HUMAN
Name: CATHRYN RASMUSON
Age: 78
Residence: ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
Occupation: BOARD MEMBER OF RASMUSON FOUNDATION
Years involved with Iditarod: SINCE THE LATE 1970’S
Iditarod Role: FORMER SPONSOR, PARTICIPANT OF JOE REDINGTON SR. IDITAROD CHALLENGE & “GROUPIE”
Current Location: MIDTOWN ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
Date of Photo: OCTOBER 15, 2024
Temperature: 69F, INDOORS
What, who or how and when did you first get involved with the Iditarod?:
I first got involved with the Iditarod, actually it was in 1969 when I arrived in Alaska, in February in the beginning of the Fur Rendezvous. And I went to the sprint races and it was 23 above and blue sky, and I thought, “Oh, my gosh, this is so exciting and so romantic.” Just a few years later, they started the Iditarod and I started reading up about that, and then I was at the front street again when they started doing that. And we got tickets to the banquet, and because my husband was a part-time donor at that time, and so we had a front row seat in the banquet and we just heard the stories of each one getting their number and telling all of their stories. And then I got to meet some of them individually and cheering them on, and that’s when I became friends with Joe Redington.
He was the father. He started it. He had a grade six education, but he was the world’s best salesman for anything. And we just hit it off and he always called me “Cathryn”, and I just loved it. So we became friends. Then in ’92, there was an article in the Times after Joe had just finished the race, and he said, “Well, I’m not going to race next year. I want to take six amateurs on the Iditarod Trail, because it’s so historical and it’s so wonderful, and the only people that ever take this are mushers. So I want to open it up to six people.”Well, there were six people that were going to do it, and Brian Davies was the first to sign up. I was the second. So a few of them… So I meet Susan Butcher, oh, a few weeks later and I says, “Hey, hey, guess what? I signed up for this. I’m just so excited.” And she looked at me and started laughing and saying, “You could die out there.” I thought, “Well, that’s not the encouragement that I wanted to get.” So I said, “Okay, what do I need to do?” She says, “You better be fit.” I thought, okay.
So I signed up at a gym and I went twice a morning at 6:30 and I had a favorite friend, Janet Bilhartz that joined me every day for the next six months. And then I had another friend, Mary Kemppel, who is a tremendous athlete, and I said, “I need you as a coach.” And she said, “Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to ride our bikes up the Arctic…” Okay, so we were going to hike, or I’m sorry, we were going to bike the Arctic Valley Trail, and I got probably halfway up and I’m leaning over my handlebars heaving, and I look at her and she says, “We got a long way to go, but hey, Cathy, she’s so positive, Cathy, we’re going to do it. We’re going to plan it, and by the end of the summer you’re going to get up this whole road.” And I did.
So I was ready to start the Iditarod Challenge and I started visiting Joe and I says, “What do you need?” And he says, “Well, I got these dogs that need inoculation.” And I said, “Okay, do we take them to the vet?” And he looked at me as if, come on Cathryn. “No, we do it ourselves.” So he had between two and 300 dogs, and he showed me how to do three of them, and I said, “Okay.” And he left me with a bag of syringes and the medicine, and I did 300 dogs by the end of the day.
And then another week I come up, and of course each time he gives me a little five or 10 mile ride. So it was my first time in a sleigh mushing. And we had, I think we started off with three dogs for the first couple of times. So the next time I said, “Okay, what do you need?” “Well, I need about a hundred of these little necklines made.” So he showed me how to do that, about three or four of those, and I went home with these brass buckles and some yellow twine, and I made a hundred of these. So that’s the way it went.
Then we finally got into the race, and that’s how I got involved with the Iditarod.
What is your Why? Why are you here TODAY and involved with the Iditarod?
It was 1993 that I did the Iditarod Challenge, and on a scale of one to 10, it was a 15. And to this day, you say the word Iditarod and rushes of memories come to me and they’re all happy. Some were very, very scary, and that’s why I’m interested in it. I’m partly with, I am a board member of the Rasmussen Foundation that travels around Alaska, and anytime I go north to any of the places that I went through when I was on the Iditarod Challenge, there’s somebody, still another old folk there, like me, that remembers coming through. And it was an experience of a lifetime, because we weren’t running to win. We mushed during the day and we slept at night, and sometimes it was in community centers, sometimes it was outside with a tent, sometimes it was in a church basement or whatever. But the people were so wonderful to us and kind to us.
And we came into Takotna, and it was right after the main racers had gone through and they said, “Hey, Joe, we saved some pie for your group.” It was like that all the way around. People were so friendly and so wonderful. They let school out in some of the smaller places so they could talk. And then the boys would come and they would talk to the guys that are our staff, that were our leaders, were on snow machines and talk about RPMs and all of that kind of stuff. And the girls would come over and say, “Can I pet your dog?” And it was wonderful. And there was two women on mushing. It was Joan Daniels from California, and myself, and women would come up and pass us a little treat of just saying, “I just have a little sweet for you,” and it was just so wonderful.
