedded the team down, I found my way into the school gymnasium and lay on my sleeping bag on the hard floor. As I lay there all I could think about was Whizz and should I do as I had with Lucy, and drop her for no other reason than she was coming into season. With hindsight it is abundantly clear that I had made a mistake dropping Lucy; with four females in the team, I could have kept rotating them through lead to keep them mentally fresh and still kept them well away from the distracted males; I had run, and finished races, with females in heat on many occasions. At this point the whole team were eating well, and to be honest females in heat rarely cause these boys to stop eating, so other than Loonie appearing distracted by Whizz on the river I really had no reason to drop her. I lay awake for the next two hours pondering my options.
The weather was not helping my ability to make good decisions. We had been told that a storm was coming down from the north and with the southern route on the Yukon already with a reputation for being a bit blustery on a calm day, there was potential that we would be running into strong headwinds for most of the 60 miles from Eagle Island into Kaltag. To make matters worse cloud cover was very low, and visibility poor, and so the Iditarod Airforce were having lots of difficulties landing at the small airports and landing strips that were associated with the majority of checkpoints. Being more remote than most, planes had not been able to get into Eagle Island and so there was no straw nor drop bags there and the race had made the decision that it would no longer be a checkpoint rather a dog drop/hospitality stop. This meant that we would now be doing a 120 mile leg from Grayling to Kaltag without resupply. Iditarod had however managed to get our Eagle Island drop bags into Grayling so we would have plenty of supplies for the trip. Coming off the Quest, an unsupported run of 120 miles was actually pretty common place and so I was not too bothered with this change. As Eagle Island was around half way, and convincing myself, wrongly as it turns out, that the team were used to doing 60 mile runs by now, I made the (poor) decision to make the run from Grayling to Kaltag in two runs, stopping off for a few hours in Eagle Island. Having spoken to a number of people the perceived wisdom was that good camping spots on the windy section after Eagle Island were few and far between until just before Kaltag and so this reinforced my (poor) decision to only rest once over the 120 miles.
None of these thoughts were helping me sleep or decide what to do about Whizz; if anything the thought that I could have a sex-crazed team all the way from Grayling to Kaltag probably mired my thought processes even more. As I lay there I knew that if I put the decision off until I was close to leaving I was unlikely to get any sleep at all and I would still probably make the wrong decision. I made a double snap decision: I was going to drop Whizz and I was going to do it now rather than wait until we were getting ready to leave in the hope that with the decision made and action taken I would be able to sleep. I got up and walked across to the checkpoint location to find a vet and official and drop her. As I was walking across I met up with Magnus Kaltenborn who had just arrived, as we passed each other he made a comment as to how slow progress had been after Anvik and how his dog team had appeared to be a lot slower than they had been before Anvik – the comment did not register until about an hour later.
Having completed all the paperwork to drop Whizz I went back to the gym to try again to sleep. As I lay back on the hard floor I thought about Magnus’ comment about how his team had also seemed slower coming into Grayling, I thought about how I could have added a gangline section to keep females and males apart and I thought about how Whizz had been my best and most consistent leader so far on this race – I had just made a monumentally bad decision in dropping her. I contemplated getting up and pleading with the officials to allow me to change my decision but by now Whizz had been taken out of the team, and besides which, maybe I had made the right decision, to be honest I was way too exhausted to know what was right and wrong any more.
As we pulled out of the checkpoint and dropped immediately back onto the Yukon I was overcome by waves of depression; emotionally I had dropping dogs for any reason and I knew deep down that I had made a very bad decision; I just hoped it wasn’t going to come back and bite me. To add to my very sombre mood, the weather was extremely warm and we were leaving into the hottest part of the day, yet another very bad decision, I would have been better either leaving earlier or resting another couple of hours and leaving into the cooler evening.
