Almost 30 years after the first running of the Alaska Iditarod for sledheads, the Last Frontier remains the land where men are men and always win the Iron Dog snowmachine race.
The once-called "weaker sex" might have at one time owned the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, but she remains largely a no-show in the brutal, 2,000-mile snowmobile race across the 49th state. And if history is any barometer, it is not unreasonable to believe victory might be forever beyond the reach of female competitors.
Over the course of the past decade, only one all-woman team has even finished. Jackie Page and Missy McClurg made it from Big Lake to Nome to Fairbanks in 2001. Their team was 15th across the finish line, which was that year second to last.
No women's team has reached the finish line since, although the Alaska Army National Guard's Sgt. Maj. Pamela Harrington of Palmer and Sgt. 1st Class Elaine Jackson of Anchorage are primed to give it a go when the race leaves Big Lake on Feb. 20. Page thinks the pair could do well, but no one expects them to contend for victory.
"Our goal," said Harrington, "is to just be consistent and finish the race."
Though the Iron Dog and the Iditarod races cross much of the same wild and foreboding landscape, they remain fundamentally different races in ways both harder and easier. No one has ever done well in both.
Five-time Iditarod champ Rick Swenson gave the Iron Dog a shot once. He ended up a way-back, also-ran. None of the Iron Dog winners have ever taken a try at Iditarod, although former Iron Dog winner Dusty Van Meter from Kasilof was a winner of the Junior Iditarod. Shortly thereafter he gave up hairy sled dogs for iron ones and never looked back. He found machines a lot easier to maintain than animals.
The situation was much the opposite for Libby Riddles from Teller and Susan Butcher from Manley. Both found it much more enjoyable to spend their time around animals than machines, and both helped develop dog teams that brought them Iditarod glory. The Iditarod burst onto the international stage after young, attractive blonde Riddles became the first woman to win in 1985. Behind her came Butcher, who was the dominant contender from the mid-1980s into the 1990s. She won the race four times and cemented the idea that gender is a competitive non-issue once racers leave the comfort of Alaska urbanity for the wilds of the frozen north.
Motorheads would beg to differ. A women's team has never challenged in the Iron Dog, and many wonder if one ever will.
Iron Dog takes a different skill set
Arguments can be made that some of the things that help women in the dog race -- their smaller size and weight plus a mother-like affinity for animals -- might actually hurt them in the snowmachine race. And though America's gender-lines have blurred in the 21st century, there remain vestiges of "man's work" and "woman's work," which tend to limit the pool of women with Iron Dog skills.
"It takes such a different skill set," said Page. "Most girls are not raised in a shop. Most of them don't take auto shop like I did."
To compete in a wilderness race where mechanical breakdowns are something of a given, Page said, racers must function as if a wrench were an extension of their hand. They must be able to change out a drive belt in the dark with eyes closed and rip out a drive track without thinking. And above all else, they must be able to improvise and jury-rig using whatever is available from tree limbs to duct tape.
"The MacGyvers on the trail, it really takes that skill," she added.
Harrington was handpicked for an Iron Dog team because she has this skill. She spent six years as a mechanic in the Guard's two-person maintenance shop in Nome. She knows her way around wrenches and ratchets. The question in her case is riding ability.
"I'm still a little bit slower than my partner would like," she confessed.
"It's a really, really tough trail," Page said. "It's tough for someone to actually, physically manipulate the machine."
Page still rides regularly and she still dream Iron Dog dreams. She wants to believe it possible a woman could win the race. Sometimes she even dreams she could be that woman.
"I've never really stopped trying," she said. "I keep working out. I keep hoping one of these days I will make my championship. (But) my back is done."
Even if her back was better, however, and even if she could find the perfect Iron Dog partner -- McClurg had enough after one try -- and even if they could somehow run a race without a significant mechanical problem (something that almost never happens), Page concedes it would still take a mountain of luck for a pair of women to win.
"It's not saying anything against anyone," she said, "but my husband can do things I can't do. Men have longer arms, longer legs," and, usually, more body mass.
Snowmachine racing more than just sitting, steering
None of those things would matter if racing Iron Dog merely meant sitting on the snowmachine and steering it north from Big Lake. But racing a snowmachine involves more than just sitting on it and punching the throttle. In fact, it is doubtful anyone could ride a snowmachine from Big Lake to Nome without getting out of the saddle.
Many parts of the Iditarod Trail, especially thorough the Alaska Range, are so off-canter on side hills that a rider must put both feet on the machine's running board and hang his or her butt out as far as possible, all while keeping the skis generally pointed uphill, or the machine will slide off the trail and into a hole.
