Iditarod Nights (8 page)

From Willow, she and her dogs would be on
their own. By tomorrow evening they'd reach Yentna Station, the
next checkpoint, forty-two miles from Willow. Then it was another
thirty miles to Skwentna and their first food drop.

One checkpoint at a time,
Matt
reminded her whenever she got herself worked up over keeping all
the details straight – where the worst sections were, what to look
for, when to stop. Just take it one checkpoint at a time.

And then she heard, "Next up, wearing bib
twenty-two, rookie Claire Stanfield, an attorney from Portland,
Oregon!"

Volunteers held her eager team at the start
banner. With her sled secured, she took a few quick seconds to walk
the length of the gangline and give each dog a pat or hug. Someone
thrust a microphone at her. She smiled and waved for the camera.
"Hi, Dad!"

"Fifteen seconds!"

Claire trotted back to the sled. Matt gave
her a thumbs-up and she returned the gesture.

"Five! Four! Three! Two!"

She nodded at the volunteers to release her
team.

"One! GO!"

Chapter 11

Thousands of people waved and cheered from
the sidelines as Claire's dogs lunged down Fourth Avenue. They
plowed through the churned tracks of previous teams, dog poop and
thrown booties. Cameras flashed. Dr. Osgood laughed and Claire
joined him with a whoop.

Ginny shied from the noisy attention and
sidled into Zach, breaking his rhythm. "That's a good girl, Gin.
Straight on." The leggy female responded to the encouragement and
pulled into her harness.

"They look great!" Dr. Osgood shouted.

"Yes, they do! Thank you!"

The soft snow gave the dogs a workout and
kept their speed down as they approached Cordova Street, a sharp
right turn and Claire's first test at keeping her rider in the
sled. She'd heard stories about teams taking it too fast, rolling
the sled and dumping rider and musher in front of onlookers. Or a
tag sled slamming into the berm of snow piled at the corner.

"We're going slow enough it shouldn't be a
problem," she said, as much to reassure herself as to put her rider
at ease.

Handsome anticipated the turn and started to
cut into it too soon. "Stay haw, Handsome! Stay haw!" The team
straightened, swung wide, and took the corner like pros. "Good
dogs!"She glanced back and saw Matt still behind her and upright on
the tag sled.

"Woohoo!" he shouted and punched the air with
a gloved fist.

Claire laughed and faced forward. "We're on
our way now!"

Dr. Osgood slapped his mittened hands
together. If his continuous bursts of laughter were any indication,
the man was having the time of his life.

Twelve blocks later, the trail dropped down a
hill to Mulcahy Stadium and joined the Anchorage bike and ski path
system, a greenbelt of paths that ran along Chester Creek through
stands of tall, straight birch and occasional culverts under
roadways.

Ginny shied into Zach at the first culvert.
"It's okay, Gin. Good girl." Claire could understand the dog's
skittishness, the noise and enclosed space a stark contrast to the
trails they'd trained on. She'd questioned Matt's advice to put the
quiet, easy-to-spook female in the team out of Anchorage over one
of the calmer dogs, like Groucho.

"This'll be a good way for her to get
acclimated," he said. "She'll come around."

And by the third culvert, his prediction
proved correct. Ginny kept pace with her teammates, giving the
underpasses no more than a brief glance.

Crossing a pedestrian bridge, a sharp left
took them by the university and behind a residential area where
well-wishers handed wrapped, fresh-baked muffins to the mushers and
Iditariders as they passed. Claire tucked hers into her handlebar
bag for later.

The trail followed the south shore of
University Lake, crossed another pedestrian overpass, then dropped
onto Tudor Road for part of a mile. Two sharp turns took them onto
the Tozier Track system of dog trails through Centennial Park, a
huge undeveloped area. Claire felt some of the tension in her
shoulders ease at the more familiar terrain.

A short while later, her team followed one
final culvert onto Campbell Airstrip, where Janey and Andy waited
with the truck, marking the end of the first stage of the race.

***

The restart of the Iditarod the following
afternoon repeated Saturday's ceremonial start in Anchorage, minus
the city streets and tall buildings. Mushers spent the morning
cooking dog chow to haul in coolers for stops along the trail. On
the lake at Willow, spectators lined the starting chute and beyond.
The temperature sat at eighteen degrees under a retina-piercing
blue sky. Smoke spiraled from family grills, filling the air with
the smells of burger patties and barbeque sauce, and gave the event
a picnic atmosphere.