So we learned a lot about the villages as we went through. The scenery was outstanding. You feel like you’re walking next to God, or mushing next to God. All you heard was the shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. And the hah, hah, hah, hah, that was all you heard for hours. You were just alone with your thoughts. I’d sing to the dogs, and no one in the world lets me sing because I can’t sing, but they would perk their ears back and they’d listen to me. So it was wonderful.
We stopped and every night Joe would regale us with some stories. And over those years I met a lot of the mushers and we’ve kept friendship with them over the years. And anytime I see them, we reminisce of course about, do you remember this? Do you remember that? I can’t believe this happened. And that’s what is the wonderful part of the Iditarod is that it’s the old guys, but these old guys are now teaching the young guys.
I don’t know anybody now in the Iditarod. I still go to the banquet and I still go to the front of the line when they’re taking off either in Anchorage or in Willow, and I’m thinking, I don’t know all these guys, but you read up about them and you think, “Wow!” I know how hard you work to get strong to do this, but they know the dogs and they love the dogs, and the dogs want to run. And there’s a symbiosis between dog and runner, and it’s just wonderful. So as I said, a scale of one to 10, it was a 15 and it still is over 30 years later. It was a wonderful time.
Tell me about your most memorable Iditarod experiences?:
One of my most memorable memories of the Iditarod is a little different than most. My lead dog and I hated each other. We were leaving Wasilla Lake and he turned around after a hundred yards and I could see the look on his face and he says, “You don’t know squat lady, and I’m going to make your life hell.” And he did. So anytime we went up a hill, and let me tell you, there was a lot of hills that we went up to, and some of them were little mountains. They even call it Little McKinley. When he would get to the top of the hill, he would stop, which means the momentum stops and it’s just dead weight on that sled that’s full. And the dogs stop, and he turns and looks at me, lifts his leg and pees. I let out a barrage of several bad words that I’m not going to repeat today. So then I had to set the hook, go up to the lead dog whose name was “Friend”, and put him back on the trail. And then go back down through the deep snow unhook and manually push that damn sled up the hill.
So I says, “So what do I do?” I was asking Dave Olson. He says, “Well, you get a switch and you hit him a couple of times and say, ‘No, don’t do that.'” So I thought, “Okay.” I still had to put the break down. I still had to walk through the snow and do that. So he would then go carry right on over the hill for the next three, or four, or five hills, and then he’d start this again. And then on another day we were going and we were taking a detour through Ptarmigan Pass, and the snow felt like you were walking through sand. You know how it’s just heavy and it’s just crystally.
So everybody is passing me, because he would run for, lead the team, for about a hundred yards, and then he’d just veer off the path. And of course everybody stops. Everybody, all the other mushers pass me, I’d get him back on the track and we’d do it again, and he’d do it again, and he’d just look at me and I would get so mad. And so I finally brought him back in and I threw him back into the line, and I called up my two girls. They’re two little females, Flopsie and Rosie, and I just adored them, but they were just so cute. So I put them as team leaders and we got in, but they’re slow. So it gets darker and darker, and the stars are coming out and nobody’s there. And then we get to some trees and I could see light at the bottom of this long hill that is covered with trees, which means I have to go around these trees on a trail in the dark. We got in and everybody just turns and says, “Hey, just thinking about maybe having to go find you.” So I put the break on again and untethered my dogs and got their dinner going and I was still swearing at Friend.
So for the rest of the day, that rest of the days, essentially every so often, when he decided to not be a leader, I would put him in the middle of the team. And I changed everybody up to be a leader. And I remember my beautiful dog, Silver, that was one of the back dogs, and he came up and he sort of looked at me and said, “Oh my gosh, I’ve never, I don’t know what to do with myself. There’s nobody in front of me.” So we had a good time with that.
Now, at the very end, at the lot in Nome, the dogs, so there’s ninety-some dogs, and they’re all just tethered down and we’re saying goodbye. We’re heading out the next day. So that morning I come by and I want to say goodbye to my dogs, how much I love them. And as soon as I’m walking by near their distance, they would stand up and they’d wag their tails and wiggle their bodies. And I’d go and I give them a, oh, Rosie and Flopsie, and I give them a good hug and a rub. And then I came over to Friend. He kept laying down, he barely raised his head, and he sort of just shrugged. And I said, “Same to you buddy.” And walked right on by. So that’s my story, my lead dog was not my best dog.
What do you know for sure?:
What I know for sure in life is that it’s always changing. What I wanted when I was a young mom, raising kids, and then as a wife traveling around the world and being a team with Ed, with the Foundation, and the bank, and everything is entirely different. When you turn into an old lady. I’m 78, you see, I got white hair, glasses, phony knees. It’s life changes. And you know what’s the best part of it, is that you stay open to it. What life’s all about for me is all the things that happen to me and its relationships. Relationships with my children, relationships with my grandchildren, relationships with my friends. And I figure I’ve been totally blessed all these years, because I have been so fortunate to meet so many wonderful people. Joe was just one of them. Every time I even say his name, I smile. And so many of the people in the Iditarod were just their total selves, and we had such stories and such wonders and a wonderful time. So I am blessed with the faculty that I can love friends and understand people that I may not be a friend of or we don’t agree with, but they’re struggling just as hard as I am. And life is good.