Old dogs, new tricks

UNALAKLEET — Rick Swenson needs a nap.

Puttering around the Unalakleet community center in bare feet early Sunday morning, the 55-year-old Iditarod legend (the only five-time winner in race history) can’t seem to get comfortable.

First he lays down on the cold linoleum floor, propping his feet up on a phone book. That doesn’t work, so he waddles off to find a chair on which to rest his feet. That’s not to his liking either, so Swenson gets up and meanders over to a small table where Martin Buser, Kjetil Backen and Mitch Seavey are enjoying a very late supper.

“You didn’t leave me yet?” Buser says, barely looking up from his meal.

Swenson pauses briefly, grunts and goes back to the floor, collapsing flat on his back and finally drifting off to sleep. Within five minutes, his snores can be heard above the muted conversations going on around him at the late-night checkpoint.

An hour earlier, Swenson surprised most everyone waiting beneath the stars in Unalakleet by posting the second-fastest time on the 90-mile run from Kaltag, showing up at the checkpoint in fifth place.

Shortly after he arrived, the assembled media started in on the questions about his age, suggesting that Swenson’s competitive showing was reason for celebration. Swenson brushed the questions aside. He made it clear he’s not in this year’s race just to represent for the old guard.

“It isn’t over until someone gets to Nome,” he said.

While Swenson may come off as a bit of a curmudgeon when pressed by the media, his manner with the race fans who adore him is anything but. As he entered the checkpoint, old friends from his previous trips through the village of 750 took turns welcoming him to town.

“It’s good to have you back, Rick,” one said.

“It’s good to be back. And with a good team, that’s nice,” Swenson replied, cracking a smile. “It’s nice to have a good bunch of dogs.”

Swenson then went amiably about his business, whispering gently to his dogs, pausing here or there to give one an extra bit of praise.

“You get two,” he said to one of his leaders, tossing a pair of snacks on the frozen ground. “You did so good, you get two.”

Swenson continued on like that, trading stories from the trail with race fans until he finally got tired of a television camera crew’s bright lights, telling the duo in no uncertain terms that he’d rather not have them hanging around his team.

Mushers aren’t always the best when it comes to public relations.

Buser, whose dry wit is more suited for dealing with dumb questions, ended up picking up his old rival’s slack when it came to fielding questions.

“We’re just a couple of old guys playing with their dogs,” the 49-year-old said.

But the Big Lake musher, a four-time champion, has been known to ruffle a couple feathers as well.

While taking his mandatory 24-hour layover in Cripple, Buser “lent” one of the high-tech GPS tracking devices placed by the Iditarod Trail Committee on several mushers’ sleds to a friendly airline pilot. Instead of seeing a slow, steady dot tracking across their computer screens at home, race fans were surprised to see Buser’s icon flying across the screen.

When word of his prank reached Iditarod headquarters, those in charge of the race were not amused.

“After that they didn’t want to give it back to me,” Buser said with a wry grin. “I was really upset.”

Buser and Swenson weren’t the only mushers representing the old guard as the race reached the Bering Sea coast Sunday. Earlier in the day, Denali Park’s Jeff King, 51, roared into town with a full complement of 16 dogs, claiming the $3,000 Wells Fargo Gold Coast award for the second straight year.

King did so by passing defending race champion Lance Mackey on the run from Kaltag, making the trek almost seven hours faster than Mackey. When he arrived 90 minutes later, Mackey claimed he’d overslept while taking a break along the way.

“I kinda lost track of time there,” he said.

But it could have been a ploy. With King bedding down for a nap of his own, Mackey decided it was time to make a move. After grabbing a quick cup of coffee and switching to a lighter sled, the defending champion was back on the trail after resting for just 2 hours 45 minutes, leapfrogging King and reclaiming the lead with roughly 260 miles left to Nome.

Mackey played the move cool, saying little about his plans for the rest of the race — not wanting any word to filter back to King.

“Now’s the time to start paying attention to the neighbors,” Mackey said, pulling his snow hook at 6:17 p.m. with 12 dogs pulling hard toward the next checkpoint, Shaktoolik.

With 16 dogs still in harness, King appeared to have a slightly faster team heading up the coast, and Mackey said he decided it was time to make a move.

“I’m taking a gamble here,” he said, checking his watch. “If it backfires, well, I won’t do it again next year.”

With a smallish team pulling him, Mackey said he has had to keep the pressure on King and hopefully hold on until the finish.

“I’ll keep ’em guessing, anyway,” he said.

A half-hour after Mackey left the checkpoint, King rose from his slumber and gave chase, hitting the trail at 7:01 p.m. after getting almost exactly five hours’ rest. He said Mackey’s short pit stop in Unalakleet had little to do with his decision to move on.

“That’s about how much I wanted,” he said.

With Mackey and King dueling out front, a high-profile cast of challengers — Backen, Seavey, Swenson and Buser — was biding its time behind them, all perennial contenders just hoping to somehow get within striking distance with precious trail left to go.

Though he was among the most upbeat mushers at the checkpoint, Buser admitted he was bummed not to be one of the frontrunners.

“I tell you what, it’s too bad I’m not a part of it,” he said.

As the night wore on, mushers did their best to grab a couple hours of shuteye in hopes of making a charge on the run up the coast. For a half-hour or so, the checkpoint was as quiet as a checkpoint gets, the snores of Iditarod champions filling the still night air.

After spending an hour in a deep sleep, Swenson finally awoke with a start after a couple sharp nudges from a race volunteer.

Soon afterward, Buser was up and getting dressed, wiping the sleep from his eyes. Backen and Seavey never really slept, with Backen hopping to his feet with a grin as the others rose, Seavey pacing nervously about as he chewed his worn fingernails.

By 4 a.m., all of the main chase group was wide awake and again moving up the trail, leaving the bustling Unalakleet checkpoint to the waves of dog teams arriving behind them.

Behind them, more weary mushers on their way toward Unalakleet, the town where mushers worn out from a week on the trail finally begin to dream the dreams of Nome.

Contact Matt Tunseth at 352-2265 or matt.tunseth@frontiersman.com