Royer experienced quarantine quagmire returning from Iditarod

SEELEY LAKE – Traditionally, a large cheering crowd greets the first mushers to arrive in Nome, Alaska, the endpoint of the Iditarod dogsled race. Local musher Jessie Royer, who pushed into Nome March 18 for a triumphant third-place finish said, "It was very strange. It was kind of like a ghost town. Like there wasn't hardly anybody up there." That was just the beginning of Royer's abrupt initiation into the coronavirus pandemic raging around the world.

Royer, now back at her home at Placid Lake, said during the latter half of the race she had hints something serious was going on because villages along the approach to Nome had moved their Iditarod checkpoints outside of the village. Nonetheless, she was completely unprepared for the bleak reception in Nome.

She said, "Normally we hang out in Nome for like a week and wait for everyone to finish and have an awards banquet. This year, basically we got to Nome and they were like, 'Get on a plane and go home. We don't want you here.'"

Because the weather had turned bad, it was another three days before she got a flight to Anchorage, Alaska where her trailer and gear were. A veteran of 18 Iditarods, Royer has a home in Fairbanks, Alaska and generally takes her dog team there after the race.

She said, "I hang out there for a month or so. I'm not in a hurry to come back because April's awesome in Alaska. I like to take the dogs and do spring camping trips and maybe go up on the North Slope and go caribou hunting and just have fun with the dogs."

This year, however, with rumors flying about quarantines and possible border closings, Royer began to fear she might end up stranded in Alaska if she took time to vacation in Fairbanks. She still had another 40 dogs and six horses at Placid Lake. Though she had a trustworthy person caring for them in her absence, she made the decision not to go to Fairbanks and to head back to Montana instead. She talked to a few other mushers who assured her they had made it across the border with no problems. She even called the border station itself and they confirmed it was okay to cross.

Mushers in the lower 48 states often buy dogs from Alaskan breeders. Because air-shipping animals is expensive and not a preferred transport method, some breeders asked Royer to haul their sold dogs when she drove back to Montana with her own team. In exchange, she earns what she calls "fuel money."

On March 26 she loaded her 20 dogs into the trailer, along with another 20 and drove eight hours to the border check station. When she arrived at 2 a.m., border patrol agents told her beginning at midnight a quarantine had been put into effect. She would have to remain at the border for 14 days before she would be permitted to cross.

In retelling the story, Royer said, "No one's going to sit at the border for 14 days. There's nothing there!"

The agents further informed her she was free to return to Alaska but if she tried to re-cross before 14 days passed, she would be arrested.

Royer said some mushers trying to get home to Minnesota came to the station also and were told the same thing. Since they had no place to go, Royer offered to let them join her at her place in Fairbanks. But first, she had to get all the extra dogs back to their various owners. Then she discovered her Fairbanks property was buried under five feet of snow. She said although she had lived there 20 years, she had never before seen that much snow.

After hiring someone to plow out her place, she got a call from the Minnesota mushers that their truck broke down. She drove back to help tow them to an auto repair shop. Then she went to work getting her dog yard ready for the dogs.

"My whole dog yard was snowed in," Royer said. "We had to shovel all the dog houses and snowshoe all the snow to pack it down. My dogs looked like gophers coming out of the houses. It was crazy! I think I only got two hours sleep in those three days. I'm like, I got more sleep than this on the Iditarod!"

Sometime during those three days the border directives changed from quarantine at the border to quarantine somewhere in the Yukon. Royer heard from another musher who planned to cross and then quarantine in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. Later she got a call from that musher saying the border patrol let her through with no fuss and just told her to quarantine in her vehicle, only stop for fuel, and drive through Canada as quickly as possible.

Royer said, "Seriously? Three days later? And if I even show up at the border I will be arrested?"

Having spent "a ton of money" getting her place plowed out, Royer decided she would stay at her Fairbanks place a while. Then more rumors came: they're going to close the border completely; no one will be able to get across. Once again, her concern for her dogs and horses in Montana took precedence.

Royer called the border station again, this time insisting on talking to a supervisor. The supervisor verified that Royer would be able to cross. Royer made sure she had the supervisor's cell number and knew when the supervisor herself would be at the station. She then again rounded up the for-sale dogs. The 20 dogs had increased to 34 because more people had called and asked her help in transporting dogs to the lower states.

Before leaving, Royer once again contacted the supervisor to get assurances and then drove down. At the border station, the computer pulled up a red flag warning saying she was to be arrested on sight but the supervisor overrode the order. Royer said all the border agents were "super nice." They directed her not to stop at hotels or other accommodations in Canada except to buy fuel. Royer said that was not a problem for her because she usually slept in her truck anyway.

Having traveled the route often over the years, she knew of places where she could pull over and let the dogs out, hers to free roam and the others on drop chains. She fed them and let them stretch their legs and go to the bathroom before loading them all back up.

At the Montana border, Royer had no problems. She said, "They barely asked me like two questions. I think I was there, maybe 10 seconds."

Nor is stay-at-home or quarantine a problem for Royer in Montana. Royer described herself as an introvert, kept busy taking care of her dogs and satisfied with their company. She does, however, anticipate this summer being a bit more difficult than usual.

Normally Royer leases some of her young dogs to a company that caters to cruise ships in Juneau and Skagway. The company provides clients with helicopter trips to the nearby glaciers, followed by dogsled rides across them. Royer said the situation is mutually beneficial because it allows her dogs to get out of the heat down here in the summertime.

She said, "It keeps the dogs from getting bored and they're up there working on snow and it keeps them happy and in shape and doing stuff all summer. And then we don't have to feed them and take care of them down here at 80 or 90 above."

Because of COVID-19, this year the cruises are all canceled, as are the glacier operations. Royer will have all 60 of her dogs at Placid Lake through the summer. But she already has plans to keep them busy.

She said, "I'll take groups of 10 to 20 dogs at a time and turn them all loose and I'll jump on the four-wheeler and go do loose-runs around the creeks and ponds and let them jump in and cool off. It's not quite the same as actually getting the work up on the glaciers but they'll still get to run a little bit."

Royer said, with the exception of the five-course meal she enjoyed at Ruby, she has not yet received any of the Iditarod awards she won during the race for being first to arrive at the McGrath, Ruby and Kaltag checkpoints. The last she heard, the Iditarod committee was going to hold the awards banquet in Nome at a later date. That seems impractical now, with the pandemic still raging. Royer said she hopes they just send the awards and forget about the banquet.