IditaProject Forum

I was able to talk to Brett again this evening. He was teary and of course, disappointed, but at peace with the decision to withdraw from the race in the best interest of his dogs.

Between Unalalkeet and Shagtoolik, Brett and Co encountered a storm so fierce the trail markers had blown out. The team literally passed the checkpoint because they could not see it. Someone at the checkpoint saw Brett's headlamp and yelled at them to stop. Martin Buser, who as run the Iditarod 39 times (according to Brett so don't quote me on the number) got lost in that storm. Brett and Co had left Unalakleet in good shape, but by the time they reached the next checkpoint, the extreme winds had "whipped it out of my dogs."

I asked Brett if his dogs would have gone further if he'd asked them too. "Yes, they would have," he said, "but it wasn't fair to ask."

Last year when Brett went through Shagtoolik, he decided it was the most forlorn place on the edge of the Bering Sea and that of all of the checkpoints on the Iditarod route, it was the one he DID NOT want to be stuck in. Picture this: Brett, Nic Petit and Ryan Reddington are currently sitting around a table in Shagtoolik singing the Iditarod Blues together (they are literally stuck there together). The storm is still so fierce, it looks like they will be stuck there for awhile. Somehow they have to shuttle all withdrawn teams back to Unalakleet to cargo freight them to Anchorage. But for now, no one is going anywhere.

Boy how fast things changed for these three capable men! What a heart-breaker. Darn Mother Nature, the big bully. Darn, those unforeseen circumstances that boss us around. But I guess that's what makes this race such an edge-of-a-seater for so many people.

UPDATE: Reached by phone on Wednesday, Haber said that the surgery to reattach his finger had been successful and that his doctor was optimistic it would regain much of its function. He has already begun physical therapy — though unable to move his finger more than a millimeter — and even changed two diapers on his 1-year-old daughter.