"An Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race musher was flown to a hospital after crashing his sled, hitting his head on a tree stump, and getting knocked unconscious, and later falling through ice and breaking an ankle."
(WOW!!!! If it's not one thing it's another thing.)
"Scott Janssen, 52, an Anchorage undertaker known as the Mushing Mortician, was home early Wednesday after getting a cast for the broken bone he suffered."
'Mushing Mortician' flirts with death, survives harrowing ordeal
MAR 05, 2014 10:16p ET
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA —
An Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race musher was flown to a hospital after a harrowing ordeal that included crashing his sled, hitting his head on a tree stump and getting knocked unconscious, and later falling through ice and breaking his ankle.
Scott Janssen, 52, an Anchorage undertaker known as the Mushing Mortician, was back home early Wednesday after getting a cast for the broken bone he suffered on Tin Creek, about 40 miles from Nikolai.
"I made it through the worst part of the trail only to slip on the ice and break my foot," Janssen told The Associated Press on Wednesday as he recuperated from home.
Treacherous trail conditions with little snow have marked the early part of this year's Iditarod, which started Sunday with 69 mushers. The nearly 1,000-mile race spans two mountain ranges, dangerous wilderness and the wind-whipped Bering Sea coast.
Janssen's ordeal began Tuesday when he crashed his sled between the Rohn and Nikolai checkpoints, hitting his head after he said he bumped across rocks all along the trail. He lay unconscious for at least an hour and awoke to find his sled nearby and his dogs huddled next to him, covered in light snow.
Chelsea Janssen-AP Photo
A rather worn-down looking Scott Janssen shows off his broken ankle on Wednesday, the result of an accident on the Iditarod trail that left him unconscious and hospitalized after hitting his head on a tree and falling through ice.
As he dismantled his broken seat, another musher came along. Janssen asked him the time, and couldn't believe an hour, if not two, had passed.
"I tripped over there, went full-speed and hit my head on that stump," he said he told the musher. "I think I went night-night for a while."
After caring for his dogs, Janssen fixed his sled and continued on.
There's a lot of heaven to be seen along the Iditarod route. But, he said, "that part of the trail was all hell."
He made it to Tin Creek and estimated he had only about 7 more miles of nasty trail until it turned good again.
But one of his dogs, Hooper, got loose from the line and took off.
Janssen said he loosely anchored his sled and tried to call Hooper as he crossed a frozen creek. But just as Hooper heeded the call and trotted back to his place in line, Janssen fell.
"I slipped on the ice, and bang, that was it," he said. "Then I just laid there on the ice because I could not get back across the water to get back to my sled."
He lay there for about 45 minutes before another musher, St. Anne, Jamaica, native Newton Marshall, came along.
"I said, `Help! Help,' and Newton comes walking up and said, `Yeah, mon. How you doing?' I said, `I'm just lying around, kicking back,'" Janssen said.
Marshall was able to retrieve a snowsuit and Janssen's sleeping bag from his sled, helping the injured musher into both. Janssen said hypothermia was setting in at that point.
After that, Janssen said he encouraged Marshall to get back on the trial and keep racing, but Marshall wouldn't budge until help arrived. Mushers carry mandatory GPS units that have an emergency button on them, which Janssen said he pushed.
"I had 15 dogs I have to take care of; no way I could responsibly mush in the pain I was in," he said.
Later, film crews for the Iditarod website came on the trail and stayed with Janssen until an Alaska Air National Guard helicopter arrived to fly him to an Anchorage hospital.
Janssen is among about a dozen mushers who have dropped out of this year's race. Iditarod officials also removed a Canadian musher because of injuries.
Janssen also had a frightening experience during the 2012 Iditarod. During that race, he had to give one of his dogs mouth-to-snout resuscitation after the animal collapsed while the team was going down a decline in the Dalzell Gorge. The dog survived.
Warm weather and light snow near the gorge led officials to briefly consider moving the start of this year's race from the Anchorage area hundreds of miles north to Fairbanks. However, the decision was made late last month to leave the start in Willow, because conditions had improved.
Janssen said the area had snow when that decision was made but not when mushers arrived. He talked of bouncing off rocks on the trail, driving a team on gravel and going "across these rivers that were like smooth ice."
"I'm very disappointed we didn't leave out of Fairbanks," he said, though he doesn't fault the trail, trailbreakers or Iditarod officials.
"It would have just been another race had we left out of Fairbanks."
Janssen has lived in Alaska and been an active outdoorsman for nearly three decades, competing in three previous Iditarods. He hoped he'd never find himself in a situation where he had to be rescued.
But he said there's one consolation.
"I can always wear the badge of honor that I made it over the pass on the worst year in the 42-year history of the Iditarod."
