Looking for Alaska

  It must have been warm and rewarding to come upon a little log cabin with an orange glow in the window and smoke coming out of the chimney at 2 A.M. on a bank above the frozen Yukon River.

  “The cabins got their names when the paddle wheelers used to come up the Yukon during the short summers. They would resupply them with wood that they burned as fuel. I knew there would be a warm cabin. I planned to go nonstop into the night about thirty miles until I got to this cabin.”

  Jeff looked out the picture window. A frozen lake, where I’d seen a small group of caribou, was in front of a frozen-blue spine of mountains.

  “I would give the dogs a fifty percent break. If it took us four hours to get there, I would rest them four hours. Once I got past the open water, it’s one A.M. I’m sleepy, on autopilot. I would mostly keep my headlight off. There was a bright sky,” Jeff said, reminding me.

  I’d seen these bright skies late at night in Alaska. It was as if a blue light shined on everything.

  “I allowed myself to doze off. I remember thinking I could quit paying attention and doze off, there would be no chance of going by the cabin. My eyes would close for a few seconds at a time. You can tell by the sounds of the dogs and the feel of the handlebar what’s happening. The first ten years I ran dogs, when I fell asleep, I fell off the sled. Now I don’t. I’ve gone so far on those runners that I can be asleep and balanced.” Jeff was rubbing one of his hands.

  “Then I felt the dogs surge forward. The handlebar tightened in my grip. I hit the switch, my headlight came on—I have a push button on my chest which by squeezing my right arm to my chest, it turns on the light. The first thing I noticed, the dogs were bolting away from something, which meant it was not a moose.” Moose in the trail is one of the worst things that can happen, but not as bad as what was about to happen.

  “The dogs had inadvertently come too close to an open lead. The snow is on top of the ice. I saw this black spot, water that wasn’t frozen. That seems strange, I know, at thirty-eight below zero. I wanted to get away from this black spot. I let the dogs surge forward about twenty yards and I hit the brake. I could tell the team was on thin ice because it was undulating under them like a water bed.”

  Jeff’s retired lead dog Falcon, one of two huskies allowed to roam free, came into the room and leaned against Jeff. Falcon had fur like a wolf. He was the only husky that would come in the house. The other one Jeff allowed to be loose was Kitty, the black-and-white queen of the lead dogs. Crippled and so old, she walked around and around the dog yard, keeping watch. As far as she was concerned, it was hers.

  “I could tell by the dogs’ body language they were scared. They were not wet, any of them. I took a step to walk up to them. The minute I stepped off the sled, I broke through into a foot of overflow water. It had frozen on top an inch. I immediately recoiled and stood back on the sled.”

  Now Falcon lay down on Jeff’s feet. Donna told me later that when Falcon was one of the world’s great lead dogs, his “problem” was that he concerned himself too much with what all the other dogs were doing. And he worried about what lay ahead. He was a worrier. Jeff scratched Falcon’s ears.

  “The dogs are looking back at me with a look that says, what are we supposed to do now? I could see the frost circles around their feet. That meant their bootees were now freezing to the ice.”

  Jeff went silent. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to remember or did not want to continue. As I got to know Jeff, sometimes he would begin telling me some amazing story and then act as if he didn’t want to finish, as if talking and sitting took up too much time that could be used for something else.

  “I figured I would have to get off the sled, stay as far as I could from them, and go along beside them. My weight could have been all it took to break the sheet of ice we were on and drop us all into the water. I did have to get the bootees off their paws so they wouldn’t be frozen there. I had to stay far enough from them so that we would not all fall through.”

  Jeff paused. Falcon looked up. He seemed to read the dynamics of every situation. Did he want to hear more? You could tell that anything Jeff had to say, Falcon wanted to hear it.

  “The leader I had then was Tommy. He did not like this situation. I had another leader named Hickey; she would have been better around water. Sometimes I extend the lead dog an extra length so that they will have plenty of room to pick the trail. When I got their bootees off, I switched and put Hickey into the lead. She was one smart and self-contained leader.”

