BETHEL, Alaska - I awoke in a room full of sleeping dog mushers. Two hours before I had crashed in the empty room of the school on the Yukon Delta. Kalskag was a third of the way through the K300 sled dog race, a preliminary races for the world famous Iditarod.

We had watched the dog teams leave the start line in Bethel twelve hours before. My son Larry and I were part of the trail marking crew that kept the teams going in the right direction. We blasted by the mushers as they steadily pushed up the Kuskokwim River; passing small native villages along the way.

Village names like Akiachak, Tuluksak and Aniak were becoming real points of reference to me as the night wore on. For hours we had cruised across broad, frozen river bends and through portages that felt more like mine tunnels than sled trails that snaked over steep river banks and through beaver dam lined drainages.

Snow was softly falling as we re-set dozens of trail markers toppled by the blustery winds that had followed the brutal cold from the previous week.

Laying on the school room floor in Tuluksak, I was listening to Iditarod champion Jeff King grunt as he pulled his wet boots off and sigh has he settled into his own parka just two feet from mine.

I expected to see some high tech gear on the race. Other than the harness and sled, which I knew nothing about, most gear was basic stuff that we all use. To keep his feet dry, Iditarod champ Martin Buser used white garbage sacks over socks pretty much like I do.

I slipped out of the room as quietly as I could to give these guys some privacy. Out in the hallway, 72 year old racer Gerald Riley was sipping coffee. He had just driven his eight dogs the 100 miles from Bethel and gained on several of his younger competition.

It was time for us to go. Reports from up the trail were that high winds had knocked stakes down. With Rohn Buser and Ed Iten scheduled to leave within the hour, Larry and I needed to keep the trail marked across the featureless river flats.

The wind wasn't pushing our stakes over, the snow was melting. Thirty five degrees and Chinook winds were doing serious damage to our marked trail. Larry and I leap-frogged our way to Aniak; each setting a stake as the other raced ahead for more.

Nestled between the Russian Mountains and the Kuskokwim River, Aniak marked a change in the terrain. No more icy river. The trail climbed a steep ridge and cruised along a spruce covered ridgeline on top of a mountain.

Larry turned to me at the top. "Dad, come here, I want to give you something." As I stepped closer, he said, "Dad, there's the Yukon out past that line of trees."

He and I had been adventuring together for 30 years. The Yukon! Wow! I'd only dreamed.

Pike Lake, 20 miles past the mountain was the turn around point for the race. Twenty miles of the toughest trail so far. The snow was melting fast. Where we had smooth trail, now there were bare spots and tundra showing.

In Idaho, when the snow melts, the past year's growth is smashed and tan. As the snow left the tundra around us, the lichens and small bushes were revived and growing. Not quite green but looking fresh and alive.

The sleds slammed from side to side against the frozen tundra. The little gullies became slush holes. And Pike Lake seemed to be getting farther than closer.

The check point at Pike Lake was manned by snow mobilers hiding from the wind behind their sleds. The wind was pushing the mushers to Pike Lake. They fairly flew to the 150 mile turn point.

As the teams turned to retrace the trail to Bethel, the 30 mile per hour wind demoralized many of the wet dogs and the teams quit. Dog teams lay down. Frustrated mushers earned their name as they trudged through the mush ahead of their teams until the dogs were ready to run again.

We stayed at Pike Lake to watch the leaders come through. Sixty year old Myron Angstman was in the top ten; but 17 year old Rohn Buser blew through Pike Lake first.

We headed home; resetting stakes. Passing mushers was tough on us because we had to skirt them and then hurry across the snow less tundra as the frozen moguls hammered our sleds.

We rested at Aniak as the mushers pulled in. They looked drained and thin. Wet clothes clung to their spare frames yet they first tended their dogs with straw bedding, warm water and special snacks.

We raced ahead again. Six teams were ahead of us again. Again we passed them as a single small head light beam swung around to check us out and ten pairs of eyes briefly glowed in our head lights.

The 41 miles to Kalskag were pleasant in the moonlight. The moonlight-bathed river was like riding in a moonlight lit meadow on calm, quiet night in Idaho.

When we kicked our boots off in Kalskag for dry socks; we looked around at the food and people. The place lost its appeal. Picked over, day old potato salad and grouchy checkers just wouldn't do it. We ate our heated burritos from the manifold cookers on our sleds and were on our way.

Dozens of dog booties and the lightly falling rain where making the ice and snow around the school a skating ramp. We slide down to the river and were on our way to Tuluksak.

Riding was still good in the moonlight. More and more stakes were down as the snow melted away. Twenty miles down the broad river, the trail cut through a series of portages and beaver dammed streams.

The beaver dams were brutal. Too slow over the jumbled piles of sticks mud and the sled high centered resulting in a lift and a tug for increasing weary arms. Too fast and the dam slammed the sled skyward and slammed the sled again on return.

The lights of Tuluksak were a welcome sight. Soft snow had increased fuel consumption and our comfortable margin was barely enough.

Our original plan was to wait for the dog teams to arrive in Tuluksak. Home was three hours away. At four o'clock in the morning the Tews boys went home.

The trail from the village to the river dropped thirty feet over a steep bank and down a gentle slough. The stakes looked good, the snow was smooth. We blithely cruised around the bend to the river.

The first puddle nearly drowned our sleds. Fifty yards across and two feet deep, the water dragged us down to barely a crawl before my steel track studs grabbed ice again.

It got worse as we went. My toboggan behind the machine filled with wet snow, bogging me deeper in the water traps.

I was worried my son would try to turn back to help me dump the sled so I wrestled the machine through worsening holes until his toboggan too was full.

We settled into a frantic pace. Too fast into the puddles, we ricocheted off the surrounding ice ridges. Too slow, and we would be wading, looking for a ride.

After our third stop to empty the 500 pounds of snow; Larry summed it up: "This really sucks, You'll have get yourself out. I can't stop or we will both be stuck."

The design of my machine poured insult on injury. The short, sculptured wind shield let a steady stream of icy water from the skis hit me squarely in the face. Soon my hood filled with water.

We quit setting stakes. We couldn't get off the river up the steep icy banks, so we kept dodging ice lakes and ridges.

Larry knew the trail. I didn't. I was skeptical, but I'll have to give him a grateful pat on the back, he found Akiachak, a tiny little village with an over land trail to Bethel.

As we passed the start/finish line that we left 36 hours earlier I had a thought: 20 dog teams will have to come through this stuff - without a motor.