Alaska News

Toilsome trekking on the Iditarod Trail

PUNTILLA LAKE -- Down in the Happy River Gorge about 20 miles south of here, attempts to rescue a rookie musher who crashed her sled in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race turned into hellish mess Tuesday.

Help for Nancy Yoshida and problems for others came in waves as the North Dakota musher sat stalled at the "steps" that take the trail down a cliff to the frozen Happy River. Since at least 2 a.m. Tuesday, according to mushers, Yoshida had been stuck in the middle tier of the sharp switchbacks between big trees that cling to the gorge walls.

She couldn't make it down because she'd crashed her sled and lost one of the runners.

As following mushers came upon Yoshida and dogs stuck in the single-track trail, they had mixed reactions. Some stopped to give the 58-year-old occupational therapist a hand; others stayed just long enough to untangle their dogs from hers, ask if she was OK, and press on.

One musher built a campfire and cooked her food. Another helped gather together what was left of her sled.

"She's having one hell of a day," said Kim Darst, a New Jersey rookie who was one of the mushers who helped.

Yoshida wasn't alone in that.

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After she crashed, one of her dogs got away, according to Jack Niggemyer, an Iditarod Trail sweeper. When Niggemyer heard the dog was missing, he and another race volunteer hopped on two snowmachines and drove south down the trail to look for it.

Their rescue attempt turned disastrous when one of the snowmachines went off the trail. As they revved up the machine and tried to push it out of deep snow, the driver's foot got caught in the suspension.

That required another rescue team to come out from Perrins Rainy Pass Lodge with a battery-operated saw with which they could cut the snowmachine apart to free her foot. The injured woman was eventually brought back to the lodge. She limped off the machine and headed directly into a heated cabin.

"She's doing just fine," Niggemyer said. "We're taking her to McGrath."

While she was recuperating, lodge owner Steve Perrins sent eight snowmachines back down the trail to get the busted snowmachine and help Yoshida, who was believed to be still sitting at the steps.

First word of Yoshida's problems arrived here with musher Trent Herbst at 3:38 a.m. The Idaho dog driver reported he had started down the steps with Yoshida behind hours earlier and waited at the bottom to make sure she made it OK.

When she wasn't there in an hour, Herbst decided to push on for the checkpoint to report a problem. He knew other mushers were close behind. Officials were getting a little nervous when the next musher, Colorado rookie Kurt Reich, didn't arrive until at 8:45 a.m. A volunteer asked him for an update on Yoshida.

"She's messing up a lot of stuff right now," Reich said.

Her dogs blocked the trail and caused a tangle with Reich's team.

"It looked like a car wreck," Reich said. "I had to tip the sled and dump it into the trees with hers. Then another musher ran through my dogs. It was not how I had planned my night."

Rookie mushers Lou Packer from Wasilla and Alan Peck from Eagle River, Alaska, were in the thick of the mess just after Yoshida crashed.

Racing through the dark toward the drop, they swung the beams of their headlamps in search of a homemade warning sign they were told was posted to a tree, warning "watch your ass.'' That was to be the signal to get ready for the three crazy, lugelike steps that take mushers over the cliff and down to the Happy.

"It's a carnival ride," Packer said. "A blast."

This year was different. Packer found the way blocked by Yoshida's team. Soon Peck arrived to join the traffic jam. Together they tried to mend Yoshida's broken dreams. They built her a campfire, cooked her food, helped her change into dry clothes and tried to persuade her not to give up. But there was little hope.

"She was crashed and burned," Packer said.

The tight, steep corners of the steps are known to wreck sleds. The trail starts bad and only gets worse with the passing of every sled. Mushers standing on the sled brake cut a groove down the center a foot to 18-inches wide that just keeps getting deeper and deeper. Pretty soon, it's so deep the brake is pretty much useless, and keeping a sled runner on either side is just about impossible.

Once a sled runner drops into the groove, the trip to the bottom goes crash, bang, bounce. The lucky are left with the sleds to which they can make repairs. The unlucky walk, or wait for help like Yoshida.

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Packer said she appeared physically uninjured but tired, dejected and disoriented. She had disconnected her sled from the gangline that keeps the dogs in a line, and they were all in a ball.

"I came upon her in this tangle of dogs," he said.

Packer wanted to press on but felt duty bound to stay.

"I'd wanted to be in a nice, warm cushiony bed and nice hot shower," he said. "But that's not what we're here to do today."

He got out his ax and chopped down a spruce tree. Worried Yoshida was hypothermic, he and Peck got the campfire going to warm her shivering body. They helped come up with a plan to get her back in the race.

They decided she could get a new sled from Anchorage musher Bob Hickel, who had scratched at Finger Lake about 11 miles away, or she could make do with her own sled as best she could.

After more than three hours, "I finally said 'Lets go -- either come or stay,' " Packer said.

Yoshida said she'd wait for Hickel's sled. It arrived late Tuesday. Yoshida hooked up and crashed again. This time, though, she only broke one runner and kept going.

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At 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, she finally limped into the checkpoint, but one of her dogs was still missing.

Find Daily News reporter Kevin Klott online at adn.com/contact/kklott or call 257-4335.

Mushers' current standings

Reader-submitted: Iditarod photos

Audio: Voices from the Trail

By KEVIN KLOTT

kklott@adn.com

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