The Northern Light

Media Credit: kenna bates / NL The ceremonial start of the 34th Iditarod, downtown Anchorage, Alaska. Musher, Ed Iten and his lead dog Zoi. Zoi's leg was crushed by a moose two years ago, but she continues to lead the team. In 2004 Zoi's determination helped Iten to earn 5th plac [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: kenna bates / NL Dogs wait for action in their kennels before the false start of the Iditarod. The compact kennels help the dogs retain their body heat in sub-zero temperatures, as well as reduce the risk of injury while being transported. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: kenna bates / NL Ed Iten cradles his team leader Zoi. He and his wife, Ruth, own a dog kennel in Kotzebue. Iten began dog sled racing in the early 1980s in the Kobuk River Valley. [Click to enlarge]

It was 20 degrees below zero at night, and dog sled musher Ed Iten was guiding his team toward the river that lies between his cabin and the town of Kobuk. Just as he had done countless times before, he started across a snow bridge that spanned the frozen river; however, he discovered too late that the ice had washed out from underneath the bridge, and he fell into the deep, freezing water as he watched his dog team and sled continue out of sight.

"I had on heavy clothes, and they were waterlogged," said Iten, a UAF graduate and current competitor in this year's Iditarod. "I'd kick off the bottom and catch the edge of the hole. The snow would break back in and the team was gone. The was absolutely no hope."

Fighting the current that threatened to pull him under the ice, Iten remembered the rope he always tied to his sled.

"No one else lived up there, so I carried a 70-foot rope dragging behind the sled, so if I ever fell off I could roll and try to catch the rope, because they were pretty wild dogs," Iten said. "There is a lot of close calls you come to have up here, but that one was within a second of never coming out of the water again."

It just so happened that the rope was dragging through the hole in the thin ice that coated the river's surface. The last time he came up for air, Iten caught a rope by the knot at the end. His 12-dog team dragged him for half a mile before stopping.

He cut a path through the alders, refusing to go back to the lethal river, and headed toward Kobuk. When he reached the village, Iten knocked on the door of a cabin where family friends nursed him back to health.

It would be decades before Iten would begin his career as a top contender in the Iditarod, undertaking what he describes as a battle between "underdog" and "corporate" mushers.

Iten took second place in the 2005 Iditarod, finishing in nine days, 19 hours, 13 minutes and 33 seconds. The win earned him and his wife, Ruth, $65,800 €" enough to both pay for the cost of caring for his dog team and finance his participation in this year's race.

Vern Halter was assigned to Kotzebue in the Northwest Arctic of Alaska as a public defender years ago when he met Iten and his wife Ruth.

He has also had his share of Iditarod experiences, having run the race 18 times as well as running the Yukon Quest five times.

"For me the Iditarod was always the biggest event you could get into," Halter said. "You have highs and a lot of lows when things aren't going well."

Physical exhaustion and below-freezing temperatures are a given for Iditarod mushers, who race their teams along the 1,112 miles separating Anchorage from Nome.

And even though Iten is a veteran musher, who has averaged an 11th-place standing in the seven Iditarod races he has run, he said the race doesn't get any easier.

"It's your one chance every year to feel absolutely stupid," Iten said. "You may get up to, in 24 hours, four hours of rest scattered in one-hour intervals. So, by day seven, your body is run down from sleep deprivation. You can't hardly make a rational decision."

There are 25 checkpoints in this year's race. The farthest distance between the checkpoints is 112 miles, more than 600 miles into the Iditarod, according to the Iditarod Trail Committee.

To keep Iten, his 16-dog team and other mushers going for 10 to 17 days, while traveling over the Alaska Range, Arctic tundra and ice-covered rivers, approximately 2,000 pounds of food were sent out to the checkpoints two and a half weeks before the race.

"The heart of everything is preparing your team. Graduated training right through nutrition, injury prevention and working with injuries, it's like any sports team," Iten said.

In order to slow sleep deprivation Iten, along with the 82 other mushers racing in the 2006 Iditarod, must make one 24-hour mandatory stop wherever they choose, as well as one eight-hour stop on the Yukon and one eight-hour stop at White Mountain, according to the Iditarod Trail Committee.

And while Iten would like to finish in first place, he knows from experience that what that would take is not entirely manifest.

"You have to have a perfect race and a pinch of good luck," Iten said.

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