A Rookie’s Journey –White Mountain to Nome
July 25, 2006

I had eaten fairly well in Elim, but the bug was back with a vengeance in White Mountain. Nothing I had even looked edible. I was going through the stuff left behind by earlier mushers and found some slim fast shakes. They were still frozen, but I cut the top off and ate them with a spoon. Ensure would have been better, but this beat the heck out of nothing. After my eight hours I went out to leave and felt so poorly I came back to bed hoping another hour or two of sleep would make me feel better. The next time I went out I threw up in the snow. Back to bed one more time. Finally after 14 hours and 30 minutes I felt good enough to leave White Mountain. The race judge was making comments about my looking for real estate in the area. Just before I left Katrina Pawlaczyk came into the checkpoint. I was the first musher she had seen since they withdrew Ben Valks and she was tickled to have caught me, even if I was leaving and she was starting her mandatory 8 hour rest.

As we left the checkpoint moving down the river things looked pretty good, but one hour out of the White Mountain, just as we got to start of the Topkot hills the wind picked up to about 50 mph direct from our right side. Thank heaven I had Bass in lead because things were about to get ugly.
For the next 6 hours we fought our way up and down those interminable hills. The wind was 50 mph with higher gusts howling from our right. The snow was blowing so bad that I frequently couldn’t see the next trail marker. There was no loose snow on the ground; it was all in the air. If I looked straight down I could see the tracks of the snowmachines that preceded us (the dog sleds were too light to leave a mark on this hard wind swept trail).

The blowing snow would land and thaw on the right side of the dog’s faces and then freeze their right eyelids shut. I stopped every 15 to 30 minutes to go down the team thawing their faces with my bare hands. I had my parka hood pulled up and the wolverine ruff tunneled to cut the wind on my face. Even then I frequently had to look down to open my eyes in the storm. As tough as it was, Bass never quit. He just lowered his head and kept moving.
The dogs were getting tired and starting to stall climbing the hills. I would walk to the front of the team, grab Bass’ collar, and get them moving again. After a while I realized that Bass was still working, it was the dogs behind him that were stopping. Then I started to grab Bass’ tugline and help him pull from there. The wind was so bad the sled was hanging 15 to 30 degrees downwind from the direction of the gangline. That made it even harder for the dogs to pull. Many times the wind would blow me completely off the trail as we crossed some knob. Once I pulled the sled back up to the trail only to have the wind blow it back down. I pulled it up again and braced it with my foot, but the wind blew it over. I had to stand on the runners and get the dogs pulling me off the exposed knob to get back on the trail.

Finally I had just about had it. We were climbing one more hill in this darned wind and I prayed to God to let it be the last one because I didn’t know how many more we could take without rest and there was nowhere to get out of the wind. God answered my prayer. As we crested the hill I could see the flat plain stretching out in front of us with a shelter cabin below. When we left White Mountain I told the dogs that if it took over 6 hours to reach the cabin I would stop, feed them, and give them a rest before we went on to Nome. It actually took about 7 hours to get there, fighting the wind for 6 of those. I was sure we had crossed the famous Topkot blowhole and was amazed to find the 4 teams that left ahead of us waiting at the shelter cabin.

It was about 4:30 in the afternoon and Randy Cummins had gotten there about 7:30 in the morning. He told me the worst was yet to come. The famous Topkot blowhole was ahead of us and he had tried and failed to cross it. He had been holed up in the cabin since 7:30 AM waiting for the storm to ease. The winds were blowing about 35 mph at the cabin with higher gusts. Being first to arrive, Randy’s team was pretty well sheltered by the cabin; the next team was mostly sheltered. The next two teams were kind of sheltered, but there was no place to get my poor dogs out of the wind. I unhitched neck line and tug lines and moved the dogs around so they could at least huddle in a group. 6 of them did, but Platinum and Basil didn’t want to be in the pile and lay down alone on the snow.

I went to gather snow to melt to fix the dogs a hot meal. The snow was packed so hard I couldn’t dig the edge of the pot into it. I tried to break some with my boots, but still no luck. Finally I got my axe out of the sled and used it to break off chunks to put in the pot and melt. There was a fire in the cabin and I brought the snow inside and put it on the wood stove along with the pots from the other mushers. I was sheltered from the wind, but worried about my dogs. I had heard tell of storms like this where the falling snow covered the dogs and protected them from the wind, but there was no falling snow here. The snow at the cabin was only inches deep so I couldn’t cut a trench for the dogs to lie in. Picard was starting to shiver and I moved him into the dog pile to a more protected spot. I broached the idea with the other mushers that we might need to bring the dogs into the cabin. This is against the rules, but we were 5 of the last 6 mushers on the trail. The safety of the dogs comes first.

R Northbound Dogs in the finish chute in Nome after 15 days 14 hours and 17 minutes on the trail. Bass is in single lead.

Race Marshall Mark Nordman congratulating Eric on his finish.

Eric delivering the mail. Eric's dad was third generation letter carrier in Fort Collins, CO. Now Eric joins the group.

The finishers at the Red Lantern banquet in Nome.