Nine of the 10 sled dogs that kept going when their musher fell off near Willow survived two days of tangles, fights and hunger while trapped together on their gangline before being rescued Wednesday afternoon.

The dogs were found in a tangled mess of lines, anchored in place after the snow hook from their sled lodged in the snow about 10 miles from where the dogs escaped east of the Parks Highway, said Erin McLarnon, president of the Willow Dog Mushers Association, which coordinated the search efforts looking for the dogs.

One dog, Tappy, was dead, apparently strangled in the mess of harnesses, said Ted English, the veteran musher who owns the team and who had loaned it to another musher.

"Almost everybody had some type of bite wound on them, and a couple of them had already formed some abscesses, but nothing that's life-threatening," McLarnon said.

The dogs got loose about 3:45 p.m. Monday, when Jan Stevens, a 53-year-old from Edmonds, Wash., training for a possible run in the Iditarod with a team from English's kennel, was knocked off the sled.

Romano Loop along Haessler-Norris Trail is a technically challenging run, and there is not a lot of snow there now, McLarnon said.

Stevens, who's been mushing for about three years, said she had been going down a hill in the woods when every musher's nightmare became reality. She hit a tree on her right and was thrown to the left. The sled stayed upright and the dogs kept on going.

"I've dumped sleds in the past, I've been dragged, but I've always managed to hang on to the sled," Stevens said. "I think it was just the impact on the tree that I was just kind of tossed from the sled. And I got to watch them go around the lake below me, and it was a beautiful sight. It was also a very sickening sight."

Stevens started walking back and called English on a cell phone. He rushed out to the area on a snowmachine, but they couldn't find the team.

"The dogs ran out and we missed them somewheres," English said. "Somebody gets on the trail for the last two or three years out there on that trail with a four-wheeler, and they really tear that trail up, so we had a heck of a time."

A ground search involving 25 or more volunteers escalated late into Monday night and resumed again Tuesday. By mid-afternoon searchers, confronted with up to 100 miles of trail to cover and no sightings of the team, began thinking they would need air support, McLarnon said. A helicopter took to the sky late Wednesday morning to began a systemic search of the area with McLarnon aboard.

With Hatcher Pass Road to the north, the Parks Highway to the west and Deception Creek to the east, the helicopter began scouring the area for any sign of the dogs. About noon, after just 45 minutes in the air, McLarnon spotted the dogs out of the corner of her eye after the chopper had run eight or nine patterns.

The dogs were beyond a barricade on the trail marking some private property -- an area passed by but not covered in the ground search because the barricade was unmoved -- and probably just about three-quarters of a mile as the crow flies from McLarnon's home, McLarnon said.

"When I got the phone call that she found the team, I just burst into tears," Stevens said. "I was elated. And then she told me of Tappy's fate, and it was heartbreaking."

The chopper set down and searchers found most of the dogs doing well. It appeared the team ran straight to that spot before the hook set into the snow, lodging them in place, and that they spent almost all of their 44-hour ordeal in that location, McLarnon said. The sled somehow managed to stay upright the whole time.

At first, the dogs were still straight on the gangline, evidenced by holes melted in the snow where they slept. But the line soon devolved into the chaos McLarnon found as she approached.

"When I got to them it was just a tangled mess," she said. "You could tell that there had been a little scuffle at some point."

McLarnon called her husband, and, along with the pilot, began freeing the dogs, cutting some of the most tangled lines. They put the dogs on a stakeout line as English and Stevens headed out to the area, she said.

"Jan snowmachined in and, believe it or not, we put a gangline onto the snowmachine, hooked all the dogs up and the dogs pulled home," McLarnon said. "They could have ran another 50 miles, I think. They were just so happy."