Bill Borden Becomes the First Georgia Resident to Complete the 1,151 Mile Iditarod Sled Dog Race from Anchorage to Nome

14 Days, 4 Hours, 10 Minutes and 14 Seconds
Not too long when you consider all of the mishaps along the Iditarod Trail. Bill Borden, first Georgia resident to complete the 1,151 mile Iditarod Sled Dog Race from Anchorage to Nome, encountered many tests of faith along the way. Only 200 miles into the race, Bill broke his gangline in a crash with a tree on the Happy River Steps, a particularly notorious section of the trail. This left him with only his two wheel dogs, Lookout and Smoke, to push the sled up the incline to Rainy Pass, a distance of about five miles before another musher helped tow him with their team. The other 14 dogs were reunited with the wheels dogs after about 12 miles of mushing on their own.

The dogs were encountered in a perfect trot crossing Finger Bear Lake by a snowmachiner. Sandy McKee, and Rick Horstman fellow rookie mushers, helped Bill get the dogs lined out among the trees and then left him to reassemble the team. After reaching Rainy Pass, Bill realized his back was severely injured in the wreck and was forced to take his 24-hour layover this early in the race. By doing so, some

of the volunteers at the Rohn checkpoint assumed that he had scratched and disposed of his drop bags containing all of his food, both human and canine, into the creekbed.

	Sled held together with   wire and hose clamps

This cost another several hour delay getting food sorted from creek gravel in order to feed his 16 hungry teammates.

The next big obstacle was the Post River Glacier which is about 500 feet of the slickest ice you can imagine. It took Bill and the dogs about an hour and a half, Bill on hands and knees, to inch up this smear of glare ice. In doing do, a runner was cracked on the sled. A second runner was cracked on the Farewell Burn forcing Bill to wire one runner back on and limp into Nikolai on one wobbly runner. Race officials allowed Bill to borrow a sled to make it into McGrath where his back up sled awaited him. Once Bill got all of his gear switched over and began to proceed, he broke another runner and a stanchion on the backup sled. He was allowed to borrow another sled from Lance Mackey, who had scratched, in order to finish the race.

There were many times when, in the face of all of these obstacles, Bill could have given up. He was mentally crushed and in physical pain, yet he continued on to finish the Last Great Race in a decent time. He had even passed several of the back-of-the-pack mushers but lost ground again when he had to walk his lead dog, Fisher King, across some overflow. This only got Bill wet from the knees down but exhaustion at this point caused him to trip over the gangline and go face first into the icy cold waters. Bill mushed to the Nome Kennel Club cabin with Ken Chase where they both took several hours to dry off and warm up.

Bill finished the dream of a lifetime on March 17, 2002 in 14 days, 4 hours, 10 minutes and 14 seconds with 13 happy dogs.

New Book Coming Soon
The adventures of Bill, Brenda and their son, Jordan, in the great state of Alaska will be presented in a book ....coming soon. Register to be able to purchase an autographed first edition copy of the book by sending an e-mail to book@CoolDreams.net

Cool Dreams—The Dream Continues
Bill will be accepting speaking engagements (prices will vary) to talk about his adventure beginning in May 2002. With Bill's background as a professional speaker, he is able to adapt his message to hold attention of many diverse groups for minutes to hours. To schedule a speaking engagment for your company, convention, school or organization with Bill and his dogs send an e-mail to KeynoteSpeaker@CoolDreams.net

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The debts incurred in this adventure were great and will need to be addresd by Bill's getting back to work as a mortgage loan officer at Checkpoint Mortgage www.checkpointmortgage.com. Bill may be reached at his office phone (770) 516-5522 extension 102.