Mushers and handlers unloaded their entire
teams this time, fed them, got them into booties and harnesses.
Some of the dogs sported colorful wind coats in anticipation of a
cool evening. Instead of Iditariders, mushers packed their sleds
with all the gear needed to survive the Alaskan bush, along with a
GPS tracker that would transmit the team's speed, location,
run/rest cycles and air temperature to Iditarod officials,
information the mushers themselves couldn't see.

Yesterday had been for show. Today mushers
wore their game faces, the dogs noisier and more animated, ready to
get down to business. At 2:00 p.m., teams would begin leaving the
checkpoint.

A lot to do, a lot to think about. Dillon
looked forward to the simplicity of life on the trail – no phones,
no demands or interruptions, just the uncomplicated task of tending
to the dogs. His sled packed and his team ready, he went to look
for Claire.

He found her in the classic stooped-over
musher's position, putting booties on one of her dogs. "Hey," he
said.

She looked up and smiled. "Hey yourself."

"How'd it go yesterday?"

"Great. Only a thousand more miles to go."
She gave her dog – all four paws sporting florescent orange booties
– a pat on the shoulder and straightened. "And you?"

"Brian took a dive off the tag sled on
Cordova."

"I heard about that. Is he alright?"

"Yeah. He's with the dog truck, being
consoled by a cute young lady who goes to his high school."

Claire put her hand over her heart and
sighed. "I'm crushed."

Dillon grunted. "I'm sure you are. So," he
moved closer and she did the same, "does this mean you're available
once we get to Nome?"

"What did you have in mind?"

"Dinner and dancing at the Bering West."

"You have dancing?"

He frowned, pretending to take offense at her
surprise. "Of course." She'd find out soon enough the music came
from a jukebox and the dance floor was a space the size of a
tabletop. A very small tabletop.

"What's on the menu?"

She may have been asking about the dinner
special, but the look she gave him said otherwise. He stood half a
step from her, close enough to keep his answer between them.
"Whatever you want." He couldn't help himself. None of the reasons
he'd recited in his head for not getting tangled up with the lady
lawyer mattered a damn when she fixed him with those dark whiskey
eyes.

Her smile stopped his breath. "I'll be
waiting."

Chapter 12

Tailgate partiers along the trail heading out
of Willow shouted encouragement to the mushers, but they also
required caution. Ginny shied whenever a snowmachine buzzed too
close, while Mama's Boy and Groucho attempted to track each
delectable food odor. "No junk food for you guys," Claire told
them. "On by."

She'd seen this part of the trail before,
running the Willow Tug 300 as one of her qualifying races. An easy
stretch of flat to low rolling hills along the frozen Susitna
River. The dogs, still jazzed from the excitement of the restart,
set a fast pace. Claire road the drag occasionally to keep them
from burning out, but she had to admit the speed felt
invigorating.

Two and a half hours after the restart, she
stopped trailside to snack her athletes, the first of many stops
she'd make every two or three hours. Keeping the dogs hydrated and
loaded with calories – a minimum of ten-thousand per dog per day –
was critical. Other teams glided past as she doled out frozen fish
and high-density kibble. She grabbed an energy bar for herself and
washed it down with a fruit drink.

The last of the day's sun faded the sky
stonewashed violet as she and her team arrived at Yentna Station
checkpoint, located on the confluence of the Susitna and Yentna
rivers. Iditarod volunteers helped her remove her bib and recorded
her check-in time. The log showed Dillon had blown through the
checkpoint fifteen minutes ahead of her. The two-story Yentna
Station Roadhouse tempted with a warm fire and a hot meal, free to
Iditarod mushers, but staying at the crowded checkpoint wasn't in
her race plan. She and her dogs pushed on.

Bonfires along the banks of the Yentna River
laced the evening air with wood smoke and the smells of wiener
roasts and charred marshmallows. Fans settled in for an all-night
vigil of race watching and partying. Claire pulled her team over to
let another team pass and a short woman bundled in fur handed her a
hotdog still warm from the fire.

