Buser eats up the attention

ANVIK, Alaska – Martin Buser was awarded with a seven-course gourmet meal and presented a gold pan filled with $3,500 in $1 bills for being the first musher Friday to reach the Yukon River in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever had ostrich before,” said Buser, when a plate of seared ostrich medallions, prawns and scallops with pancetta and pomegranate mustard, prepared on a three-burner stove by a gourmet chef flown in from Anchorage, was set down before him.

After finishing a dessert of bittersweet chocolate crepes and a cheese plate with pear poached in port, Buser received his “after dinner mint” – a pile of $1 bills.

“Pretty awesome,” he said, as people crowded around in the community hall in Anvik, where Millennium Alaskan Hotel chef Mick Hug, wearing a lynx hat, prepared the food, which included appetizer, soup, fish course, meat course, salad, dessert and a cheese plate.

Buser shared his meal with Iditarod veteran Ken Chase of Anvik, whose best finish was fourth in 1978. The two mushers became friends in 1980 during a cold Iditarod run on the Yukon River. Buser was trying to camp out on the river. Chase steered him toward a more comfortable spot.

“Thank you for the delicious food,” Buser said, taking another sip of 1983 Dom Perignon champagne, before he headed upstairs to get a few hours’ sleep before getting back on the 1,100-mile trail and toward the finish in Nome about 500 miles away.

Buser, a 48-year-old four-time Iditarod champion from Big Lake, reached the Yukon River checkpoint at 10:45 a.m., followed an hour and 15 minutes later by defending champion and four-time winner Jeff King of Denali Park. Lance Mackey of Fairbanks was third. Paul Gebhardt of Kasilof was fourth.

Buser, who took a mandatory 24-hour rest in Ophir, said his dog team did well going the 90-mile stretch from Iditarod to Anvik.

“This was a pretty good little push,” Buser said.

Buser said he’s taken some pretty hard hits on the trail this year – one that he thought was going to end his 24th Iditarod. He was on his way to the halfway point at Iditarod when he banged his knee on a tussock.

“I thought I had totally broken it. It made such a loud pop,” he said. “It just knocked me off the sled and passed me out.”

When Buser came to, he pulled himself back on his sled and continued on.