Tales of Old: The Story of the Iditarod Part 2
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 9:48 amTales of Old: The Story of the Iditarod from the Eyes of an Inupiat
By Frozen Chosen (Phil Sualuaq Kugzruk)
Prologue Continued: In the Beginning
As I write this, Brent Sass is making his way west across the Bering Sea Coast, having left Elim this morning shortly before 0600. Weather forecast for the area in the next 24 hours looks great, with very little regional winds and temps hovering slightly below zero.
Weather here in the southern Seward Peninsula can be very unpredictable, with storms that suddenly appear “out of nowhere”. There are two infamous areas of the coast that have played a major role in interrupting and disrupting race plans and have contributed to a Front runner losing their spot to the next musher some miles behind them.
The most infamous spot is just north of Shaktoolik, where a shelter cabin was eventually built for the very purpose of ensuring that a competitor will have a place to escape from the cruel elements of nature. The North Land, in a way, can be seen as a massive subcontinental graveyard, where, over the decades, centuries, and yes, millennia, individuals and expeditions “out of the blue” faced the total and unforgiving onslaught of “mother nature”. And many of musher, local, and travelers along the northern Bering Sea coast can testify to this massive onslaught that can occur at a very “moment in time”, giving absolutely “no warning” whatsoever.
It could be like getting blindsided with an immediate hard-hitting blow by a Cassius Clay. Clay, who is known to today’s generation as Muhammed Ali, attacked and hit his opponents with sudden fury and “bam!”, his rival not seeing or aware that he is down on the mat! This is exactly how the Bering Sea Storm hits: with one massively hard-hitting blow that left powerful mushers and teams like King and Butcher reeling.
The best of them, who one would think was the premier expert and experienced of all mushers, was the Shishmaref Cannonball: Herbie Noyakpuk. Herbie, an Inupiat from the community of Shishmaref, halfway up the coast from Nome and Kotzebue, was a long-time race favorite and legend. Unfortunately, this once popular and well-known musher is slowly fading from history, much like other legends of old, including Larry “Cowboy” Smith, Fat Albert (the lead dog of another legend, Rod Perry), and yes, even the musher fans once loved to “hate”, a transplanted Minnesotan named Swenson…
The Shishmaref Cannonball, if he were still around today, would, without hesitation and the biggest smile north of Dixie, tell you of the time he was in the lead on this Last Great Race. And like many after him, faced the onslaught and punch of Ali in the form of this Bering Sea Storm so vicious, it took the “wind” out of this respected Inupiat. Herbie, in his honest, humble, and quiet hesitant way, simply admitted that this was the coldest night he ever spent in his entire life as an Inupiat who, in Shishmaref, faced the bitter, harrowing, and unforgiving Northwest Wind on the coast of the Chukchi Sea.
Anyway…well, here I am running up a “side trail” and finding myself lost in a myriad of ice-covered sloughs, rivers, and yes, lost in the daze of a complete Whiteout of Nothingness out on the Norton Bay ice between the Infamous Boulder sized mound (where the Shelter Cabin of All Shelter Cabins is just north of the checkpoint of Shaktoolik) and the checkpoint of Koyuk…
In a nutshell, these Tales of Old are a collection of stories of long ago, of ages past that are now covered in the dustbin, ashes, and snowmelt of “time”. You see, once upon a time, there was a place, a location, a spot somewhere smack in the middle of Nowhere…(we call this the Last Frontier, the Great Land…Alaska)…and someone from somewhere at sometime long long ago decided the call this Place on the Spot of Nowhere “Iditarod”.
This is its story…
…to be continued…
Frozen Chosen
By Frozen Chosen (Phil Sualuaq Kugzruk)
Prologue Continued: In the Beginning
As I write this, Brent Sass is making his way west across the Bering Sea Coast, having left Elim this morning shortly before 0600. Weather forecast for the area in the next 24 hours looks great, with very little regional winds and temps hovering slightly below zero.
Weather here in the southern Seward Peninsula can be very unpredictable, with storms that suddenly appear “out of nowhere”. There are two infamous areas of the coast that have played a major role in interrupting and disrupting race plans and have contributed to a Front runner losing their spot to the next musher some miles behind them.
The most infamous spot is just north of Shaktoolik, where a shelter cabin was eventually built for the very purpose of ensuring that a competitor will have a place to escape from the cruel elements of nature. The North Land, in a way, can be seen as a massive subcontinental graveyard, where, over the decades, centuries, and yes, millennia, individuals and expeditions “out of the blue” faced the total and unforgiving onslaught of “mother nature”. And many of musher, local, and travelers along the northern Bering Sea coast can testify to this massive onslaught that can occur at a very “moment in time”, giving absolutely “no warning” whatsoever.
It could be like getting blindsided with an immediate hard-hitting blow by a Cassius Clay. Clay, who is known to today’s generation as Muhammed Ali, attacked and hit his opponents with sudden fury and “bam!”, his rival not seeing or aware that he is down on the mat! This is exactly how the Bering Sea Storm hits: with one massively hard-hitting blow that left powerful mushers and teams like King and Butcher reeling.
The best of them, who one would think was the premier expert and experienced of all mushers, was the Shishmaref Cannonball: Herbie Noyakpuk. Herbie, an Inupiat from the community of Shishmaref, halfway up the coast from Nome and Kotzebue, was a long-time race favorite and legend. Unfortunately, this once popular and well-known musher is slowly fading from history, much like other legends of old, including Larry “Cowboy” Smith, Fat Albert (the lead dog of another legend, Rod Perry), and yes, even the musher fans once loved to “hate”, a transplanted Minnesotan named Swenson…
The Shishmaref Cannonball, if he were still around today, would, without hesitation and the biggest smile north of Dixie, tell you of the time he was in the lead on this Last Great Race. And like many after him, faced the onslaught and punch of Ali in the form of this Bering Sea Storm so vicious, it took the “wind” out of this respected Inupiat. Herbie, in his honest, humble, and quiet hesitant way, simply admitted that this was the coldest night he ever spent in his entire life as an Inupiat who, in Shishmaref, faced the bitter, harrowing, and unforgiving Northwest Wind on the coast of the Chukchi Sea.
Anyway…well, here I am running up a “side trail” and finding myself lost in a myriad of ice-covered sloughs, rivers, and yes, lost in the daze of a complete Whiteout of Nothingness out on the Norton Bay ice between the Infamous Boulder sized mound (where the Shelter Cabin of All Shelter Cabins is just north of the checkpoint of Shaktoolik) and the checkpoint of Koyuk…
In a nutshell, these Tales of Old are a collection of stories of long ago, of ages past that are now covered in the dustbin, ashes, and snowmelt of “time”. You see, once upon a time, there was a place, a location, a spot somewhere smack in the middle of Nowhere…(we call this the Last Frontier, the Great Land…Alaska)…and someone from somewhere at sometime long long ago decided the call this Place on the Spot of Nowhere “Iditarod”.
This is its story…
…to be continued…
Frozen Chosen
love your stories buddy
