Looking for Alaska by Peter Jenkins

Author:Peter Jenkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

How would you like to be hooked up to this? The Tustamena 200. PHOTO BY PETER JENKINS

After maybe five miles I was somewhat relaxed on the runners. I was practicing adjusting to all the undulations on the surface of the ground, and I could see that if it was done right, over several days it would demand less energy of the dogs and certainly put less stress on them. Then, without warning, we came to a steep creekbank; the dogs never slowed; they even sped up. It seemed to head almost straight down, then we hit the ice of the creek, blown clear of snow. When we hit the ice, my sled began sliding sideways at a runaway speed. Plus my sled pulled Jeff’s a bit to the side too. I was now sliding at a ninety-degree angle to the long, straight line of these thirteen blazing dogs. Half of them had already begun zooming out of the other side of the creek. I could tell this was not going to be elegant. I hit the creekbank, bang, and it sounded as though the sled would shatter, but it didn’t. I smashed into the bank, came off the sled, which turned over sideways. The impact threw Jeff off his feet, but he did not release his grip even though his sled too was knocked on its side. Jeff held on with both hands. The dogs pulled him and the sleds up and out of the creek and across the bumpy, frozen ground. He was telling the dogs to stop, and they finally did. I ran out of the creek the best I could. I knew the way I’d hit I would have some bruises and knots, and I did.

“That was a pretty good fall. Those second sleds really whip on the ice. You all right?” Jeff asked me.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I wasn’t ready for that one, though I’m not sure even if I was I could have hung on.”

“And can you imagine, after running the Iditarod for five days or seven days, and you hit something like that. People fall off their sleds, it’s a good way to lose your team. Sometimes they don’t stop until they get to the next checkpoint or get tangled in something.”

That crash illustrates what makes dogs and mushers such performers at the most extreme levels. It shows why they must be so qualified. They don’t play out their game in a climate-controlled dome or stadium. They don’t run across a place like California or Pennsylvania that has a comparatively mellow climate. Besides California and Pennsylvania are not large enough playing fields for the Iditarod. They need almost twelve hundred miles. They don’t play out their game on a smooth wood floor where there is no concern about running full speed into a steep riverbank you couldn’t see or were so sleep-deprived you forgot it was there. How many baseball games have been played in a whiteout, on top of the frozen Bering Sea, with

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