As afternoon turned to night however, and we made our way along the seemingly ever widening Yukon river, slowly we started to pass other teams camping, breaking Grayling to Kaltag up into three easily achievable 40 mile runs – I started to doubt my decision to do it in two runs. Pulling into Eagle Island late in the night, temperatures had dropped somewhat and the dogs had started to perform better, and with it my mood had lifted slightly. Although there were no official checkpoint services, there was a warm arctic oven to sleep in and good coffee to drink. Word was that the storm was still coming but if we didn’t hang around to much we could be through the more exposed sections of the river before it hit; I decided to grab two hours sleep and be back on the trail 4 hours after arriving. By far the majority of teams around me were doing the run in 3 and so going by Eagle Island, only two other teams were there and so the Arctic Oven was not only warm, it was spacious; I fell into my first sleep since Iditarod. As I slept I heard a couple of teams coming and going and when I awoke I realised that a) it was daylight and b) I had the tent all to myself. I groggily stared at my watch in disbelief: 6 hours, I had been there 6 hours – I had lost the two hours I had hoped to use to get upriver ahead of the storm.
As we dropped back onto the river the wind was increasing already and by the time we were making good progress again, and passing a few of the teams on their second camp, we were running into some good headwinds and getting battered by wind and blowing snow whenever we had to cross the river from one bank to the other. After a few hours I passed another team having difficulty making one of these crossing due to how strong the wind had now become however working together the two of us made it across to the sheltered bank. As the other team said they were going to use the sheltered spot to rest for a few hours I started to consider doing the same but whilst I had enough food to rest again, I had used the last of my straw at Eagle Island. I figured we were now between 15 and 20 miles out of Kaltag and despite the fact that we passed a couple of piles of straw where we could have rested for a few hours, the dogs were looking okay so I decided we should push on to the checkpoint. As daylight started to fade, the wind had dropped away but snow was now coming down thick and fast and I was watching the trail disappear before us. We were starting to see some signs of civilisation, the occasionally hunting or fishing camp but I was also starting to notice that the dogs were slowing down in the fresh, deeper snow and Fram in particular, was occasionally looking back at me. By the time I figured we were no more than 3 miles from the checkpoint, and I could actually see a red beacon in the distance, we had slowed to a crawl. I started messing around with leader combinations again but it seemed the dogs had had enough of my poor decisions and just stopped. Thinking it was only a few miles to go I tried walking in front of the dogs but whilst the dogs would follow, and despite it now being well after dark, it was so warm that pretty much any exercise had me sweating profusely, soaking my inner layers. Worse than that, having been over 24 hours and 120 miles since our last checkpoint I was pretty much out of personal food and drinks and already succumbing to dehydration. I knew there were at last three teams that had been camping not too far behind us and so decided that I would wait and get a tow off one of them. After a couple of hours the first of these teams passed and although my team would not initially chase, as the second team passed we did pick things up and covered the last couple of miles at a reasonable pace and looking, dishonestly, in pretty good condition.
Checking in to Kaltag I was surprised to see Ryan Redington still there; Ryan said he had had exactly the same problem as me but, frustratingly, almost right in front of the checkpoint – he had decided to scratch as a consequence but had been unable to get his team out yet as the visibility was still very poor and so no aircraft were able to land at the tiny airport.
I knew that the right decision for the team was that we should also scratch – for whatever reason I felt that I had effectively lost the confidence of the team and this far into the race, and with 80 miles over the portage and into the next checkpoint of Unalakleet right ahead of us, it would be hard and risky to try to recover the team. Feeling really depressed I managed to convince the checkpoint staff to let me make a call back to Louise, she advised me to do what was best for the dogs but I could tell that her underlying sentiment was that I should scratch. The race, however, in the form of the on-site official had slightly different thoughts. Whenever I spoke to him about scratching he kept telling me how great the dogs were looking and how I should continue on to Unalakleet, the dogs would be fine. I went inside the Roundhouse that serves as sleeping and eating area for the mushers and mentioned this to Ryan. His thoughts were that as well as his full team there were a whole lot of dropped dogs still in the checkpoint because there had been no flights to get anyone out and so the checkpoint was getting overwhelmed. He felt that the race official wanted me to keep going not necessarily because it was the right thing to do for me or the dogs but that if I could get the team to Unalakleet under my own steam, the airport there was much bigger and allowed instrument landing and so as far as the race was concerned it was a much better place for me to scratch.
