PUNTILLA LAKE - Long before the Iditarod Trail turned truly ugly, Minnesotan Kevin Kortuem was riding on a single sled runner and a prayer. Just miles out of Finger Lake before climbing 30 miles through brush-filled canyons into the Alaska Range, the rookie musher hit something that broke the left runner just in front of his foot. Ahead, Kortuem knew, was the notorious Happy River Gorge, one of the nastiest stretches on the 1,100-mile trail to Nome. A hard stretch of trail for the leaders of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, it only gets worse with the passing of each team. To slow their descent along the three so-called steps that snake the trail down to the base of the gorge, mushers stand on a drag between the sled runners. The drag is a studded piece of snowmobile track that carves a groove in the trail. With every passing team, the groove goes deeper - until it becomes a ditch too wide to straddle but too big to avoid. More than 60 mushers preceded Kortuem. "It was a bitch," he said. "You just hang on. It was a pretty exciting ride down." Somewhere along the way, he bloodied his nose. "That's the least of my worries," he said. "I can fix my damn nose." The sled, however, was irreparable. Kortuem hoped to get a new one flown in from McGrath, the checkpoint more than a 150 miles down the trail. Meanwhile, fellow rookie Karen Ramstead from Perryville, Alberta, was salvaging wood from Kortuem's broken sled to fix hers. She had two busted stanchions on the left side; how it happened was a mystery. "I hit the Iditarod Trail," she said. "I did it ... just coming in here. I heard a popping noise, and I kept crashing after that. I thought I just didn't know how to steer a sled anymore." She was actually relieved to discover the sled broken. On the sun-drenched surface of this snow-covered lake, Iditarod veteran Jamie Nelson from Togo, Minn., was helping make repairs, with some advice from race judge Terry Hinesly, an Oregon sled builder and veteran of the 1985, 1990 and 1993 Iditarods. They were working with pieces of Kortuem's sled runner, willow, twine, wire and whatever else they could find. "I wish I'd brought my drill," Nelson said. "What are you going to attach (a brace) with?" Hinesly asked. "I've got hose clamps," Ramstead said. "Hose clamps!" Hinesly said. "Hose clamps are good." One of the dogs sleeping on straw in the warm sunshine in front of the sled looked up at that exclamation, but the rest of the team slept on. Overhead, the sky was a gentle blue. Fine tufts of clouds kissed the summits of the snow-covered peaks that rise around the lake at the south end of Rainy Pass. Baltimore rookie Dan Dent wandered among his dogs nearby in his flashy yellow jumpsuit, encouraging one dog to eat, putting some salve on the foot of another. Dent confessed to being tired after a five-mile push into the checkpoint. His gangline, the main line onto which all the dogs are attached, snapped in the Tuesday morning darkness after his sled met a tree. "I just hit it in a way that there wasn't any give," Dent said. "I looked up and (the dogs) weren't there. It was like they vaporized. They were gone." All but a pair - putting Dent behind a two-dog team. "Six would have been good," he said. "I have a fully loaded sled. It's got a lot of weight in it." With a six-dog team, he figured, "I would have made it here an hour earlier, and I wouldn't have gotten soaking wet (from sweat) and had to dry everything out." But with help from those two willing dogs, Dent made it. The rest of the team had apparently stayed on the trail and was already in the checkpoint waiting. All were reunited as Rainy Pass, and the rest of the Alaska Range beckoned. Out there, other teams were flowing north in perfect weather - the winds calm, the trail obvious, the temperature cool enough for the dogs but warm enough for the mushers. And the views amid the snow-covered peaks were spectacular. * Outdoors editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com when the Iditarod is over
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