I patted each, not sure who was comforting whom. I walked back to where my dogs, five of them, were waiting. Until 10 days before I had never even seen a racing sled. "Too bad the weather isn't better," the official said, looking up at the overcast sky and the scattered snowflakes drifting to earth. At two-minute intervals the other 21 teams would depart. The first team would leave at the stroke of one. There were 22 entries in the race in 1966 and I was one of them. It is regarded as the toughest sled-dog trail anywhere, and each contestant must run it three times-a total of 75 miles-during the championship. It climbs into the foothills of the Chugach Mountains before eventually returning through choked stands of birch and evergreens and across snowbanked permafrost to the city and Fourth Avenue. The trail circles across streams and frozen lakes, through forests of stunted trees and over windy plateaus rutted with the tracks of moose and other game.
The rope marked the start and finish of the 25-mile championship trail, a trail that begins and ends each day in the center of Anchorage but, in between, winds far out into the white wilderness that surrounds the city.
At F Street a thick rope lay across the breadth of Fourth Avenue, half buried in the snow that had been freshly spread for the race. Yellow police barricades lined the road and carpenters hammered the final nails into wooden grandstands. On the avenue itself traffic had been stopped since early morning, an exception having been made for the crane-necked television vans.
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