Despite the fact that Ryan’s advise was sound and based on experience, having grabbed a few hours’ sleep, I made the (bad) decision to go with the advice from the race and headed out later the following morning with 12 dogs (I discovered that Fram had a sore back hence why he had kept looking back and, potentially a possible reason the team had stopped before the checkpoint) heading over the portage towards Unalakleet and the Bering Sea coast.
There is some very sage advice, attributed to no less than John Schandelmeier, that if you lose your team, as I felt I had before Kaltag, the best way to get them back is to do a series of short runs and short rests. The 80 mile run from Kaltag to Unalakleet is normally broken up at halfway by a stop at Old Woman cabin, a small, but very welcome shelter cabin right on the trail – my plan had been to run the 40 miles to Old Woman (easily achievable given the long rest we had had in Kaltag), rest there for 5 or 6 hours, and then run on to Unalakleet; if the dogs were looking good, bury any memories of the night before Kaltag in my subconscious; if the dogs didn’t run well I would scratch and get a quicker and direct flight for the dogs back to Anchorage. As well as Old Woman cabin, the portage also has another shelter cabin on Tripod Flats, about 25 miles out of Kaltag. As we climbed up towards and over the highly exposed Tripod Flats the dogs were running really well, it was as if we had had no issues at all the night before. Schandelmeir’s words, however, kept rattling through my brain and slowly I came to the conclusion, and made the (bad) decision, that I should stop at Tripod Flats Cabin, feed the dogs a full meal, take a four hour break and then continue on for another 4 hour break at Old Woman.
Everything went according to plan EXCEPT, that when I was taking my break more snow had blown through the area. We got back on the trail after 4 hours but having pulled away from the cabin the dogs once again seemed reluctant to break trail as they had the night before. Instead of trying a more experienced leader combination, or even just putting Maddie in single lead as I had done in the past to great effect, with no hesitation at all I made the (bad) decision to turn around and go back to the cabin and give the dogs more rest.
The two cabins at Tripod Flats and Old Woman are always well stocked with wood, get warm quickly and have comfortable sleeping areas; I filled up the woodstove and crawled into my sleeping bag for a full night’s sleep.
After a very restless night I pulled myself out of the sleeping bag and ventured outside to hit the trail only to be greeted by a far worse scenario that when I had returned to the cabin the previous night. Several more feet of snow had fallen whilst I had been sleeping and now the trail had disappeared completely. Leaving the dogs to rest I wandered out onto the trail leading back towards Kaltag and all I could see was featureless white terrain; I was wading through knee deep snow but knew I was on the trail. For many minutes I stood and stared back the way we had come; everything was really deep snow, it seemed that we were now stuck. Without really trying, but with very little fresh snow on the trail, the dogs had not wanted to break trail the previous evening, how was I ever going to get them to break trail now, in either direction, with so much deep, fresh snow. The answer was I wouldn’t be able to get them to break trail, because I didn’t try. My thought process was that if we tried to continue towards Unalakleet we would be getting into ever more remote areas and further from civilisation; at this point we were about 25 miles from Kaltag and around 55 from Unalakleet, the further on we went the harder it was going to be to ‘get out’ if the team quit again. I started to realise just how bad even my most recent decisions had been, not just in leaving Kaltag for such a long run with a team that were no longer confident in my decision making process but then in stopping at Tripod Flats when the team had been ready and willing to run on well broken trail to Old Woman cabin. For months afterwards I would play this last decision over and over in my mind, beating myself up about scratching.
