Storm drives six Iditarod mushers to scratch at end of race
By RB Smith and
Diana Haecker
Last Friday, a strong ground storm in the Topkok Hills surprised a group of Iditarod mushers as they ran from White Mountain to Safety, one of the last legs of the race. Six mushers had to be rescued by snowmachines and scratched from the race. Two mushers broke bones and suffered from hypothermia.
The group of mostly rookie mushers came into White Mountain in the evening of Thursday, March 17, between 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. Veteran Jeff Deeter of Fairbanks came in first, followed by rookies Sean Williams of Chugiak, Sebastien Dos Santos Borges of France, Gerhardt Thiart of South Africa and Michigan, KattiJo Deeter of Fairbanks and Bridgett Watkins of Fairbanks.
Veteran Riley Dyche of Fairbanks had made it in at noon on Thursday, and he left the checkpoint a little after 10 p.m. that night, into conditions that were already becoming dangerously windy. In White Mountain, though, the temperature was around 5°F and trees and the hillside blocked most of the increasing winds.
“It’s going great,” Jeff Deeter said as he put down straw for his dogs. The mushers swapped stories and supplies as they prepared for their mandatory 8-hour layover in White Mountain. Some mentioned the windy conditions coming into the village from Elim.
“If we had a day without wind, it would be a different trail,” Watkins said. Dyche described the windswept ice “like someone had just scraped down it with the edge of a snowboard.”
Despite the weather, most mushers seemed to be in good spirits. After tending to their dogs, they were able to get some sleep and warmed up in the White Mountain library, which had been opened up to the Iditarod by village residents the previous Tuesday.
For public health reasons, the original plan was for both volunteers and mushers to stay in a row of heated Arctic Oven tents that had been set up on the riverbank just outside the river. However, the volunteers quickly ran into supply issues. They lacked sufficient fuel to heat the tents and cook their food, and the plywood outhouses that had been built ahead of time offered no insulation.
In response, local White Mountain residents let the volunteers into the public library, which had some bedrooms, electricity, internet, running water and a small kitchen. This had become the de facto checkpoint building by the time the group of mushers came in on Thursday night.
Because of the large number of people that night, the volunteers decided to go back to the tents to sleep, and left the library open for the mushers. People went to bed soon after sundown, and were back out by 3 a.m. to mush the final stretch to Nome.
That morning was about as calm as the previous night in White Mountain, but a violent storm was already descending on the trail just outside the village. Unbeknownst to the Iditarod staff in the village, Dyche was already battling fierce winds and was struggling to reach the Nome Kennel Club Topkok shelter cabin, where he would spend more than 24 hours waiting out the storm.
The next several hours went by uneventfully in White Mountain. The volunteers were waiting for the next round of mushers to arrive in White Mountain and they saw that some mushers’ trackers were stopped in the Topkok hills, but had heard no news of any serious problems.
But that changed when at about 1:30 p.m. on Friday, Ed Stang arrived in White Mountain with Gerhardt Thiart riding on the back of his snowmachine. Thiart was hypothermic and had a hurt ankle. Stang informed Iditarod staff that Bridgett Watkins, along with all of Thiart’s and Watkins’ dogs, was in need of rescue.