  The blue parakeet flew over and landed on my shoulder. Jeff said he was surprised, normally the bird didn’t relate to strangers this soon. It seemed odd to see a parakeet in a place that got to fifty below outside.

  “It’s so hard to give them direction on the ice. I left the team and walked about fifty yards ahead, trying to scout a route. Right on the edge of this trail there was fast-moving water. Even though there is water so close to where we’d be going, and remember it’s thirty-eight below zero, I felt Hickey could negotiate this place I’d just walked through.”

  On the wall was a watercolor of Jeff and his team running through a large herd of caribou. The caribou weren’t spooked, just trotting along. If they had been, they’d leave a dog team, even one of Jeff’s, in a cloud of snow. I asked Jeff about the painting, if it had really happened. He said it had, several times, and that Donna had done the painting. She was quite talented.

  “There ahead of us was an open lead. Imagine a rushing stream, in the middle of the huge Yukon River, which is frozen hard. This stream could have broken out of the ice and now is running on top of the ice. The water could be a foot deep, it could be much deeper. The deeper it is, the more dangerous at this temperature.”

  We were interrupted by some workmen who were hanging and taping Sheetrock upstairs. They were looking for some coffee; Jeff made them a pot. When he got back, his face tightened up, as if he were feeling the stress of this situation all over again, facing possible permanent injury or death for him or some of his dogs. Getting sucked up by the current of the Yukon River, after 1 A.M., alone, when it’s almost forty below, has got to be about as risky a moment as possible in Alaska. Sometimes reliving a situation like this, without the surging adrenaline to help you overcome it, can be more intense than the original experience.

  “I walked back to the sled. I scratched Hickey’s ears and explained to her how much I needed her to do this. I told her she would have to confidently leap into the water and swim across it aggressively without panicking. Her actions as leader would set the tone. Believe me, these dogs, all twelve of them, knew what a bad situation we were in.”

  Jeff had so much energy it almost sparked off his small frame.

  “Hickey was not afraid of water, she kind of liked it, but more than that, I believe she wanted to be in that leadership position where it all relied on her. I fully expected her to be able to touch the bottom ice. Maybe the water was only a foot, foot and a half deep, deep enough to do some damage, especially to a human’s bare skin. I walked back to the sled. I pulled the anchor [a stainless-steel double hook mushers use to secure their teams by placing it into the hard-packed snow or on a smallish tree]. I said, ‘Hike.’”

  I tried to visualize that blue dark night. What movements did the nervous dogs make? Which dogs were not fearful? The beam of light from Jeff’s headlamp bounced here and there, not wanting to focus too much on the running water. Then there were the sounds of the running danger, “warm” compared to the thirty-eight-below-zero air temperature. And above, on the steep banks of the Yukon, were the dark shadows of the dense tree growth in which almost nothing lived this time of winter. Were any of the dogs whining? They were Jeff’s closest friends, his team; his life depended on them and he would never reveal their moments of weakness or fear to anyone.

  “Hickey, she followed my directions perfectly. First she followed my footprints. I was saying, ‘Good girl, good girl.’ I knew when she saw the open lead—only I’d seen it so far—she c
ould not want to enter the water. This was the worst situation, the highest risk we could have been in. I was well aware that if Hickey and the two swing dogs balked and didn’t dive right into that ice and water, it could be catastrophic. If she stopped and the rest of the team, who couldn’t see what was ahead, kept going and pushed her and the swing dogs in, then they all could get tangled in the water.”

  The look of intense concern returned to Jeff’s face.

  “I’d taken Hickey through water before, that’s why I picked her. As she came up on the edge where the solid river ice gave way to overflow, she balked. The swing dogs came up on her. I’m encouraging her. Telling her she can do it. Suddenly, she launches herself with all four feet like a Labrador retriever right into the flow. Then the swing dogs balked. At that exact second, I could tell she wasn’t touching, it was deeper than she is, a bad situation now made much worse.” Jeff began opening and closing, opening and closing, the hand he’d almost cut off with the saw.