I returned to the cabin, snacked the dogs and took stock of what was in the sled. I had enough food to last at least another 24 hours if necessary; if I attempted to run to Old Woman and we stalled I would certainly have enough food to last until snowmachines could get to me and rebreak trail. I had more than enough dog food to make it back to Kaltag; my main concern was how warm it now was, how hard I would have to work, how dehydrated I would become and how little fluids I had left; I set about melting snow in order to fill my flask with water. For the next hour or so I wandered from the cabin, to the dogs, to the trail; now I was incapable of making any sort of decision whatsoever, good or bad. One thing I was sure about and that was that we couldn’t just sit here and eat our way through the dog food, I had to make sure that whatever we did it would be in a timely enough fashion that the dogs would be fine. I went back out to the sled and pulled the tracker out from the bootie used to secure it from the sled, walked back into the cabin, sat at the bunk and just stared at the tracker. For the next hour I just sat there staring at the buttons on the front of the tracker. We were not in a life threatening situation so the SOS button was never an option. I felt that the Race Marshall knew me well enough that if I hit the assist button he would know that I was not in trouble but that we could do with some help; despite the ignominy and the embarrassment it was going to cause me, I would not be setting off any panicking at Iditarod Headquarters or subsequent and unnecessary emergency rescues. I also felt that people would have been spending long enough watching me sat at Tripod Flats to know something had gone wrong, but it would be something that was not an emergency. As my fingers toyed with the cover that prevents inadvertent operation of the assist button, I could feel tears rolling down my cheeks. With my stream of poor decisions I had completely failed the dogs, not just in leaving Kaltag but in everything I had done since leaving Rohn, if not even the start line. I also thought about everybody following on the tracker, and all our amazing sponsors who get us to the start line in the first place and I realised that I was letting them all down too. But I also came to one other, very big and very important realisation: I no longer cared if we finished Iditarod, the determination that had got us to the finish line of five Yukon Quests and two previous Iditarods was gone; I just didn’t care any longer, I just wanted to get the dogs back to safety. I hit the button, my failure was complete but at least, at the last, I had made one correct decision, not a good decision, but the correct decision.
I fed the dogs again in preparation for an attempt to run back to Kaltag in the hope that eventually we would run into trail breakers coming out to check on me, repacked the sled and started to ready myself to leave. About 1 ½ hours after I had hit the button I heard snowmachines in the distance and was very relieved not only when two machines pulled up but when one of the riders revealed himself to be Mark Greene, a long time Iditarod volunteer who had provided me with a great deal of advise and assistance in Kaltag and who was to become, for a short time at least, a very good friend.
Mark took me back into the cabin and he immediately apologised that I had been stuck here for so long; the weather had been so bad, and the internet and communications so patchy in Kaltag, that he had had no idea I was stuck at Tripod Flats, he said he would have come out much sooner if he had known. He then asked what I wanted to do, should they rebreak trail for me to Old Woman so I could continue? I knew the score, in pushing the button, either button, I was effectively withdrawing myself from the race. Even if I had wanted to continue, which I most certainly didn’t, there would have been a fair amount of controversy that I didn’t want to deal with. I knew the rules but more importantly, I no longer cared about finishing Iditarod and with me having such a poor attitude, it would be picked up by the dogs (if it hadn’t already been) and we would never make it up the coast, traditionally the hardest part of the race.
For months, if not years afterwards, I played the race over in my mind, over and over and not in a healthy way. There was so much that I could have done differently; I made so many mistakes; so very many bad decisions. At one point I decided that I was completely done with long distance racing; I actually thought I no longer had the drive or the mental strength to ever race again and so it was with a mixture of trepidation, and ultimately relief when we signed up for, and finished the 2019 Quest and in doing so went through a few very tough situations that fully tested my resolve and decision making abilities. I do feel that I have unfinished business with the Iditarod; it is not nice to leave on a scratch (the race very generously listed me as a scratch as opposed to a withdrawal which is in fact what it should have been) but I have made one decision that I know is the right decision - I will never run Quest and Iditarod together in the same year again …. (maybe).
I don’t often, if ever, dedicate stories to individuals but this one is for two people. Firstly for Ruth Bethea who asked me on numerous occasions why we had scratched from the 2018 Iditarod and I could never overcome the embarrassment to tell her despite the fact that she was a long-time supporter and friend of the kennel. Ruth passed away a few weeks ago and I will never now have the opportunity to tell her what had happened. Secondly this is dedicated to Mark Greene. I first met Mark on the 2015 Iditarod and came to like him immediately, a very strange occurrence for me; he was dedicated to the race but you could also see his love and passion for the dogs; you could see that he was just a very, very kind and good person. By the time we had loaded the dogs onto the very small aircraft to get us out of Kaltag in 2018 Mark and I had become very good friends and I knew I had a friend for life. What I didn’t know was how short that time would be; Mark suddenly passed away just a couple of months later; I will forever be in his debt not just for his friendship but how he got me out of a situation that my very bad decision making had got us into.
