Newport
Bartlett, 74, received about $4,000 in contributions while endeavoring toward the eighth edition of the Iditarod, the iconic sled dog race that sends hardy mushers more than 1,100 miles along a dramatically cold and windy landscape. Bartlett placed 21st out of 36 racers to finish the race — many more dropped out — arriving at the finish line in Nome, Alaska, in 16 days, 16 hours, 12 minutes and 46 seconds.
A natural storyteller, Bartlett has recounted his experiences to an audience about 140 times over the last 38 years, he said, speaking to them again on Tuesday in a packed room of about 50 at Newport’s Richards Free Library. The presentation kicked off a series of programs organized by the Newport Historical Society.
Without the use of visual aids save for one framed piece of memorabilia featuring the official event poster and patch, Bartlett, a Newport blueberry farmer and bovine podiatrist, was warmly received by the audience, some of whom still vividly recall when Bartlett and his wife, Heidi, announced in 1979 their intentions to participate in the Iditarod the following year.
The subsequent fundraising campaign, spearheaded by friend Paul Skarin and others and dubbed the Newport-to-Alaska Committee, included bright red-and-yellow bumper stickers, reading “I support musher Bill,” that could be spotted on vehicles throughout the Sugar River valley for some 20 years after the race. The effort received widespread attention from the state’s newspapers, allowing supporters to follow the Bartletts’ preparation and journey.
“I still get a cold chill down my spine thinking about (the support we received),” Bartlett said during the discussion. “Aside from the cash, we got a lot of donated items, gear and equipment. Even places like Woolrich and L.L. Bean chipped in. I didn’t know how to repay everyone.”
Granted the use of a 2-ton Chevrolet truck — provided he performed all of the maintenance it needed — from a friend in Laconia, N.H., the Bartletts attached a huge multi-tier trailer to it, large enough to transport the dogs as well as their gear. Many of the dogs also were lent by owners from around the area, and one was retrieved during the trip west from an owner on the upper peninsula of Michigan. First, the Bartletts stopped in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., acquiring 6,000 pounds of high quality dog food from a recommended source.
“This guy was well ahead of his time, because it was all organic meat that the dogs loved,” he said. “Today, most of the dogs in the race are bred specifically to compete in the Iditarod. I went out there with a bunch of farm dogs, but they were well fed.”
As they approached Alaska, the couple encountered 60-below-zero temperatures in a section of Canada’s Yukon Territory called Destruction Bay, Bartlett said. “It was a dry cold,” he joked. They were outside Tok, Alaska, still about 300 miles from the race’s start in Anchorage, when the radiator started leaking and eventually gave out.
Hacking at a telephone pole for kindle wood to start a roadside fire, Bartlett left Heidi with the dogs and accepted the invitation of a semi-truck driver for a ride all the way to Anchorage to find a new radiator. “Mind you, I wasn’t leaving her with nothing. She had 6,000 pounds of dog food if she needed it,” Bartlett said to laughs.
It was Christmas Eve, and Bartlett interrupted a party in Anchorage to speak with the owner of a junkyard. Sure enough, they found a replacement radiator, but it was well into the night before Bartlett made it back to the truck. He was 40 miles from where it rested when he bumped into a stranger who gave him an update about Heidi.
“He said, ‘Don’t worry about your wife; someone took her in,’ ” Bartlett recalled. “Forty miles, that’s from here to Concord, and somebody knew all about my situation. That’s just the way word travels out in that country.”
The Bartletts lodged for the next two months in Montana Creek, 100 miles north of Anchorage, where Bartlett and his dogs trained and bonded. “I took them on 30-, 40- or 50-mile training runs, and that was very enjoyable,” Bartlett recalled. “It’s just you, the northern lights and the dogs, and they love to run when it’s cold. Seeing how enthusiastic they were to be running was amazing.”
Bartlett’s goals for the race were modest, but not resigned: “I didn’t want to go all out and try to win, but I didn’t want to be last. I wanted to be somewhere in the middle and just progress through the race. It kind of goes along with my philosophy in life, which is to try to do what you do a little better than you did yesterday.”
Though he made efforts to avoid absorbing too much advice from well-wishers — “I had my own stubborn ideas about how I wanted to race,” he said — Bartlett did heed one tip about racing hard at the outset to establish pace.
“For the first 24 hours, we pushed hard to the front,” Bartlett said. “I was in the first 10-14 (racers) for a good part of the race.”
Bartlett and his dogs withstood harrowing Dalzell Gorge, a steep stretch of trail that notoriously derails unprepared or unlucky teams, but had a more difficult time with wide open swaths of tundra later in the race.
“The wind chill factor got to around 80 below. I only got a little bit of frost bite around my nose,” Bartlett said. “The dogs just did not like running in that wind.”
The team still maintained a good pace until it missed a turn and veered an hour off course with about 80 miles to go. “I realized at one point that the sun should have been back behind my shoulder, but it was off to the side,” he said.
Until then, Bartlett’s team had been outpacing Alaskan Libby Riddles, who five years later became the race’s first female champion. Riddles finished the 1980 race in 16 days, 13 hours, 58 minutes, three places and about two hours ahead of Bartlett. Bartlett, however, still finished one spot ahead of Swede Martin Buser, now a four-time race winner.
“We came into Nome around midnight, and everyone came out of the bars to give us a hero’s welcome,” Bartlett said. “We probably got as loud of a reception as the winner (Joe May) did.”
Then came the logistics of coming home — something that hadn’t previously crossed Bartlett’s mind. “It helped to be young and ignorant,” said Bartlett, who was 36 at the time. “Everything just seemed to work out.”
Though he never again raced in the Iditarod, Bartlett went on to be chief race judge at the 400-mile John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon in Minnesota, the longest in the lower 48 states. He has returned to the Iditarod once, serving as a judge in 1990.
Looking back on the entirety of the experience, Bartlett remains overwhelmed with gratitude. He still remembers the banner in town that read “Welcome home Musher Bill” upon his return.
“To think about going from Newport to Alaska to compete in the Iditarod, even all these years later, there aren’t any words to explain it,” Bartlett said. “All I can say is that it was one of the greatest adventures of my life, and I’m so glad to be able to share it with you.”
Jared Pendak can be reached at jpendak@vnews.com or 603-727-3225.