A night they would all remember...

Press, 8 July 1976, Page 21

A night they would all remember...

storm which followed for several days. Nearly half the field was eliminated. And who was third to the last musher into the Rohn River checkpoint? None other than Norman Vaughan. Overnight, temperatures plunged to 30 below zero fahrenheit. Rodk hard trails took their toll on the dogs’ feet, and several more teams fell by the wayside. Temperatures continued to plunge, and at about 45 below, Norman Vaughan and his team fell through overflow ice (softspots caused by temperature fluctuations) on the Kuskokwim River. Soaked to his waist Vaughan swam his team to shore and anointed their feet with castor oil and tincture of benzoine. By that time, his own feet had frozen hard. He then tried to chop his boots off with an axe, but to no avail. Undaunted, he mushed his team 40 miles to the next checkpoint at

lost some friends by wearing some clothes I had left near the seal pot a few washes later. Ruby did not sleep until their hometown hero, a salmon fisherman, Emmitt Peters, mushed into town at three in the morning. The temperature neared 60 below, and the Aurora Borealis flickered green in the sky overhead. Some disagreement lingers on about what subsequently took place. After a short rest, Peters hit the trail again, mushing down the frozen Yukon River towards the Bering Sea. Both Nayokpuk and Peters reached the sea at about the same time, Peters gaining about nine hours on the leader in two days. Some choose to think that Peters used his knowledge of the river to skirt the established trail and take a shortcut down a tributary. That curious come back marked the end of a good musher named

Fox, approached the finish line. Though Peters’s team had rested, the musher had not, as all the time not on the trail he had spent preparing food and caring for his dogs. Cheeks white with frost, icicles dangling from eyelash and beard, Peters looked up at. the flashbulbs and cameras clicking under his nose and said: “Somebody . . . take care ... my dogs.” His legs gave way, but a friend propped him up and proffered a snort of brandy from a hip flask. An hour later, another musher named Jerry Riley crossed the finish line, having passed a weary Nayokpuk some 10 miles out of Nome. The time for the winner, having crossed 1049 miles of snow and ice by dog sled was 14 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, more than six days faster than the previous record. The

prize: $15,000 — and a night of .undisturbed sleep. In the next 10 days, 21 other mushers crossed the finish line. Each one, regardless of position, was greeted with a siren, a police escort down Front Street, and a cheering reception by the townspeople of Nome. To be sure, the race had taken its toll on both man and dog. However, of the more than 450 tough Alaskan Maiemute-Siberian husky cross sled dogs which started the race, only four died along the way. One developed a heart condition, another was trampled by a moose, and two others were pierced through the chest by icicles. Considerable precautions were taken to insure the dogs’ safety. Eight veternarians flew the trail daily, and checkpoints were set up every 50 miles to allow mushers to drop ailing animals from their teams. Sick dogs

would then be flown to Anchorage for nursing and medical attention. The winner of the race two years ago. Carl “Tire Iceman” Huntington, dropped out of the race at the halfway point, and decided not to enter Iditarod again. “Too expensive,” he said. “To win this race, a musher has to train his dogs specifically for this kind of race all year long. “Even winning the top prize doesn’t begin to cover the expenses,” he added grimly. In spite of this, there were 48 entrants in the race this March, the biggest field ever; 23 eventually finished. Ironically, Emniitt Peters overslept at the Shaktoolik checkpoint, 200 miles from Nome, allowing Jerry “Wrong Way” Riley (so-called because he once took a 50 mile detour in a snowstorm) to mush triumphantly into Nome. When the race, is over, Nome becomes a quiet

place once again. Even now, however, if you were to wander into the Nugget Inn on Front Street, you would probably hear old Albro Gregory and the boys talking about next year, and perhaps lay a bet on “Wrong Way,’’ “The Fox,” or The Cannonball.”