Truckload Authority - Winter 2014/15

CAT Truckload Authority 021414_Layout 1 2/13/14 5:38 PM Page 1
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Miller Trucking Ltd
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much just hit the deck; the choice is either squat down or get blown over. My sled
would flip over and I would do a header into the ice, the whole lot of us would slide
10 feet, sometimes 100 feet across the ice before we’d hit a patch of packed windblown
snow that would give us traction. When the gust would stop, the dogs would
get up and walk back into the wind to try and move us away from the open water a
little bit more, and continue down the trail.”
If they were blown into the Bering Sea, Seavey and his team of champion
athletes would face certain death. They were now fighting for their lives in the most
unforgiving of winter conditions.
Seavey found himself having to weigh his options carefully, but quickly, because
time was not on his side. Stop, seek shelter and safety under his sled with
his dogs huddled around him to keep each other warm? Turn back? Or press on in
hopes they could withstand the treacherous elements and survive?
Seavey made his decision. He believed there was indeed light at the end of
this tunnel.
“Ten miles later you pop out the other side of this tunnel and it’s a nice, sunny
day,” he said. They finally made it through the storm.
So the focus now turned to reaching Safety, the final checkpoint 22 miles from
the finish line.
Once there, Seavey inquired about King and Zirkle.
“The checkers there seemed more than a little flustered. They told me they had
no power, they didn’t know where any of the other teams were so it seemed they
were just trying to make it out on their own there, too. So all the information they
had was on the clipboard, which I didn’t really take time to look at. If something had
gone really strange and somebody didn’t make it that’d be the first thing they’d tell
you. But the fact that they hadn’t said anything of importance told me that nothing
had gone too wrong, which means Jeff and Aliy must have made it through and
everybody was OK.”
About that time the youngest dog on his team, Reef, who had been leading
them through part of that storm, started barking and yapping to go, which “made
it pretty clear for me to tell my team we were going to keep going, that we weren’t
going to stop here and it wasn’t going to be a big deal because they were all going
to be willing to do it.”
So Seavey gave the dogs the command to mush. “A’ight!” he yelled, and they
took off quickly.
“I was very, very pleased as my team rolled out of Safety. They were all happy
to be back on the trail despite the incredibly rough storm we had just been through.
They were comfortable and they were confident because presumably I was doing
my job and they still trusted me and that was a big morale boost for me.”
But there was still more treachery ahead between Safety and Nome.
It was snowing and the wind was blowing, creating a whiteout.
“Now the wind has something to pick up and throw around. It’s like a dust
storm; you just can’t see more than 20-30 feet at times in any direction. There
were several places in this storm where I had to stop the team and start walking
in spirals away from the team to try to find any sight of the trail marker or any
sight of the trail because we’re just mushing through a snow globe where it’s
white in every direction you look. I kept finding scratches in the snow and ice
or finding a marker and turning the team back into the trail and continuing on.
But again, I really wanted to keep this calm, it was already stressful enough for
the dogs, so we kept it low pressure, we kept just acting calm like this was no
big deal. They’d been on their feet running now for 9, 10 hours; that’s enough
stressors right there.”
They kept moving through the storm and near Cape Nome, the last big hill
before the finish line, the snow abated.
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