Overflow on the trail - Iditarod EDU 
Moments with Mushers: Scary Stories
To go along with Halloween later this month, I thought it would be appropriate to post about what a few of the mushers remember as some of their scariest moments on the trail. It may be scary for a completely different reason, but is still fitting.
Here are their stories…
As told to me by Dan Seavey:
Whew, there are a lot to choose from! I would say that one of them had to be when I first encountered real overflow. It was during the ‘74 race and I was just coming out of Rohn and headed through the Farewell Burn.
We had to cross a river and so I led the team out onto the river and I noticed we started to sink a little bit. I was getting really nervous because as we got out further we started to sink more and I was wondering to myself if we were going to go all the way through. So I called “haw” to my team and we turned a little bit, but I was in it, to just underneath my kneecaps. The dogs were sinking pretty deep too. Some of my smaller dogs might have been doing the doggy paddle at that point. But we did make it and when we pulled the sled out of the river, I can still picture it now, there were 7 big buffalo waiting there, as they had been introduced in the area.
As we started running again, the buffalo ran with us. They ran in front for a good mile and a half and we just followed right behind. Then they just disappeared, and we kept going for a bit until I found a good place to set up camp and build a fire. At that point we took our time to dry out and warm back up before we were able to head back onto the trail. That took a good part of that day. But that was one of my scariest moments.
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