Jan Masek placed 12th in the 1988 Iditarod. Masek escaped from Czechoslovakia in as stolen race car. He came to the United States in 1967. Masek began mushing in 1969. During the 1984 race, Masek married Beverly Jerue of Anvik at the Finger Lake Checkpoint at the home of Gene and June Leonard. That year, on Monday, March 5, Masek reached Finger Lake at 1:40 AM. When Brian Johnson, a magistrate who was also running Iditarod, didn’t reach that checkpoint in time, Col. Norman Vaughan married Jan and Beverly. Then Masek left to continue the race 24 hours later. However, he eventually scratched from the race.
In 1978, Masek had helped Col. Norman Vaughan train for the Iditarod. That led to his decision to want to race it himself. When leaving for Nome at the start of the 1988 race, Masek said, “I like to see lots of snow and bad trail.” That is exactly what he got! Jan Masek was one of the four mushers who rescued Don Burt, one of Iditarod’s trail breaking snowmachiners. Burt had fallen through an ice bridge into the water. Austin, Barve, and Philip were the other 3 mushers to rescue Burt. Swenson helped pull the snowmachine up a steep hill. (According to the 1989 Iditarod Race Annual)
Peter F. Kelly finished 41st in the 1988 Iditarod. In the 1989 Iditarod Race Annual, Kelly shared information: Prior to the start of the race, Kelly had 1,300 miles on his team. He fed them Iams, turkey and turkey skins, beef, chicken, liver, salmon, and honey balls. A sponsor, Ha very Burges and his family from Fox, gave him a Swenson Cooker to cook dog food. For his personal food, Kelly had wonderful meals packed in Seal A Meal bags and homemade bread donated by teachers, family, and friends. “My personal food was perfect,” Kelly said, “probably the best part of my race. I’m sure some checkers and veterinarians can attest to that. I used a toboggan sled built by Dave Olson of Knik.” Peter also recalled that after leaving White Mountain, “I had traveled about two hours when I met a snowmachine official form ITC who said that the wind was blowing 70 miles per hour and that we shouldn’t go over Topkok and down on the coast ton None but instead we should stop at the shelter cabin right before the top of Topkok. So Tim ‘the Mowth’ Mowry and I pulled into the cabin before dark. It was a beautiful sunset. Mowth and I felt pretty high entering the cabin. We had just caught four teams we had been following for 700 miles. We opened the door to the cabin and these four mushers who had been trapped in a storm and thought they might die. They were cold, frostbitten, and tired. So much for catching four teams and thinking you’re a big shot!” Peter Kelly gave advice for rookies entering the Iditarod, “Learn the trail on your fist race and have some fun. Meet some people on the trail. It really is a GREAT RACE. Every musher gets his or her entry fee’s worth of excitement.”
Kelly had been a special education teacher and lived near Hatcher Pass in the Willow Creek Gold Mining District. He took a leave of absence from the Matanuska- Susitna Borough School District to train and run the race. When he decided to run the race, he had a lot of support and help from friends, family, Palmer High School, and Snowshoe Elementary School.
Kelly had come from Utah to Alaska in 1978. After being intrigued by seeing the start of the Iditarod and following the race, he wanted to learn more. “The dogs and distance just grabbed me.” He got his first dogs from Dennis Boyer and started learning about driving a dog team, by running 6 dogs.
In the 1989 Iditarod Trail Annual, Tim Mowry, a sportswriter for the FRONTIERSMAN and a rookie in the 1988 race, shared this information: Like many mushers, Tim made honey balls for the dogs, using Redington’s recipe. Tim thawed the beef, laid plastic bags in the bath tub, dumped in all the ingredients and began stirring. The mixture turned into a sticky, gooey, ‘life form.’ Then he put on some dish washing gloves and prepared to roll honey balls to the exact size the recipe called for. He packed the material into a ball but it disintegrated. The process repeated itself a few more times and Tim decided something was missing. Eventually he packed the goo into plastic bags and plopped them unto the patio. He never had a chance to try the honey balls during the race. Tim’s nick name was ‘the Mowth’.
Tim ‘the Mowth’ Mowry shared this in the 1989 Iditarod Trail Annual, February 18 was food drop day in Anchorage, “Maybe it was an omen, or maybe it wasn’t, but I took the red lantern for the Iditarod food drop shipment, edging out Herbie Nayokpuk. We pulled into the Anchorage drop-off point with two pickup trucks loaded with supplies weighing 2,364 pounds. For two days, my handler and I had diced up frozen meat for the dogs in our office parking lot, first with electric saws and then with chain saws. At one point, a man stopped to make sure we weren’t poachers.”
In the 1989 Iditarod Trail Annual, he tells us he sent out 2,364 pounds of supplies to the trail. Here is what he sent 300 pounds of chicken,200 pounds of turkey, 200 pounds of beef, 200 pounds of turkey skins, 150 pounds of beef by-products, 400 pounds of commercial dog food, 200 pounds of white fish, 60 rolls of toilet paper, 200 assorted candy bars, 1,000 dog booties, 30 sets of gloves, 15 felt boot liners, 10 cans of beef jerky, 3 cases of fruit juice, 1 case of Lipton Cup a Soup, 1 case of hot chocolate, 75 D batteries, plus steak ,fried chicken, spaghetti and meat balls, roast beef, pizza, and other assorted meals all secured in Seal A Meal bags. Tim added, “Of course, who knows what we forgot!”
According to the 1989 Iditarod Trail Annual, Tim ‘The Mowth’ Mowry decribed the feeling he had about the race, “I’m scared to death one minute and thrilled to death another. Any way I look at it, the word death pops up. No Musher has ever perished on the Iditarod Trail yet, so I shouldn’t be worried. Besides that, John Gourley has assured me that the Iditarod Trail is paved. But still, I’m haunted by a picture of me frozen stiff on the Yukon River, my face crusted with a thick layer of ice.” ‘The Mowth’ placed 27th in 1989 with a time of 13d 21h 19m 9s, bettering his 1988 race time of 18d 7h 21m 41s.
Continuing with quote from ‘The Mowth’ Tim Mowry, speaking about the 1988 Iditarod and mushing on the Yukon River, “A warm and gorgeous amber sunset over the Ruby Hills was our welcome mat to the cold and cruel Yukon. A ground blizzard served as our goodbye. This is the place that one musher told me was ‘the coldest place God created on the face of this earth’. It didn’t disappoint me; we spent three days on the Yukon and the temperature never reached zero. The last two days, going into Nulato and Kaltag, we battled ground blizzards on the river. Each day we lost the trail only to find a half-covered snowmachine track that led back to the main trail. My leader, Freckles, was our savior. He never wavered. He stuck to the trail like glue.” When Tim reached Nome, the headline in the Frontiersman read: “Tim Mowry, ‘The Mowth,’ makes it to Nome with fingers and toes intact.”
Interesting trivia… In the 1988 Iditarod, Tim Mowry was the only musher who left Anchorage in the same position he was in when he reached Nome. He drew position number 42 and finished in 42nd position. (Source, 1989 Trail Annual)
Eagle brand dog food has been on the trail keeping sled dogs healthy for a number of years! Matt Ace, who placed 43rd in the 1989 race, fed Eagle Brand Dog Food plus beef, beaver, lamb, and pork fat. During the race, Matt used an alcohol stove to cook the dog food. He drove a Tim White sled that had been borrowed from Dave Aisenbrey. “I broke the runner off just out of Unalakleet and traveled the rest of the way to Nome with one good runner. I wore a parka made by Robin Chlupach and I loved it. I also wore down pants and bunny boots. I had a great pair of mittens. They were beaver on the top with a Gor-Tex cover and several layers of different sized woolen mittens. They were given to me by a friend, and upgraded by my mother. “When asked to give his advice to rookies, Matt said, “I’m still learning from my father and other mushers, so I don’t have a set training schedule yet. But I will say from experience: Keep your dogs happy and don’t over train them. Take good care of your dogs, the very best you can. And another thing, try your equipment before the race and don’t push too hard early in the race.” Resource, 1989 Iditarod Trail Annual
For more information on Eagle Pack Dog Food, follow this link!
*The images of the boot and the Alaska map are from the Iditarod Trail Annual.
Article compiled by Diane Johnson, Resource: Iditarod Trail Annuals.
