With markers missing, Iditarod racers navigate in packs

By KEVIN KLOTT
Anchorage Daily News

Published: March 7, 2007
Last Modified: March 14, 2007 at 06:39 PM

PUNTILLA LAKE -- As the wind chill dipped to minus 37 and a ground storm pounded dogs resting on straw beds here, rookie musher Andy Angstman emerged from the direction of Rainy Pass in a cloud of blowing snow.

His eyelashes were frosted. The coats of his Alaskan Huskies were layered with snow. He blinked rapidly to keep his eyelids from freezing shut.

As he stomped on his sled brake, a checker yelled out, asking who he was and what he was doing coming into the checkpoint from the wrong direction.

"Turned around," the 25-year-old said. "I couldn't see anything. I can't drive when I can't see."

Angstman had just escaped a ground blizzard in the cold heart of Rainy Pass more than 20 miles to the north. Fearful of getting lost or being forced to hunker down without protection against the wind, Angstman turned around and backtracked 22 miles to find shelter.

"We got into it," he said. "Once you reach the plateau (leading to the pass), you can't see anything."

Over the Alaska Range to the north, Yukon Quest winner Lance Mackey was the first to reach Takotna. He had trailed four-time champion Martin Buser into McGrath.

Those teams were racing. The mushers who hadn't already scratched here were just trying to make progress.

Angstman grew up driving dogs in windy Bethel, and it has always been his dream to run the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. He's experienced ground blizzards before, but nothing like this.

Only three days into the race, his Iditarod dream was turning into a hellish nightmare shared by many teams. Of 82 race starters, 10 are already out -- including such notables as DeeDee Jonrowe of Willow and four-time champ Doug Swingley from Lincoln, Mont. They have suffered from an assortment of broken bones, bruised bodies and dogs that just said no way.

On Tuesday, five teams -- Angstman, Richard Hum of Talkeetna, Scott White of Washington, Randy Cummins of Big Lake and Cindy Gallea of Montana -- left the checkpoint and then returned after deciding the pass was impassable.

One team was reported missing and two dogs were running loose in the pass, officials at the checkpoint said in the afternoon. However, Bill Pinkham, the musher who was believed to be lost, pulled into Nikolai at 10:07 p.m.

Hum, a 35-year-old rookie, was thankful just to get his team back safely.

"We're gonna see if we have enough food to take our 24-hour here," said Hum, who followed Angstman into Puntilla Lake. "What the hell, maybe we'll take two. I don't think we're going to win."

Teams headed into Rainy Pass traveled in packs for safety. Rookies followed veterans who knew the blown-over trail, its markers having vanished in the wind.

Before the sun rose Tuesday, White played caboose in a pack of five led by Akiak's Mike Williams and Canadian Karen Ramstead, the most experienced mushers in the bunch.

"We hear there's 80 mph winds and the trail's all blown away," White said before leaving.

Rumors about just how bad it was spread quickly Tuesday morning after Colorado's Mike Curiak -- a mountain biker headed to Nome -- retreated in the face of a blizzard that had confined him to a tent for two days and created huge snow drifts. Curiak is the record-holder (17 days, 2 hours) for the Iditarod Trail Invitational to Nome.

The 37-year-old planned to reach Rohn by following the Iditarod Trail through Rainy Pass into the Dalzell Gorge, but he took a wrong turn at a point where snowmachine tracks lead in separate directions. Instead of following the tracks toward Rainy, he followed the old trail of the Tesoro Iron Dog snowmachine race toward Ptarmigan Pass.

Curiak said there were no trail markers to follow. They'd blown away.

Just after sunset on Monday, Curiak said he was shocked to see a headlamp in the distance. A musher dressed in a navy blue parka came up the Ptarmigan Pass trail toward him.

"You're going the wrong way," Curiak shouted as the musher passed.

The musher stopped, set his snow hook and screamed, "What did you say?"

"This is the way to Rohn if you want to go through Ptarmigan," Curiak said. "You're going the wrong way."

The musher turned his team around, and Curiak proved their location by showing the man the coordinates on a GPS receiver. They were eight miles off course.

When Curiak later reached the junction to Rainy Pass, he reported seeing teams fanned out, breaking trail up to the pass.

Iditarod race marshal Mark Nordman asked race judge Art Church to halt teams here temporarily until a crew of trailbreakers could re-mark the route.

"It's nasty," Church told Steve Perrins, owner of the Rainy Pass Lodge.

Perrins recruited three of his five sons -- Steve Jr., Colton and Clay -- to gather all the old trail markers they could find around the property and take snowmachines to the pass. He told his boys to ride close and outfitted each machine with equipment for a subzero bivouac if necessary.

"Get as many stakes as you can," Perrins said. "And nobody is sleeping out."

Meanwhile, teams that weren't leaving the checkpoint to get pounded by the weather were being joined by teams that had been pounded by the terrain on the climb into the mountains from Finger Lake.

Colorado's Lachlan Clarke, a 50-year-old running in his third Iditarod, suffered a badly sprained ankle. His sled tipped on its side and slid on glare ice. Clarke rolled his right foot and likely tore ligaments, he said.

Willow's DeeDee Jonrowe, running in her 25th Iditarod, broke the pinkie bone on her right hand in the same area late Monday night when her sled bashed into a tree.

"It doesn't hurt that bad when it's cold," she said. "But I could tell bones were moving where there is no joint."

Jonrowe had been forced to scratch in only one other Iditarod.

"I could try to be a cowboy and go on, but I can't take care of the dogs," she said.

Bryan Mills of Merengo, Wisc., did, however, decide to play cowboy after he broke the tibia -- the small bone -- in his left leg.

"If I lived in Alaska, then I would scratch," Mills said. "(But) I didn't come all the way from Wisconsin to scratch.''

"There was a root sticking up and it banged the outside of my leg," Mills said. "I heard a snap and thought the sled was broken. Then everything went numb in my leg. It was the scariest moment of my life."

Stan Watkins III, a heart doctor in Anchorage who was here to watch the race, advised the 42-year-old to scratch, but Mills refused.

"This is what the Iditarod's all about," he said.

Daily News reporter Kevin Klott can be reached at kklott@adn.com.

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