Iditarod Dream by Janelle Jamison

Author:Janelle Jamison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2012-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

The following day wasn’t quite as warm, but Rita repeated her system between intermittent snows. She knew that other drivers were following the same plan, and she kept moving as quickly as possible to gain distance.

True to what her father and Mark had told her, she couldn’t count more than a few hours of sleep in total. The lack of sleep didn’t discourage her, however. Rita kept reminding herself of how easy the trail had been so far and, despite her desperate need for sleep, she kept to her self-appointed schedule.

“I’ve taken chances,” she said aloud, “but they’ve paid off and I know they were the right things to do.”

Rita smiled to herself as the dogs moved at a steady lope. At Finger Lake she’d moved up nine places, and after an uneventful roller coaster ride through Happy River Gorge, Rita was beginning to feel smug in her self-confidence. “I knew I didn’t need anybody,” she reminded herself. The cold wind made her cheekbones numb, but she didn’t care. She knew she could win the race.

In the back of her mind, August’s words mingled with her self-assured thoughts. Her father said she needed God and no matter how she tried to deny Him, Rita knew it was true. That was the biggest problem about all the miles of solitude on the trail—it gave a person too much time to think.

Rita thought about stopping the dogs in order to get her headphones. Maybe listening to some of her favorite music would help her to keep her conscience in check. She glanced at her watch and decided against it. She could just as well block out the thoughts by forcing her interests elsewhere. At least, she hoped she could.

The dogs were holding up well, and each checkpoint had shown them to be in excellent shape despite the way Rita pushed them. It was Rita who suffered. At times she thought she imagined teams just ahead of her, but when she rubbed her eyes with the back of her mittens, the images faded. It wasn’t until Rita thought the dogsled was floating up into the air that she decided to rest. Rohn was only a few hours ahead of her and both Mark and her father had suggested she spend her, twenty-four-hour layover there. All she had to do was hold on until Rohn.

While Rohn and a good night’s sleep waited just down the trail, Rita knew she would still have to face the challenge of Dalzell Gorge. Her father had described this stretch of the Iditarod as a nightmare.

First, there was the climb from Puntilla Lake to 3,200-foot Rainy Pass. The dogs had managed this with relative ease, and Rita was beginning to think they were living a charmed life. Maybe her father had just been overly tired by the time he’d come this far, she surmised. Maybe it was just that he was so much older when he’d run the race.

As the team crossed over the divide, Rita had to turn her full attention to the trail at hand.

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