Going into a hole means getting stuck, which in turn means lifting and pulling and sometimes even digging to get unstuck. Harrington, who largely learned to snowmachine on the hard-packed snow of the Seward Peninsula around Nome, got her introduction to this problem last year as she transitioned from a long-track trail sled to a short-track racing sled. The latter is faster than the former, but also easier to get stuck. Harrington repeatedly got it stuck in the deep snow up in the Shell Hills north of Skwentna about 85 miles out from Big Lake on the trail. She and partner Jackson -- Iron Doggers train and race in teams for safety reasons -- got plenty of exercise lifting and pushing sleds out of deep snow.
Women, with their smaller muscles, labor with an inherent disadvantage. It is the same disadvantage they battle through every mile of the Iron Dog, which is essentially a wrestling match between a human and a 500-pound chunk of iron bouncing, twisting, turning and sometimes flying along rough trail.
Riding an Iron Dog racing sled, Harrington confessed, isn't really at all like riding a trail machine.
"That trail can be wonderful one day and hell the next," Page said. "The terrain out there is the most unforgiving in the world. I joke that the trail made a man out me."
"I made a pretty good bump-sled out of that long track, but with the short track, you've got to go faster to go smoother, and it works right up to the point you get bucked off," Harrington added.
Buck this: Iron Dog racing a bone-breaking battle
Getting "bucked off," as Harrington describes it, creates new issues. First, there is some inherent danger. The driver who flies off can get hurt, although Iron Dog racers are now required by rule to wear not only helmets but body armor, which has prevented some of the more serious bone-breaking injuries of the past. Injuries to the drive are not the only concern, however. A sled left flying down the trail unwomanned can hit things -- rocks, ice, trees, tree stumps, cliffs -- and end up smashed. And even if both driver and sled survive crashes unscathed, there are physiological consequences.
Each crash is a major body blow. Each blow takes a toll. The toll wears a rider down. This is what makes the Iron Dog race different from a simple snowmobile ride to Nome. Almost anyone who is generally fit, savvy in the ways of Bush travel and experienced on a snowmobile can ride from Big Lake to Nome these days. The often poorly marked and in places untracked Iditarod Trail remains a challenge, but less so today than when the race began in 1984.
Back then the "Iron Dog Iditarod" -- destined to shortly thereafter become the "Iron Dog Gold Rush Classic" and later the "Tesoro Iron Dog" -- went only about 900 miles from Big Lake to a finish in Nome, but it was a mighty tough 900 miles. The equipment of the day was prone to breakage and the trail a whole lot rougher. The snowmachine was on its way to becoming a favored convenience in Bush Alaska, but the winter snowmachine highways that now connect many villages had yet to develop. They would.
Technology over the course of the next two decades would change things even more, however. Snowmachines got a more reliable and a whole lot more comfortable thanks to changes in frame and suspension design.
Fifty-year-old Scott Davis, the winner of the second Iron Dog along with partner Gary Eoff, pretty much concedes he wouldn't be racing again this year if not for the latter. A seven-time Iron Dog champion, Davis is the winningest racer still on the trail. Teamed with five different partners over the years, he won in each of the first three decade of the Iron Dog's existence. He will this year be racing with his 22-year-old son, Cory, having split with previous partner Todd Palin, the husband of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Davis is hoping he and Cory, a highly successful World Snowmobile Association Snocross rider, can find success. But Scott now faces a handicap similar to that facing the women who enter the race. After age 35, people lose an estimated 3 percent to 8 percent of muscle mass per decade. At 50, Scott is simply not the man he was when he won that first Iron Dog title at 25. John Faeo, the winner of the first Iron Dog and the race's only other seven-time champ, recognized the limitations of age and retired in 2007. This might well be Scott Davis's last Iron Dog.
The race, he admitted, gets harder every year.
The Danica Patrick of Iron Dog?
He comes back because he can't let go. Harrington is in because she got an offer she couldn't refuse The Alaska Army National Guard, her employer and a major Iron Dog sponsor, offered to help organize and finance her team. Some involved with Iron Dog dream of the publicity gold mine that awaits the arise of a Danica Patrick of the north.
Patrick, as most know, did to Indy car racing what Riddles and Butcher did to the Iditarod. She broadened the appeal of motorsports as Riddles and Butcher grew the appeal of Iditarod.
There are those who hope the same could happen to Iron Dog, but it seems the longest of long shots. There is a big gap between finishing an Iron Dog and winning an Iron Dog. No one knows better than Page.
"There aren't a lot of women in motorsport," she admitted. "Missy and I can't be the only ones out there. I honestly feel there must be others out there."
Well, there are at least two: Harrington and Jackson. They have the hopes of a whole gender on their shoulders. "I think they are going to do really well," Page said, but a victory would seem even less likely than former champ Palin's wife, Sarah, becoming the next president of the United States.
Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com