The Race: Norton Sound; Nome Summary and Analysis

The day is clear and the wind calm as the team sails over the ice still ignorant of what lays before them. Cookie suddenly changes her pace. Her tail goes up in a question mark and she runs on her toes signaling bad ice. Gary knows that the possibility of falling through the ice is high so he grabs the catch rope and drops to his stomach to distribute his weight. Gary gives Cookie a command to bring the team around and after a few hundred yards the sled moves back onto the thicker, older ice. Later Gary learns that a piece of ice twenty miles across had broken off to float out to sea. New ice started to form but was only a few inches thick when Gary crossed over. If Gary...