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The Serum Run: Sled Dogs Save the Day-Part 3

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The Serum Run: Sled Dogs Save the Day-Part 3

At three o’clock Charlie Olson left Golovin for the 25-mile run to Bluff.  He fought his way through a blizzard with a gale wind of fifty miles an hour throwing him and his team of seven dogs from the trail time and time again.  The thermometer read thirty below zero, Olson’s hands froze, his dogs froze and stumbled, but they fought on through the night.  His vision obscured by the raging blizzard, Olson had to trust his lead dog to stay on the trail.  At 7:30 P.M., only four hours and fifteen minutes after leaving Golovin, he reached Bluff and passed the serum over to Gunnar Kasson.

Kasson ran the last 55-miles to Nome, to honor and fame, with 13 dogs in harness.  Somewhere along the trail he bypassed the next relay driver, Ed Rohn, who was waiting at Safety to take the serum on the final lap into Nome.  “Intentionally bypassed,” chuckled the old-timers many years later.

But, for Kasson, leaving Bluff at 10 o’clock in total darkness and an eighty-mile-an-hour wind-driven snowstorm, no landmark was familiar and he could have easily missed the roadhouse.  Dressed in seal mukluks that reached to his hips, sealskin pants, a reindeer parka and hood with a windbreaker over that, Kasson could still feel the sting of the wind.  Two of his dogs, longhaired veteran trail huskies, began to succumb to the weather and Kasson had to stop and buckle on their rabbit skins.  The sled kept tipping over in the soft snow; he couldn’t see; he didn’t really know where he was.

The only way for Kasson to survive, the only way he could even attempt to get the serum through the storm, was to give direction of the team to the leader, Balto.  Balto, one of Seppala’s Siberians, was a powerful, experienced leader, but Seppala had not taken him for this run because the six-year-old dog’s speed wasn’t as fast as it had been.  Kasson needed the leadership, however, and borrowed Balto from Seppala’s kennel.  Given his head in the worst weather, Balto put his nose down and sniffed and felt his way along the buried, invisible trail.  All Kasson could do was trust the dog’s instincts and experience.  The efforts of over one hundred and fifty other sled dogs and nineteen other drivers depended solely now on Balto.  The lives of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Alaskans depended on the doughty little sled dog and his team.

In the tradition of the great lead dogs, Balto, ears flattened against his head to keep out of the storm, nose working to pick out the trail, guided the team and the serum directly to Nome.

When they got there, at 5:30 in the morning on February 2, the half frozen Kasson collapsed beside battered, depleted dog team and began pulling ice from Balto’s feet.

“Balto,” he was heard to mumble… “Damn fine dog!”

In New York City’s Central Park a statue of Balto stands vigilant watch, keeping the accomplishments of sled dogs alive.  The inscription reads: “Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters, through arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in the winter of 1925.  Endurance.  Fidelity.  Intelligence.” R. Coppinger

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Dr. Robert Forto is the Dog Sledding Examiner, a musher training for his first Iditarod under the Team Ineka banner and the host of the popular, Mush! You Huskies Radio Show

The Serum Run: Sled Dogs Save the Day-Part 1

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The Serum Run: Sled Dogs Save the Day-Part 1

In 1925, the population of Nome, Alaska was just two thousand.  Most of the miners, prospectors and adventurers of the gold rush had moved on.  The city was the site of a potential catastrophe, an epidemic of diphtheria.  Diphtheria is a “specific, localized, and superficial bacterial infection.”  It produces a powerful and deadly toxin that in the first quarter of the twentieth century claimed over half the lives of anyone unlucky enough to contract it.  The residents of Nome were in dire danger, without an adequate supply of antitoxin the city’s prognosis was at best poor.

The challenges of delivering the twenty-five pound package of life-saving antitoxin were many.  It would have to be picked up from the railhead in Nenana and transported to Nome over six hundred seventy four miles of the “roughest and most desolate” terrain found anywhere on the planet.  The trip, which normally took twenty-five days, would have to be undertaken in just fifteen; in the middle of an arctic winter where the bone-chilling temperatures ranged from -19ºF to -64ºF.  To complicate matters it was dark most of the time in late January and early February.

Richard Byrd said, “The Eskimo husky still is, as he always has been, the one absolutely reliable means of polar advance.”  Rest assured it was this reliability that spared the lives of the citizenry of Nome.  Twenty or so brave mushers: natives, mail carriers and white men put their lives, and the lives of their dogs, on the line for the isolated city.  They did not risk it all for money, or for glory, but simply because it was the right thing to do.

