Annual Don Bowers Memorial Sled Dog Race
Jan. 30, 2009 The Don Bowers Memorial Sled Dog Race once again started at Willow and reached a checkpoint across the river from Talkeetna and returned to Willow. It was a 200 mile race with an additional 100 mile leg to make it two distinct races, a 200 inside a 300, which are both qualifying races for the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest. The race was the dream of the late Don Bowers of Montana Creek who died in a tragic plane crash on McKinley a few years ago. An “over the hill” group of Bowers mushing friends have since kept the race alive. Don’s original intent for the race was to provide a real time opportunity for rookie mushers to qualify for the high pressure races in a low pressure environment. Checkpoints that are easily accessible to the road system make the logistics affordable and premium trail remains a primary criteria. It was and is more of a learning experience than a competitive money race. Each year by custom we designate someone, generally deceased, as honorary musher. Considering possibilities this year my mind veered onto a different tack:
The Trapper Creek rest stop and checkpoint, “May’s cabin”, is the old Kurt Wagner homestead across the river from downtown Talkeetna. My wife Sandra and I, in recent years, have refurbished the cabin and call it home…the cabin, a piece of history in itself. We’ve been involved locally with sled dogs and the people who drive and drove them hereabouts for many years. So the thought comes to me; what better way to keep good memories alive than to dedicate this year’s race to the “wood and water” haulers; the shaggy dogs, their sometimes shaggy owners, their long suffering wives, ex wives, girlfriends, and live in cooks who once inhabited that world “up the tracks” and “across the river” that made this place and the time so dynamic..
The names Mercer, Humphries, Kaso, Rosser, Petty, Goodwin, and Randles come easy to mind…the Sutherland brothers west of the river, Ron Aldrich from Montana Creek, and the many three, four, or five dog kennels that populated the area. A few of them trapped, some raced including the Iditarod, but most used the dogs mainly as winter transport and some were just “Post Office” dogs. Simply owning a team here in the 70′s and 80′s was a distinction of sorts. Mushers were a distinct class of the society…for better or for worse, where watching a team pass was as exciting to strangers as to a small boy in 1920 watching a bi-plane land in the pasture. I often crossed the river to buy groceries at Dorothy’s store and recall driving a 10 or 12 dogger right up the middle of main street where dogs had right of way, at mid day, (before Sandra) hoping to impress a lady or two.
Home built wooden sleds, $5 army surplus parkas and mukluks, dog harness hand sewn from olive drab Army-Navy Surplus webbing, big herky cast off Air Force mittens, B&J long johns and socks were standards…no Cabelas, no L.L. Bean. Tom Mercer built a sled of unseasoned blue gumwood for the 1976 Iditarod because he’d heard it was very strong wood. It was, but it warped, and it warped, and then it warped some more. In day’s prior to the race the runners became more and more twisted as they went through successive freeze, dry, and twist cycles. It caused the sled to track ever more erratically. For the entire 1100 mile race from Anchorage to Nome the only time Tom was in the trail was when he was crossing it. In 20 day’s he developed an amazing variety of names for the sled. Today the bones of the sled rest peacefully against a rock at the bottom of a hill near my old cabin on Oilwell Road; gray, weathered, twisted, and fossilized. Tom was a big man and he drove a big team. On my very first dog race I was forced to pass him on the trail when he stopped to rest. He had 19 dogs in harness. That rig was a hundred feet from the runner tails to the nose of the lead dog. I’d hardly ever seen that many dogs in one place before. It was impressive.
The Randals family, as did everyone who lived up the tracks at the time, came to town on the ties; right down the tracks between the rails. The leaders of the team had three basic commands, “Gee”, “Haw”, and “TRAIN !!!”. Crossing the railroad bridge took nerves of iron. I only did it once and remember it still…listening for the whistle and looking down between the ties in terror. The game warden once got a snow hook tangled in the ties while crossing …and then heard the whistle. It nearly ended his career.
Jack, or Tom, or Pecos, or Walter…any of them, on impulse, once or twice a winter would throw a camping outfit into a sled, hitch up dogs, and start down the tracks stopping at cabins along the way recruiting participants for a camping trip to the Yentna, Skwentna, Shell Lake, or wherever. Across the Su and up Petersville Road, then down Oilwell Road and beyond Moose Creek my cabin was halfway to the Kahiltna River and a routine stopping place on the winter trail to “anywhere”. I sometimes woke at night to the rattle of pots and buckets downstairs. I would shout down. “WHO?”, and get a response like, “get out of bed…we’re going to Skwentna…come on along”. I would find people in the kitchen warming dog food, making coffee and drying mitts. There would be a gaggle of dog teams resting in the trees around the cabin who along with my own dogs, at some point when they seemed to sense we were going camping, erupted in a communal howl that shook snow off the trees. I recall campfires; steel buckets of dog food on one side, frying pans and sooty coffee pots on the other, and sleeping on spruce boughs under a canvas tarp in an $18 Sears Roebuck sleeping bag. It was an amazing time and I appreciate how extraordinarily lucky I was to have been a part of it.
The mushers of this years Bowers race will use trails, knowledge, and skills that developed and evolved here in the upper valley by those unique characters. I thought it a fine gesture to recognize them and the time they defined….good history is so easy lost. And If by chance Don, or Kelly, or Tom, or Patrick are watching; know that we haven’t forgotten.
Post race addendum: Local volunteers from the Talkeetna/Trapper Creek area were prime movers in making this years race happen…in spite of contrary weather conditions. A partial list to include Beth Wheeler, Race Manager: Trail makers, Jim Kershner, Ed Yadon, Rich Crain, Joe May, Earl Boone and Bob Filter: Checkpoint workers, Shawna, Jeff, and Amanda Olson, Mary Crowley at Willow and the lovely Miss Sandra: Communications, Hal and Nancy Morgan, Debbie Sherfick, George Menard, and Mel’s magic 2 mtr. ham repeater. Trapper Creek checkpoint was hosted by Sandra and Joe May. Thanks also to the Willow Trails Committee for the Willow-to-Deshka trail. The final race results are linked to on the Bowers web site. Although the rate was high the majority of scratches were attributable to existing or new human twisted, sprained, or strained body parts. The dogs were magnificent but some bodies weren’t up to the rigors of two or three hundred miles of trail. The race is ultimately a test. Some pass, some fall short to try another year.
Joe May