  “Then her momentum pulls the swing dogs in. I still figured it was water on top of the ice. The more dogs that got in the water, the more they pull the others in. The next good thing I saw was Hickey getting out on the other side. But there was still much bad that could happen with the other eleven dogs. Remember, every dog is tied together. We still had to get the sled and me through it. Now the dogs are like lemmings off a cliff, no dog is touching, they’re all swimming. It wasn’t really water as most people think of it, it was like a giant, rushing margarita.” Ellen, the youngest of Jeff and Donna’s three daughters, came in the room, her homework done, and told her dad he had to help review her spelling words. He sat her down in his lap and asked her to hold on until he finished this story.

  “The seconds that all this takes slow way, way down. I’m evaluating. Okay, I should be able to touch bottom, get across in two or three big leaps. You try to take splashing giant steps. By now enough dogs are on the other side, I’m encouraging them like hell. I remember saying really loud, ‘Hike, hike.’ There are six dogs still in the water. I’m continuing to give them verbal commands, I give the sled a huge push and…” Jeff rearranged the way he was sitting on the sofa.

  “I jump in next to the sled, and it’s lying over on its side. The water is moving pretty fast. I instinctively tried to crawl on top of the side of the sled. I gasped as I felt the water and ice going into my suit. Four dogs were treading water in front of me trying like hell to pull me and the sled to the other side. Eight dogs were on the other side shaking off.” Jeff looked to see if I was focused.

  “I knew if I didn’t get out of the frozen, rushing water, it would be over. It still might be. What if my matches fell out of the sled and washed away? I launched myself on top of the wheel dogs, the ones closest to the sled, then launched myself on top of the next two, then went hand over hand up the rope and dragged myself out on the other side.”

  Jeff seemed to turn pale, remembering getting through the water, so frozen, so deadly. Plenty of people have died in Alaska in the water in the summer. Outside that night, it was seventy degrees below the freezing temperature of water. Imagine immersing yourself in that behind a twelve-dog team, all tangled, some of your best friends howling and possibly drowning and frantic. All you can think about is making sure you make it across.

  “There were four dogs still in the water. I tried to get the other eight to pull them and the sled out, but they were rolling around trying to get the water and ice off their fur. I hollered at them in this tone of voice that almost shocked me. They bolted to attention and they pulled out the first two. I yelled, ‘Hike.’ They pulled out the next two and so on, until they pulled the sled out, which was by now fully soaked.” My adrenaline was flowing in the extreme. I heard what sounded like a wolf howling. It was a couple of Jeff’s dogs outside. They must have heard something, because then it seemed that all eighty joined in. Some of them had to be part wolf.

  “I immediately worried about my hand. I’d almost cut it off, and then in this same race, in 1988, frozen it when it was one hundred below zero. The hand was in serious jeopardy now that my mittens were wet. I tore through the sled for the waterproof bag which has dry gloves and dry mittens.” Jeff didn’t have to reach for these memories, they flooded up instantly. Situations where the outcome of your life is unknown never seem to fade far away.

  At this point in his story, Jeff encouraged Ellen to go find her mom, maybe this time she could help with the spelling review. He put some water in the kettle for tea and came back and sat in a chair instead of on the sofa.

  “It’s a very long way from out here to the nearest hospital … you know the only two mushers I know who have died, died in situations where there was open water or breaking through the ice. One of my fiercest and nicest competitors, Bruce Johnson, from British Columbia, was doing a training run. His leaders didn’t take his command and steered him out onto a lake. The middle wasn’t frozen yet. Instead of abandoning the team, he stayed with them and they all drowned. So sad…”

  Someone knocked on the front door. With three daughters, eighty dogs, and three handlers working for them, there was always something happening at the Kings’. Plus, Jeff was chief of the Volunteer Fire Department and Rescue Squad. A guy with a warm hat with earflaps walked in, needed to ask about some new piece of equipment. After he left, Jeff picked up the story again.