The chain of events
In Nome, the Nome Fire Dept. just returned from a response to a kitchen fire at the Polar Cub Café when Daniel Stang arrived at the Fire Hall on Friday morning, asking them if they’re gearing up to go check on the mushers stalled due a wind storm between Topkok and the Klokerblok River. Fire Chief Jim West Jr. was then notified of the situation and contacted White Mountain Search and Rescue and arranged for a Bering Air helicopter to fly to White Mountain to pick up Bridgett Watkins. Prior to that, Bridgett Watkins had called her husband Scotty Watkins in Nome by sat phone and told him she and Gerhardt Thiart needed help. Watkins alerted the Iditarod and Mike Owens, a long time Nome musher and Iditarod volunteer, called Dan and Ed Stang, who were at their cabin in Council, to ask if they could do a welfare check on the mushers. While the Stangs were alerted, Scotty Watkins, his cousin Drew McCann and Mike, Melissa and Michael Owens readied their snowmachines in Nome to ride out. Ed Stang said in an interview with the Nome Nugget that he went out and knowing their exact position, he found Bridgett and Gerhard. “It was definitely windy,” he said,“but at least you could see, because there was not much snow blowing around.” Watkins waved him down and her first concern was that they couldn’t get a dog out of a snowcave they dug as snow compacted around it. Stang said she informed him that she and Gerhard had pushed the help button on the Iditarod tracker. “She was doing ok, but Gerhard was just sitting there and I could tell he was in rough shape,” said Stang. Stang then devised a plan to shuttle the dogs to a more sheltered place near trees about a couple of miles away from where they were. They emptied out Thiart’s sled and loaded dogs in and Watkins and Stang took the first load to the sheltered spot. The sled kept on tipping over and finally Watkins said they need to request a helicopter to get everybody out. Stang texted his dad to relay the message to Nome that a helicopter was needed. “We got into the trees, in the sun and out of the wind, and Bridgett stayed there with the dogs,” Stang said. He went back and the sled kept on flipping over by the wind. Thiart was very cold by then and couldn’t use his hands. Stang loaded more dogs in the sled and told Thiart to hang on and lean into the wind to prevent the sled from flipping. However, right at the bottom of the Klokerblok River crossing, the sled flipped and Thiart screamed in pain, saying he broke his ankle. The situation turned serious, with Thiart being hypothermic and hurt and unable to assist in the task at hand. Stang said he grabbed Thiart by the ruff of his hood, dragged him to his snowmachine and loaded him up. They continued on to take the dogs to Watkins and Stang, a dentist and versed in medical decisions, made the assessment that Thiart needed help rather sooner than later. Stang decided to take him directly to White Mountain as Watkins and most of the dogs were in place out of harms way. When arriving at the checkpoint, Stang said the checkpoint officials seemed to be unaware of the situation and he had to knock on several checkpoint tents before finding somebody who then alerted the rest of the crew. Thiart was taken to the city office and White Mountain Search and Rescue started to gear up and head to Watkins to assist her and the remaining seven dogs that were left at the windy spot on the trail.
For the lack of a weather station in the Topkok Hills, the wind speed can be only extrapolated from data gathered at Johnson’s Camp on the coast. It ranged between 35 mph sustained winds gusting up to 45 mph.
In the meantime, Drew McCann and Scotty Watkins fought their own battle through the Topkok Blowhole. McCann said they stopped at Safety to wait for the Owens’ crew, but when they didn’t arrive, they kept on going.
Race marshal Mark Nordman confirmed that the Owens’ turned around before the blowhole and returned to Nome.
Watkins and McCann checked on Riley Dyche who was at the Nome Kennel Club’s Topkok Shelter cabin – he was safe. They came upon Sean Williams and told him a crew was coming. “But we never saw the Deeters and Sebastien,” McCann said. The wind flipped McCann’s snowmachine and that he was concerned it would overheat as there was very little snow kicked to cool it down. They found Watkins with the dogs where Stang left them and went to get the remaining seven dogs out of the wind. A good Samaritan from White Mountain assisted in the task and while transporting that group of dogs, the sled flipped and Watkins hurt her collarbone. Scotty Watkins took his wife then to White Mountain and eventually the veterinarians and other Iditarod volunteers got the dogs to White Mountain. Thiart was taken by helicopter to Nome and the Watkins’ and McCann took a Bering Air flight out of White Mountain to Nome.
All their dogs were shuttled via snowmachine to White Mountain on Friday night and over the course of the weekend flown to Nome.
Meanwhile, Sean Williams, Dos Santos Borges and the Deeters were caught in the same storm farther down the trail. The Deeters and Dos Santos Borges were escorted to the Topkok shelter cabin by White Mountain Search and Rescue.
They waited there with Dyche and around 30 dogs for the storm to let up. The cabin was recently renovated, had electricity, and was well-insulated and stocked with supplies. When Dyche finally mushed to Nome on Saturday morning, he described the situation as crowded but “bougie.”
The Deeters mushed their dogs close to Nome and the teams were picked up by dog truck at Farley’s Camp.
Williams was hunkered down farther back on the trail but was uninjured. He and his dogs were taken to White Mountain via snowmachine on Friday evening. Mark Nordman said he’d been involved in one way or the other with the Iditarod since 1983 but he’s never seen anything like that. It was one of the more demanding days,” he said.
All six mushers who left Friday morning did not finish the race, but the final four – Eric Kelly of Knik, Kailyn Davis of Fairbanks, Yuka Honda of Healy and Apayauq Reitan of Kaktovik – made it into White Mountain on Friday afternoon and stayed there until the storm had mostly abated on midday Saturday.
All four arrived in Nome late Saturday night, with Reitan receiving the red lantern, to bring a close to the 50th Iditarod.
