Will and the team are fresh off their rest at Finger Lake, and are ready to tackle the Happy River Steps, one of the major obstacles of the race.

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Onward and Other Directions

Episode 4: The Steps

Hi, everybody. Will here. Thanks for tuning in again for Onward and Other Directions, a podcast where my team of Alaskan huskies and I bring you along for our very first Iditarod in recordings I made along the trail. This is episode four. The team and I have started the race. We traveled over rivers for 80 miles, camping once along the way for four hours. We started our climb into the Alaska range, which is the mountain range that Denali, the tallest peak in North America, is part of and rested at Finger Lake, one of the checkpoints along the route. While the dogs rested, I did chores and vet care and chatted to some fellow mushers.

This recording takes place on the run right after we leave Finger Lake. It's one of my favorite pieces of audio from the entire race. We're heading towards the checkpoint of Rainy Pass on a beautiful sunny afternoon. This run contains the infamous Happy River Steps, a series of three sharp drops, which have gained acclaim over the years for many crashes and wipeouts. The Steps were one of the two biggest obstacles on the trail that I've been thinking about for years, hoping I would be able to drive through them successfully. As I left the finger Lake checkpoint, I knew my moment of truth with this pretty iconic part of Iditarod lore was approaching fast. This recording starts shortly after the beginning of the run.

All right. Am I recording? It's hard to see. Oh, yep, looks like I am. So we're on the run to Rainy Pass, which has the infamous Happy River Steps on it somewhere. I keep thinking the next thing is going to be it and then it's not, or I don't think it is anyway. I'm pretty sure not. Anyway, every single time I'm like maybe this is it, which is how I'm feeling right now. Ope, there's a little whoop-dee-doo. See if we can hang on there.

This could be it. I just carved a new path. It's a pretty snowy year. So I -- in theory, I don't think it'll be that bad, except there's probably going to be a big old trench carved out of it. But um, yeah, I don't really know. I know the steps are these three big drops. That's all I really know about it. Uh. And it does look like we're heading towards downhill. We kind of climbed for a while. We're in this really beautiful trail that crosses the Alaska range. It's so cool. It feels like we're out like in Colorado or something like these really big old cottonwoods. And not pine trees, but spruce trees that are like pretty old and tall, not, not the little scraggly friends. Um. And, yeah, the mountains are really just like right in your face and phenomenal, beautiful. So this is really cool to see.

This is the first part of the trail so far that I have not been on, which is really refreshing. That's something I've discovered this year a lot is that I get really uplifted when I'm getting to go on a new trail. I've mushed on a lot of different trails in Alaska. And including the first like 120 miles of the Iditarod trail because of a race that used to go up there to the last checkpoint I was just at, Finger Lake. And so all of that trail I'd been on before and you know, for whatever reason, that's not as... just doesn't... it's not as exciting. And it's also kind of like...

Wow, the mountains are just so cool. I mean it, the mountains look like the Rockies, too. Like Alaska and mountains are definitely different than the Rockies, which I think feel kind of... I'm not sure if this is geologically correct, but I think it seems like they're older and more like rocky as you might suspect. And this part of the Alaska range that we're in looks like that,