2005 Iditarod broadens the definition of "challenge..."

from The Baltimore Sun
Saturday, March 05, 2005
An extra climb in the Iditarod
By Candus Thomson

As a youngster, Rachael Scdoris turned to her dogs for comfort when
cruel
classmates taunted her. And it will be her dogs that the 20-year-old
musher
calls on today as she lines up to compete in her first Iditarod.

Each day, before she dips into her snack bag along the 1,150-mile
trail,
she'll feed her team. Before she massages her own weary feet, she will
knead
the soreness from 64 paws.

When both they and she are digging down for that last bit of energy,
the
Iditarod rookie will raise her voice in song - gospel and spiritual
tunes
she has known forever.

There is no place she would rather be.

"Running a team of dogs is the fun part. There is an electricity
between
us," she says.

On top of the hardships each of the other 78 Iditarod mushers will
face,
Scdoris has one more challenge. She is blind.

Congenital achromatopsia, a deficiency of the photoreceptors called
cones
and rods in her retinas, affects her depth perception, light
sensitivity and
ability to determine color. From the back of her sled, she can make out
the
fuzzy forms of her lead dogs, but little else.

Bright, white conditions along a snowy route are particularly difficult
for
her. Low-hanging tree branches or open water or wild animals are
potentially
life threatening.

In other races, she has been guided by a "visual interpreter," a scout
on a
snowmobile who radioed back warnings about when to duck and turn, much
the
way blind climber Erik Weihenmayer took directions from sighted
teammates
when he reached the summit of Mount Everest.

But the Iditarod Trail Committee initially rejected her application to
compete because the idea of a gasoline machine running with the sleds
was
anathema. The committee relented in 2003, but attached a stipulation:
her
eyes would have to be a musher on a sled, not a snowmobile driver.

The ruling opened one door and closed another. Paying for an additional
musher and dog team was financially impossible, and Scdoris was forced
to
withdraw from the 2004 race.


This year, she has corporate sponsors and an experienced shadow. With
her
every step of the way will be "Precious" Paul Ellering, 51, a bear of a
man
with a huge mustache and shaved head who made his reputation as a
tough-guy
wrestler and coach in the World Wrestling Federation before he
completed the
2001 Iditarod.

Naturally, there's grumbling.

The outdoors writer for the Anchorage Daily News predicted, "Once the
race
starts, she'll be no more than a well-financed, sled-riding spectator
on the
trail."

An opinion piece in the same newspaper complained about the "hype," and
hinted that the Iditarod Trail Committee altered the rules to avoid a
discrimination lawsuit.

If she manages to complete the race and collect prize money, the writer
wondered whether Scdoris would deserve an asterisk next to her name to
signify the help she got that other mushers did not.

Scdoris says that like her dogs, she will pull her own weight.

"I worked hard to get here, but so did everyone else. There are some
things
I can't do, like fly a plane and drive," she says. "The rest is fair
game."

While Ellering can be her vision, he cannot be her muscle. Care of the
dogs
and managing the three tons of supplies dropped along the trail are
Scdoris's responsibility. The dogs will be a lifeline she must sustain.

John Balzar, who completed Alaska's other distance race, the 1,023-mile
Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race, recalled in his book, Yukon
Alone:

"There is no choice but to hang on to the sled and give yourself over
to the
dogs. They drive themselves by instincts that are impossible for humans
to
decipher.

"Their trail sense and determination is all a person has. Without them,
these mushers would be as helpless as babies out of a crib ...

"Tired, sore, cold and scared, a musher feels sobbing spasms of
gratitude
and admiration for these small, hard-muscled animals. You have led them
here, and now they must lead you out."

To qualify for the Iditarod, Scdoris placed 11th in Montana's 350-mile
"Race
to the Sky," and sixth in the 430-mile John Beargrease Sled Dog
Marathon in
Minnesota last year.

"The Iditarod is just like those races; it's just a lot longer," she
jokes.

The record, set in 2002, is 8 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes and 2 seconds.
Scdoris believes she will need about two weeks to get from Anchorage to
Nome.

There were early signs Scdoris was going to be a musher. At age 8, she
announced her intentions to run in the Iditarod.

She soloed at 11

"I thought it was really cute and that it was wonderful that she had
such a
rich fantasy," recalls her father, Jerry Scdoris, who raises sled dogs
and
helps organize a 300-mile sled race each year near the family's home in
Bend, Ore.

Rachael Scdoris took her first solo ride at 11 and completed her first
race
the next year. As she's grown older, she's taken up rock climbing and
participated on her high school's track and field team.

The taunting by elementary school classmates only made her tougher, her
father believes.

"I just see her as a great overachiever," Jerry Scdoris says. "It's
easy for
us as parents to do it ourselves. I think that's what I've learned from
her,
to step back and be supportive.

"It's been a whole lifetime of letting go, and now I don't have any
choice."

Rachael doesn't understand what the fuss is about.

"I'm not anything special. I'm just out here running my dogs," she
says.

Others say Scdoris is a role model, especially for blind children and
adults.

"We all need somebody else to push the boundaries for us," says Barbara
Pierce, director of public education for the Baltimore-based National
Federation of the Blind.

"People like Rachael and Erik do that for us. They refuse to agree to
live
by the limitations. They give the rest of us permission to dream our
dream
and climb our own Everest."