By Jim Stanford on January 29, 2007
With the International Stage Stop Sled Dog Race off and running, Dan Carter is taking an important step in his preparation for the Iditarod this spring.
Carter was one of 18 mushers to glide through the streets of Jackson on Friday in the Stage Stop’s largely ceremonial opening leg. The real racing began Sunday with a 76-mile run from Lander to Pinedale, won by Wendy Davis of Lander.
The Stage Stop winds through seven communities in western Wyoming before finishing Feb. 3 in Park City, Utah. For daily race results, click here.
Carter, 36, is the latest man of Granite (Creek) to aim his sled toward the Iditarod, following in the tracks of his mentor and boss, Frank Teasley.
Although this is his sixth Stage Stop, don’t expect any smoking times from him. He’ll be following a mellow pace as he teaches his team of young pups how to handle a long haul. At approximately 400 miles spread over eight days, with banquets and lodging at each stop, the Stage Stop is an easy jaunt compared to the 1,100-mile Iditarod from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska.
Carter has been camping out with his team in sub-zero weather in recent weeks in training for the Last Great Race on Earth, which begins March 3.
He is no stranger to epic adventures, having mushed in every major sled dog race in the lower 48 states. During the summer of 2004 he paddled a canoe 1,400 miles from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay by himself, camping out for three months.
A native of central Indiana, Carter earned a degree in construction management from Purdue University but wasn’t ready for an office job after graduation. He became a canoe guide in the Boundary Waters wilderness of northern Minnesota. When winter came, he shifted to guiding sled dog trips.
He learned the Zen of mushing, which requires “thinking beyond human terms,” he says. “You have to work without using your mouth so much. It’s more about who you are, and the dogs pick up on that. They’re very good at first impressions with people. Either you fit into their world or you don’t.”
Through a client, Carter learned of Teasley’s commercial outfitting business, Jackson Hole Iditarod Sled Dog Tours, and he drove west in 1996, looking to see a new part of the country. He knocked on Teasley’s door at Granite Creek and lined up a job for the winter. By 1999, Teasley had taken him under his wing for race training.
Carter ran the first of his six Stage Stops in 2000, finishing eighth out of twenty-three teams.In 2003, he placed fifth in the Stage Stop, the best finish ever for a Jackson musher. That spring he spent forty days on the road with the dogs, competing from the Midwest to Maine. The high point of the trip was winning the 120-mile Grand Portage Passage in Minnesota.
Carter credits Teasley’s coaching for helping him make strides in the sport. “Frank and I can sit down and talk for hours about racing,” he says. When difficult situations arise on the trail, other mushers might worry whether they are making the right moves, but Carter has stayed confident. “I always felt I didn’t have to question myself,” he says. “I knew what I needed to do.”
Like his mushing mentor, Carter is a river guide. He has tamed the rapids of the Green, Colorado and Snake and serves as river manager for Barker-Ewing River Trips in Jackson Hole during the summer.
On his solo canoe journey in northern Canada, Carter paddled, carried and dragged his boat across dozens of lakes and rivers. Breaking waves threatened to topple him and smash his canoe on rocks on some of the largest lakes, while pummeling winds slowed his pace as he edged toward the Arctic Circle. Along the way he fished for northern pike and jumbo brook trout and camped among swarms of mosquitoes as thick as clouds of smoke.
The trip has steeled Carter for the challenges of the Iditarod. He spent the fall training puppies and culling a team of sixteen he will take with him to Alaska. The dogs will be twenty 20 months old by the time they reach the starting line in Anchorage, and Carter’s goal will be to get as many to the finish as possible without leaving them at checkpoints for care.
He and Teasley have laid out a plan by which Carter will race the dogs this year to give them experience, and Teasley, an eight-time Iditarod veteran, will harness the best ones for his run next year. “It’s a team,” Teasley says. “I’m the coach, manager, fund-raiser and cheerleader. Dan’s the driver. We’ve worked together so long it just feels right.”
Carter is eager to achieve his dream. He sums up his philosophy thusly: “The trail is home; life is a journey.”
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Follow Dan’s Iditarod bid on his Web page, www.DanCarterIditarod.com, which has links for sponsorship info.
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Carter is one of two local mushers competing in the Stage Stop. Also racing is Stacey Teasley, wife of race director Frank Teasley. She is competing for her second time and like Carter is running a team of huskies from Frank’s kennel as part of the broader Iditarod training. Frank plans to select the best dogs from both teams to compete in the Iditarod in 2008.
