Valley musher pushes through to finish

Resslin' Around, by Casey Ressler

Last summer, Valley musher G.B. Jones camped out for a week to make sure he was the first musher to sign up for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Last week, he worked hard to make sure he wasn't the last musher to finish.

Jones finished 76th out of 77 mushers, holding off rookie Perry Solmonson by 14 minutes to avoid the Red Lantern award. And if you don't think it was a hard-earned 76th place, you don't know G.B. Jones.

Along the trail, Jones posted updates on his Web site, www.alaskanmusher.com. Only a paragraph long, many of the posts tell a tale about the real Iditarod, and what it's like to spend two weeks on the trail to Nome.

Take, for instance, this post from March 16, in Galena. "Arrived this early morning with 14 dogs. I dropped Forrest back at Cripple due to fatigue. Sport and Diamond have been the primary leads. The Grateful sled is still moving up the trail in it's busted condition. The sled's brush bow consists of two strips of plastic sled runners latched together with nylon cord and duct tape. The stanchions are missing or busted. One of the side support railing is gone, the other one missing. Have frostbitten feet. The journey is challenging and rewarding. Life is good."

Life is good. Busted sled, torn boots, frostbitten feet and duct tape used to fix all three of those problems. Life is good if you are G.B. Jones.

When it would have been much easier to simply chalk it up to bad luck and scratch, Jones kept going. When it would have been easier to drop out than to piece together a sled and worry about your frostbitten feet -- all while the leaders were hundreds of miles ahead -- Jones toughed it out and finished. Jones would have had any number of reasons to explain why he couldn't continue, reasons everyone else would have understood, but that would mean he quit, and Jones couldn't do that. It's just not who Jones is.

Sometimes just finishing a project will tell you a lot about a person's character. The Iditarod certainly falls into that category.

Once the race gets away from the glitz and glamor of the start, it's a severe physical and mental test, for both the canines and humans. Along the way, obstacles are met, and only the most dedicated people have the drive and ambition to keep going.

While everyone probably thought the Iditarod was over once the first 10 or so mushers finished in Nome, the real lessons to be learned were playing out a hundred or so miles back down the trail.

After the nightly news quit covering the race, a handful of mushers like Jones were still piecing together their sleds, taping the holes in their boots and pushing on, knowing full well that there wasn't going to be a big reception for them in Nome. That didn't matter, though, because that's not why they ran in the first place.

Jones pretty much runs the race out of his own pocket. He has little to no corporate sponsorships, and he doesn't have all the latest, greatest gear. But he does have the most important thing -- character.

For mushers like G.B. Jones, finishing is winning. And for us, it's a free lesson in perseverance.

Casey Ressler (valleylife@frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor.