Scott Swanson
Rachael Scdoris told an audience of students at Sweet Home Charter School last week how she’s driven an Iditarod dog sled team through Alaskan weather at wind chill factors of 80 degrees below zero.
But the fact that she could barely see where she was going wasn’t due just to the conditions.
Scdoris is legally blind.
The charter school hosted Scdoris (pronounced “Sa-doris”), of Bend, as a celebration for the end of its second annual Read-a-thon Challenge Wednesday, April 5. Principal Tavia Thornton said the reading contest was modeled after the Iditarod race in that every minute that students read counted for a mile on the race course, which was depicted by a paper trail running around the walls of the school gym, from Fairbanks to Nome – and a little beyond to total 1,000 miles.
Kindergarten/first-grade teacher Jeff Tompkins, who once taught in Alaska, organized the event, she said.
The 31 students who read at least 1,000 minutes (one minute per mile of the Iditarod) during the school’s Iditarod-themed Read-a-thon challenge included Zoie Allison, Trey Carr, Ethan Niebels, Ivan Pelcher, Landry Potter, Kayla Matthews, Micah Niebels, Moses Cifuentes, Samantha Swanson, Trenton Carr, Damon Lawrence, Corey Lowe, Ryker Smith, Austin Ufford, Eturnyti Allison, Emmalin Feuerstein, Zane Hart, Caiden Matthews, Raylynn Meyers, Nate Swanson, Lilly Sawdon, Kirsten Sautel, Lacey Carr, Jackson Parrish, Jessica Corliss, Jazmine Jordan, Ethan Parrish, Ben Tolman and Lydia Wright.
Top reader Nate Swanson read 2,500 minutes during the month of March.
Tomkins said 113 students participated in this year’s Read-a-thon, an optional event, and together read a grand total of 73,365 minutes. All reading took place outside of school hours and students were required to write a reading reflection entry on their reading log for every 20 minutes of reading.
In addition to weekly themed challenges, each child’s reading log was placed into a weekly drawing for prizes donated by A&W and Figaro’s.
“We were fortunate enough to receive a $500 grant from Figaro’s ‘H.E.L.P the Charity’ program, which also helped to cover costs related to the event,” Tomkins said.
“We’re really pumped about that,” Thornton said.
Scdoris and her husband, Nick Salerno, brought along one of her former lead dogs, Pedro, now retired at 12 years old. Students got to pet the Alaskan husky, who clearly enjoyed the attention, though Scdoris frequently quieted them, explaining that dogs hear a lot better than people and the volume of many children talking at once in loud voices could be overwhelming.
Scdoris, 31, participated in the Iditarod four times, starting in 2003, racing with a “visual guide” who also raced the course. Salerno said that, with 20/200 vision and total color blindness, she can only see to the front of her dog team.
“Every sled dog race I’ve ever entered had its own set of challenges,” Scdoris told the children. That could be anything from the terrain to sleep deprivation to hunger – or lack of a desire to eat, or just taking care of her dogs on the trail, she said.
She demonstrated the outfit that mushers wear on Tomkins, dressing him in a heavy coat and snow pants, goggles (which, she said, were crucial as she’s known racers whose eyes have frozen from extreme cold), gloves and boots, though she didn’t make him put on the latter. Also crucial, she said, are knee pads – “you fall a lot in races,” and a helmet to protect against “face-whackers,” branches that hang down and can strike a musher traveling below.
She told of spots in the Alaskan Range where the trail is less than a foot wider than the sled, with dropoffs on each side.
The headgear came in handy in her first Iditarod, she said, when her sled slipped off the trail and rolled 360 degrees.
“Fortunately, I had my helmet on,” she said. “The only thing that got hurt was my hands, which ended up pinched under the sled.”
In addition to a sleeping bag, snowshoes “in case I have to stomp out a campsite,” a headlight (required), and an axe, which she chops into the snow and uses to tether the dogs.
For her team she carries extra dog harnesses (one of the best dogs she ever had “liked to chew things”), jackets for the dogs to sleep in – “they sleep better when they’re warm,” food and medicine, and oil, with which she massages them.
“I carry lots of things that help,” she said.
A big challenge for her is food, she said.
“Two things can happen in a race like (the Iditarod),” she said. “You can be so hungry you’ll eat anything or you can be not hungry at all. So what I did was I put out stuff I always like.”
Such as cheesecake.
“In my first Iditarod, I set out candies,” she said. “Health considerations go out the window.”
She said temperatures have to be taken into consideration as well.
“You don’t want to put out fruit and have it turn brown and disgusting.”
Scdoris had her best finish in the 2009 Iditarod – 45th, beating her previous best of 57th.
She said she generally sleeps in the open, on the trail – usually without a sleeping bag, rather than at checkpoints along the way as some mushers do.
“Usually, I don’t get into my sleeping bag because I won’t wan to get out,” she said.
She said she did use it on that stretch in the Yukon when she had to battle through 50 mph winds in temperatures 20 below.
“It was not that cold, in dog racing terms” except for that wind, she said.
“I knew it was time to set up camp and it was a good time to use my 40-below sleeping bag.”
Scdoris got into it, with one of her dogs.
“She slept really well that night,” she said. “I know that because I didn’t.”
Scdoris grew up at Mt. Bachelor, where her father Jerry operated Oregon Trail of Dreams, a dog sled tour business that takes visitors on rides in the area of the mountain. She started racing when she was 11, she said and has competed in several races each year since, the most recent in Canada. She and Salerno, whom she met when he was a parting attendant at the ski resort, now run her father’s business and, she told the children, have “a little over 100 dogs,” which drew a collective gasp.
“Every one has its own name, its own personality and its special needs,” Scdoris said, adding that it takes three or four hours a day to care for them all.
Also along for the Charter School trip was the couple’s 2-year-old son Julien, who took a turn at the mic and amused the older children with some high-energy runs around the gym.
Tompkins said he was inspired by Scdoris’ story and wanted the students to hear from her.
“ Specifically, I wanted to inspire students to understand the importance of setting goals and overcoming challenges, as Rachael demonstrated in being the first ever visually impaired Iditarod musher,” he said.
“I had heard of her story and became a fan rooting her on while I was teaching in rural Alaska; I knew that she was born, raised, and lives in central Oregon therefore when I was dreaming up the theme to this year’s Read-a-thon I was inspired to contact Rachael. Her willingness to visit our school as part of the culmination of the Read-a-thon was an important element in the success of this year’s event.”