The pain can wait until Nome

TOUGH AS THE TRAIL: Musher pushes on despite a leg most likely broken.

By KEVIN KLOTT
Anchorage Daily News

Published: March 10, 2007
Last Modified: March 12, 2007 at 07:28 AM

MCGRATH -- Using a wooden handrail to support his battered and probably broken left leg, Iditarod musher Bryan Mills carefully made his way down a flight of stairs to tend to his laundry, then his dogs.

Afterward came time for a home-cooked meal. He ate with pink cheeks wrinkled in pain behind his fuzzy red beard.

"Man, this hurts like hell," the 42-year-old Wisconsin musher confessed. "My balance is @#$%."

Five days and more than 200 miles back on the Iditarod Trail, Mills ran over a root frozen in ice. It whipped back between the runners of his dog sled and smashed him in the shin. Doctors who happened to be at Perrin's Rainy Pass Lodge told him that in the best case his tibia was badly bruised, but it was probably broken.

Mills wondered about putting it in a cast so he could continue the race.

One doctor told him, "There's no cast, and you'll just have to deal with the pain. You should drop out of the race."

A veteran of two previous Iditarods, Mills instead pressed on. He appears determined to finish what he started Saturday in Anchorage and get his dogs to the burled arch marking the finish line of the 1,100-mile race to Nome.

It will not be easy.

As of Friday night, 19 mushers have been knocked out of The Last Great Race by unusually tough trail. With the race not even at the halfway point for many, the record number of 25 scratches from way back in 1980 could be matched.

Among the first and most notable mushers to quit were four-time Iditarod champion Doug Swingley of Montana and DeeDee Jonrowe of Willow. They both suffered broken bones before reaching the Rainy Pass checkpoint.

That's the stretch of trail that got Mills too, but there's no way he wants his name added to that list of scratches.

"I won't quit until my dogs quit," he said.

Since Rainy Pass, Mills has struggled over some of the roughest trail in Iditarod history by balancing all his weight on one leg. His damaged leg hurts so much he can barely use it to press down his sled brake when necessary.

"It's real difficult,'' he said, "but we're through the technical part now -- I hope. It was so cold coming down the Dalzell Gorge, I didn't feel my leg."

His spirits didn't get much of a lift here when he read the Iditarod standings.

"My friend (Ben Stamm of Wisconsin) just scratched,'' he said. "I can't believe that."

Mills can't understand why any musher would spend tens of thousands of dollars to race in the world's longest, most prestigious sled dog race and then drop out just because they were in pain.

Dealing with adversity and overcoming your worst fears are what the Iditarod is all about, he said. Driving through nasty, frozen tussocks and gravel bars on the Farewell Burn is simply a challenge to be met.

"I fell off the runners and was drug more than two dozen times (Wednesday) night," he said of his 80-mile trip from Rohn to Nikolai across the Burn. "But I'm not going to quit."

A stay-at-home father who says his occupation is that of full-time musher, Mills trains his team on four-wheeler trails and logging roads in the Chequamegon National Forest in northern Wisconsin. Sometimes he'll bring his 2-year-old twin daughters with him on the shorter runs.

"I train all year long with these dogs, and my one race is coming to Alaska for the Iditarod," he said.

The race means a lot to him. When he was faced with the tough choice of starting his first Iditarod or watching the birth of his daughters, he headed to Anchorage.

The girls were born March, 11, 2005, while Mills was in Takotna, taking a mandatory 24-hour layover required of all mushers at some checkpoint along the trail.

People have told him this year, "Why don't you just scratch?"

"Well, it's not that easy when you're thinking: 'I missed the birth of my kids to run this race.' '' he said. "It's kinda sick when you think about it, but this race is kind of like a drug. It's addicting. You swear to God you'll never do it again. Then you get to Nome and say, 'I could probably do better next year.' "

Of the 19 mushers who have scratched, 11 quit at the Rainy Pass checkpoint on Puntilla Lake.

Some blamed the ice-rink trail from Finger Lake to Puntilla Lake. Others pinned their decision on the winds howling at them out the Alaska Range. At least four teams retreated from Rainy Pass -- and some were blown off trail -- as winds estimated to have gusted to 90 mph swirled snow, reduced visibility to zero, and blew away trail markers.

Afterward, McCarthy rookie Jeremy Keller remarked that "this is the year to find out if you really have a sled dog team."

No one would blame Mills if he gave up in the face of all this, but he's pressing on, still hoping to better last year's 30th place finish. He's come a long way from his rookie days that began with 12 dogs bought for a measly $200 and another $200 spent on borrowed harnesses.

"It was redneck heaven," he said.

Coming through Rainy Pass in near dark that year, the weak beam of Mills' cheap light caught the attention of fellow rookie Dallas Seavey of Sterling, son of 2004 champ Mitch Seavey.

Seavey asked Mills, 'That's the only light you have?'

"They didn't know what to think of me," Mills said.

If he crosses the Burled Arch next week, they'll know what to think of him for sure -- one tough dude. He already claims the distinction of being only one of two Wisconsin residents to complete the Iditarod. He could become the only one from Wisconsin -- probably even from the lower 48 -- to have completed the race on a broken leg.

Daily News reporter Kevin Klott can be reached at kklott@adn.com or 257-4335.

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