WASILLA — Valley musher Lou Packer got caught up in one the Iditarod’s notorious storms and paid the price. Two dogs dead and a scratch.

Back at home, his wife, Ellen Varosi, knew something was wrong as she tracked him on GPS.

Only later did she find out just how bad things were.

Todd Disher/Frontiersman Iditarod musher Dr. Lou Packer while training before this year’s race.

Back at home, the doctor from Urgent Care Lake Lucille related his story of survival.

Early in the race, Packer stopped to help stranded musher Nancy Yoshida after she crashed her sled on the switchback Steps outside Finger Lake.

“I felt my task was to help her think clearly,” Packer said. “She was worried about not scratching. She needed to reorient her goals and go into survival mode.”

Packer and musher Alan Peck made sure she had a fire, dry clothes and food cooking. He headed to Finger Lake and sent a rescue crew after Yoshida. All told, this put Packer 3 1/2 hours behind schedule, he said.

Later down the trial, he arrived into Iditarod happy to have completed what he thought would be the hardest part of the race. Spending a nine-hour rest at the checkpoint, his dogs were checked twice by the vets, who found nothing wrong.

He took off from Iditarod planning to take 10 hours to reach Shageluk, camping in between. The snow was punchy, he said, but the trail was still visible. About four hours out, the wind began to blow.

“We were on the last part of the exposed stuff, on these large hills right at treeline. We were about drop down onto the river and rest there. When we climbed on of the last hills, the storm hit,” he said. “The wind felt like a hammer.”

To make matters worse, the sun was in his face just above the horizon. He couldn’t see the reflective tape on the trail markers and lost the trail.

Around 7 p.m., he knew he had to stop or the dogs would quit on him. He got his stove out to melt snow, but the wind blew it over. He used his backup fuel, but the wind knocked that down. Even when he got a fire going, the wind sucked the heat out of the water.

Eventually, with the temperature below minus-30, he watered and fed his dogs, put them in their coats, and zipped himself up inside his sled.

“I woke up at 3 a.m. really cold. I knew I had to get up and move around, or I was going to freeze to death.”

He dug out the gangline, sometimes covered in 3 feet of blown snow and hooked up his team.

Packer was out in front of his team looking for the trail. His lead dogs would step on his snowshoes, but the wheel dogs, not knowing to stop, tangled the lines. It took him 20 minutes to get the team going, only for it to happen again and again.

“We went a few miles, and the dogs started to look pretty bad,” he said. “I turned the team around and retraced my steps trying to get down into a wind-protected area and feed them again.

“Grasshopper started to look bad. He had gone from bad to really, really bad. I realized he was probably done for. I wrapped my parka around him in the sled and started walking the team. The sled kept tipping over from the weight. After about the 6th time, he started to die.”

“I sat there with him for a while and watched him pass. It was just awful,” said Packer, his voice choking up on the phone.

“I realized I had to stiffen my spine and get the rest of these dogs down, or we’re all going to join him.

“We went a while longer, and Dizzy went down. I put him in the sled and got into a protected knoll. He was gone by the time we got there. I can’t tell you how bad I felt that I wasn’t there when he died.”

“I looked over at the rest of us, and said ‘Man, we’re next.’”

Packer made a fire, looked to his dogs and ate the last of his food. At this point, he had been gone from Iditarod for 26 hours.

The Iditarod Air Force deployed search aircraft at 2 p.m. Monday afternoon. They found Packer’s distress signal 22 miles outside Iditarod.

Despite the hazard posed to his plane, pilot Packer only knew as Bruce landed on a ridge around 3 p.m. Packer loaded all but four of his dogs onto the plane and headed back to his sled.

He found shelter in some trees and waited for the second plane. At 5 p.m., there was still no sign of rescue. Packer knew he could survive the night by going back and getting gear from his sled, but the temperature was already dropping below minus 20.

When Bruce landed in Unalakleet with Packer’s dogs and found out the second aircraft had not left McGrath, he dared a second landing and finally brought Packer out of the wilderness.

Packer suffered frostbite on his right eyeball and upper and lower lids, from which he said he will recover with no side effects. But more than that, the emotional toll will leave permanent scars.

“I am grieving the loss of my dogs. Those two always gave great kisses,” Packer said. “They are like your family members. You feel like you’ve failed them. It’s like a bad dream, but it’s real. There’s a lot of let down with that, but I got all the other dogs out alive.”

Packer is also mindful that if he was three hours faster out of Iditarod, he would have missed the storm and still been on his way to Nome.

“Would I jeopardize my ability to finish the race to help another person? Yes.”

Asked if he thinks satellite phones should be a requirement, he responded it would have been no help.

“The people watching my movements knew exactly what was going on. Clearly something was wrong,” he said. By the time he would have called, the rescue efforts would have been well under way.

The necropsies on the dogs did not show anything, according to Packer, who is hopeful he will race next year.

“Something like this galvanizes you,” he said. “I feel this is something I want to do. I just hope it’s not two bad weather years in a row.”

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.