Gunnar Kasson and Leonhard Seppala received most of the credit and glory associated with the Nome Serum Run; however, they were just a small part in a much larger, history-making adventure.  It was primarily Native Alaskans and mail drivers who weathered the biting cold and the blinding storms who conquered the brutal trail.  Those drivers were thanked by President Coolidge and even received a medal for their efforts, but they were mostly over-looked by the media.

The tale begins in January of 1925, in Nome, Alaska.  The only physician in Nome, Dr. Curtis Welch, discovered a case of the dreaded “Black Death” disease, diphtheria.  The doctor’s supply of antitoxin was very small, and Nome was the medical center for a district of some eleven thousand extremely vulnerable natives.

There was a supply of antitoxin in Anchorage, Alaska.  As previously alluded to, the difficulty was in transporting the serum to Nome.  There were two biplanes at that time in Alaska, the problem with using them was that not only were they disassembled for the winter, they were also both open-cockpit.  The days were short, and the weather was horribly cold.  The pilots were willing to give it a go, but it was decided that the risk to the only serum in Alaska was too high for such a reckless endeavor.  So just as the natives had done for centuries, the residents of Nome pinned their hope of survival on sled dogs.

Tomorrow: Part 2 of The Serum Run: Sled Dogs Save the Day

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Dr. Robert Forto is the Dog Sledding Examiner, a musher training for his first Iditarod under the Team Ineka banner and the host of the popular, Mush! You Huskies Radio Show

Balto the Sled Dog

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Balto the Sled Dog

We mushers all have had a lead dog (or two, or three) that was of exceptional status on our teams. Many stories can be told how these dogs “saved the day”. Many movies and books have been written and shown of these courageous dogs with tremendous will and might. Many dog sledding fans know more about a musher’s lead dog than they do the (human) driver him/herself. The lead dog is often portrayed as the quarterback of the team. The one that all the other dogs listen to.

There is one dog that is probably the most widely known lead dog in the world. His name is Balto. There an animated movie about him (pretty good I might add) and he even has a statute in New York’s Central Park.

Let’s learn a bit about this famous sled dog: Balto
Balto (c.1919-14 March 1933) was a Siberian Husky sled dog who led his team on the final leg of the 1925 serum run to Nome, in which diphtheria antitoxin was transported from Anchorage, Alaska to Nenana, Alaska by train and then to Nome by dog sled to combat an outbreak of the disease. The run is commemorated by the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Balto was named after the Sami explorer Samuel Balto.

1925 serum run

In January 1925, doctors realized that a potentially deadly diphtheria epidemic was poised to sweep through Nome’s young people. The only serum that could stop the outbreak was in Anchorage, nearly a thousand miles (1,600 km) away. The only aircraft that could quickly deliver the medicine was taken out of winter storage, but its engine was frozen and would not start. After considering all of the alternatives, officials decided to move the medicine by sled dog. The serum was transported by train from Anchorage to Nenana, where the first musher embarked as part of a relay aimed at delivering the needed serum to Nome. More than 20 mushers took part, facing a blizzard with −23 °F temperatures and strong winds. Katie Pryor interviewed the musher after he had finished. News coverage of the race was worldwide.
On February 2, 1925, the Norwegian Gunnar Kaasen drove his team, led by Balto, into Nome. The longest and most hazardous stretch of the run was actually covered by another Norwegian, Leonhard Seppala and his dog team, led by Togo. They came from Nome towards the end of the run and picked up the serum from musher Henry Ivanoff. The serum was later passed to Kaasen. Balto proved himself on the Iditarod trail, saving his team in the Topkok River. Balto was also able to stay on the trail in near whiteout conditions; Kaasen stated he could barely see his hand in front of his face. During a blizzard, Kaasen and his team missed the last sled dog team and had to take the medicine twice as far. At Nome, everybody wanted to thank Kaasen at first. He suggested giving fame to Balto as well.
Togo was the star dog for Leonhard Seppala even before the great 1925 Serum Run. Instead of celebrating the triumph together as one huge team, many became jealous of the publicity Balto received, especially from President Calvin Coolidge and the press. Seppala favored Togo, but the general public loved the story behind Balto, and so they would take a far different path after the celebrations were over. Balto was not welcomed at the ceremony in New York in which Seppala and Togo received awards from the explorer Roald Amundsen.

Citation: Wikipedia
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Dr. Robert Forto is the dog sledding examiner, a musher training for his first Iditarod under the Team Ineka banner and the host of the Mush! You Huskies radio show.