OPHIR — Lance Mackey, the man who once dominated Alaska's long-distance mushing scene, said his own mistakes in this year's Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race forced the four-time champion to turn his team around Wednesday and drive them on a slow journey back to this remote, snowy checkpoint. It's the first time in his career, he said, he has turned his back to the finish line.
"The hardest part is that my dogs paid the price for my stupidity," four-time Iditarod champion Mackey said Thursday afternoon as he prepared to boil water in a big metal pot near his mostly sleeping team. "I blew it."
Their problems started about four hours out of Ophir — a checkpoint some 340 trail miles from Willow that is no more than a few cabins and tents, where dog teams rest on straw among thickets of spruce trees. As Mackey and his team ran down the trail, his dogs' stool went from "perfect," he said, to a green-colored "projectile liquid." He said he expected one or two dogs — tops — to get diarrhea. "Not the whole team at one time."
Mackey didn't have enough medicine for all 16 dogs, so he tried to split his supply. It didn't work. Meanwhile, his dogs' harnesses — which Mackey had loosened — rubbed some dogs' skin raw beneath their front legs.