  “As I stood there, soaked to the bone, I was no longer in danger of drowning—I was in danger of freezing to death. I evaluated how I could help myself and the dogs. Remember, put yourself in the place I was: twelve wet huskies and me, two hours ahead of the nearest team. I scanned the riverbank with my headlamp. It was twelve feet high. There were some large trees up there, but it would be almost impossible to get up that bank. I figured my best bet was to find a pile of driftwood.”

  Jeff planned to light this driftwood on fire. He had a hatchet, some dry matches, and a can of fire starter. He said he could not stop thinking about his favorite Jack London story, “To Build a Fire.” In it a man traveling alone along the Yukon gets about half as wet as Jeff was that night, gets a fire going, but snow from the trees above blows down on top of it. The fire goes out, and his dog, with a warm body mass, watches the man freeze to death.

  “After a trauma like that you never know what your dogs will do, how they will be affected. I gave them the forward command, they took off like a bolt, like if a moose jumped out in front of them and began running away. Their response to the dunking was jubilance and energy. They took off like it was the start of the race.”

  When Jeff talks of his dogs, his voice changes. It warms up and becomes lined with the emotion that comes from profound appreciation. You wouldn’t want to be one of his competitors, but you would want to be one of his dogs.

  “I couldn’t at first stop thinking about my competitors. The dogs follow the trail of the team that is ahead. When we cannot see any trail, say in a blizzard, they can smell it. What if they followed me and someone died, or some dogs died? But right then, I still had to be concerned about my own life. I remember taking stock of my body, something I know well. I measured each square inch, my neck, my rib cage, my biceps, my stomach, all of it. Where was I completely soaked, where was I not wet? I had a suit on, one custom-made by a neighbor before Cabela’s began making them. The suit was completely frozen stiff, rigid. It became like a suit of iron.”

  I could see Jeff was missing the tips of a few fingers on his left hand. “I had never been all-over wet before in a race. I remember moving my arms and fingers, trying to keep my dexterity so that when I came to the firewood, I would be able to grasp the match.”

  Donna walked through with Ellen to take her downstairs and tuck her in to bed.

  “I was really taken by the energy of the dogs. I was having difficulty moving. Time passed, a half hour, then an hour. I was getting discouraged, seeing no firewood. We came around a bend in the river. There in the distance was a little red dot. The dogs saw that light. They took off like a streak of li
ghtning. There is a custom on the Yukon: trappers and others will hang out a lantern on a branch for anyone coming through.” By now the kettle had been whistling for quite some time, but Jeff ignored it.

  “On this part of the river there were protruding blocks of ice the size of refrigerators. We bang into them, and they’d about throw me off the back. If I had been thrown off, I don’t think the dogs would have stopped until they got to the cabin. I was still, immobile, shivering. I would try to run, holding on, to warm up and couldn’t. I knew now I would live, but it seemed to take forever.” Jeff talked as if this short run to the red lantern had taken place last week. He is the kind of human who needs a challenge, a test. He actually enjoys being challenged in extraordinary ways, just not when it involves getting soaked at close to forty below.

  “Finally we got to the light. The dogs just peeled out; I got off the sled to try to lessen their load and run up the bank. I was a frozen cylinder. I could not run; they dragged me up the bank. I took off their harnesses, fed them, and went inside. The trapper inside, a Cree, had his head laid on the table. Four-fifths of a bottle of rum was gone. A pot of moose stew was on the woodstove. Inside the cabin was a real strong smell of rutabagas. This guy, a Canadian, was a musher sometimes. He had a thin, black beard and is very powerfully built. From out of nowhere, he lifts up his head and says twice, ‘I killed a moose with a tomahawk yesterday. I killed a moose with a tomahawk yesterday. I ran it down through the deep snow.’ Then his head hit the table.”

  What a treasure that warmth inside those four walls was. And to be able to eat warm moose stew.

  “It took me the better part of an hour to get out of my clothes because I had to thaw the zippers. When I woke up, there were several teams parked at the bank of the river. I asked them if anyone had problems at the water. They said everyone did—everyone got wet. I was dry again, the dogs were rested. We took off, and that was the first big race we won, the 1989 Yukon Quest.”