"You need to keep up your strength," the
woman stated, flashing a broad smile.

"Thank you. It looks delicious." And it was.
Mustard. Ketchup. Onions. The best hotdog she'd ever eaten.

As she drove into her first night on the
Iditarod, the temperature dropped to ten below. Stars too numerous
to count pulsed in the clear sky. She turned her headlamp on then
off again because it spoiled the view. The dogs didn't need it.

She stopped trailside prior to reaching
Skwentna to feed her dogs the meal she and the Sommers had cooked
that morning and put in the cooler to keep it from freezing. Once
they'd eaten and had curled up for a snooze, Claire managed to
catch a nap on top of her sled bag before the sounds of another
team passing in the dark woke her.

They reached Skewentna at 3:30 in the
morning. Claire followed the volunteers waving glow sticks to
collect the first of her food-drop bags, then blew through the
checkpoint. Her dogs needed little coaxing.

An hour after dawn of day two, they made
Finger Lake checkpoint, bordered by a line of timber at the base of
the Alaska Range. A checker wearing a bright yellow vest over his
parka welcomed her. "Bib number?"

"Twenty-two."

He recorded the information on his clipboard
and looked at his watch. "Time is eight thirty-seven. How many
dogs?"

"Sixteen." Claire signed the check-in
log.

"Are you staying?"

"Yes."

"Okay, there's half-bales and full bales,
HEET and water on your right."

"Great. Thanks." Claire pulled up the hook.
"Hup. Good dogs."

Once she'd loaded the supplies on her sled, a
volunteer showed her where to park her team. They'd been on the
trail eighteen hours and covered a hundred and twelve miles. Claire
planned to wait out the heat of the day in Finger Lake and give her
dogs a good rest before tackling the Happy River Steps and the side
hills of Happy River Canyon. The next hundred miles or so of trail
would be some of their toughest.

The dogs wasted no time settling in. Ginny
curled into a tight ball to make herself inconspicuous. Singer and
Riley rolled in the snow and pawed the air. Riley was minus a
bootie. Again. Trouble nipped at Pepper for encroaching on his
space, and Groucho barked like a skipping record, impatient to eat.
Claire tossed a scoop of kibble onto the snow in front of each dog,
followed by slices of frozen lamb.

She began spreading straw for their bedding
and a volunteer veterinarian came by to do a HAWL examination on
each dog. Heart, hydration, appetite and attitude, weight, lungs.
Claire showed her yellow vet book, documenting previous mandatory
checks.

"How'd they look on the trail?" the vet asked
as she manipulated Handsome's right front leg, looking for sprains
or soreness. "Any concerns?"

"They did great," Claire said. "The trail's
been perfect. Nice base under the snow."

While the woman continued her exam on the
rest of the team, Claire finished laying out straw and started
removing booties. She ran her fingers between pads to clear any ice
accumulation, checked for abrasions and applied zinc oxide ointment
to keep their paws soft and dry. Riley's left rear paw showed a
little redness but no breaks in the skin. Claire rubbed an
anti-inflammatory on it to be safe.

With Groucho, Sam, Mama's Boy and Harmony
rounding out Saturday's ceremonial line-up, she had sixty-four paws
to inspect. Zach got tired of waiting and chewed one of his booties
off. "Darn it," Claire scolded, poking her finger through the soggy
hole he'd made. His ears flattened against his head. "Don't give me
that sad look. Lucky for you and Riley, I packed extras."

The veterinarian confirmed what Claire
already knew, that her athletes were in good health – fresh. She
could pull up the hook and get back on the trail right now and
they'd be fine with it. But she didn't want to push them or
herself.

She set up the alcohol cooker and dumped in
HEET, lit it and set a pot of water on to boil. The Alaska Range
watched and waited. Claire paused to lean back and study their
intimidating snowy peaks and icy ravines. Later that afternoon, she
and her dogs would take on the challenge of reaching the other
side.
My God
.

Dillon was up there somewhere. He may have
even checked out of Rainy Pass by now. She hadn't seen him since
the restart in Willow yesterday afternoon. He stayed in Skwentna
for a few hours, but had already checked out when she got there.
According to the log, he went through Finger Lake two and a half
hours before she and her team arrived.