Rent One Second to Glory: The Alaska Adventures of Iditarod Champion Dick Mackey

Synopsis

Dick Mackey, one of Alaska's great storytellers and one of its toughest men, approaches life in the North as one continuous adventure. It seems as if he has been everywhere and done everything in Alaska, soaking up more adventure and excitement than any ten of the rest of us.

In 1978, Mackey won one of the most dramatic finishes ever in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, crossing the finish line a mere one second before Rick Swenson after an unbelievable two-week, 1,149-mile run from Anchorage to Nome. More than twenty years later, veteran dog drivers still shake their heads over Mackey's astonishing win.

Mackey was one of the founders of the Iditarod race. He also competed for many years in the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous sprint championships and helped promote the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest race between Fairbanks, Alaska, and Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. He and his son, Rick, are the only father-son team to win individual Iditarod titles.

After retiring from competitive mushing, Mackey established what became the world-famous Coldfoot Truck Stop north of the Arctic Circle, where the temperature once plunged to seventy-nine degrees below zero. Mackey has so much cold-weather wilderness experience that Disney hired him as a consultant in the filming of Jack London's classic, White Fang.

View descriptions at Amazon.com