Don Eckles was 24 when he and 59 other mushers headed from Anchorage toward Nome, the 975-mile trek across Alaska known as the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
A year earlier, soon after arriving in Anchorage to work as a radio announcer, Eckles had seen the start of the 1979 race and thought to himself, “Man, that looks like the adventure of a lifetime. I need to do that.”
He was the overnight DJ at KFQD-FM Radio in Anchorage, making $1,400 a month—$300 more than he had made at Omaha’s WOW Radio. He was enjoying the Alaskan outdoors in Anchorage, which is wedged between mountains and Cook Inlet.
Married with two young daughters, Eckles rented a team of 14 dogs, bought a sled, and spent his spare time over the next year training himself and the team and finishing qualifying races.
He didn’t want to just run the race. He wanted to win. Looking back, he said: “What was I thinking?”
The Iditarod, he says today, taught him lessons that proved to be valuable during years of struggle that eventually led him and his wife, Linda, to being inducted into the Omaha Business Hall of Fame.
The couple are co-founders of Omaha-based Scooter’s Coffee, one of the nation’s fastest-growing franchise businesses.
Coffee was far from Eckles’ mind on March 1, 1980, when he and his dog team headed across the snow, following a trail along the Iditarod River that miners had used when gold was discovered in 1908.
The name comes from the Deg Xinag and Holikachuk languages of the Athabascan people of interior Alaska and means “distant” or “distant place.”
The Iditarod finish line was indeed distant. Eckles was one of 35 Iditarod rookies that year, alongside 25 others who had competed before.
“At 24, I thought I could do anything,” Eckles said. “Because I actually thought I could win this thing, I did things differently from the dozens of seasoned mushers who had done this many times. I don’t have to tell you how naïve and foolish that was.”
Seasoned mushers would run four hours and then rest the dogs and themselves for four hours before heading out again. Eckles’ strategy: Run until he was tired, maybe 10 hours, stop and rest, and repeat. He had started near the back of the race but soon was passing other teams.
The first night out, he put his sleeping bag directly on the ice and his body heat caused some melting and a cold, wet night’s sleep. After a few days, he discarded his camp stove and propane to save weight, figuring he would collect wood and build camp fires. But wood was scarce along much of the trail, and soon he and his dogs were eating frozen meat.
“There were times on the trail when I was lonely or afraid,” he said. “When you’re mushing along in the darkness alone, it’s just you and the dogs, and the sound of a sled gliding across the snow. Very quiet. Very dark.
“You realize how magnificent it all is and how much danger is all around you. There could be open water that you don’t see until it’s too late. There are moose, which hate dogs. There are wolves, which kill and eat dogs and people. There are hazards, which can cause serious injury or death. You begin to realize just how small and insignificant you are in the scheme of all that.”
His mandatory indoor 24-hour stop was refreshing, but the difficulties of the trail soon returned.
“I realized how lonely I was,” he said. “I remember being surprised by the emotion I felt. I realized that I wasn’t nearly as strong as I thought I was.
“It wasn’t that I wasn’t strong, but maybe more that I learned that I really did need people in my life. I wasn’t as able to just handle the world as I thought I was. I missed Linda and the family. I didn’t know what any of that meant then, but I know now how much we need each other. How interconnected we are. And that’s a good thing.”
By the time he traveled nearly 600 miles, he realized that he wouldn’t make it to the finish line. It was 40 below zero as he slid along the frozen, winding Yukon River, hoping to make it to the next checkpoint at Galena and then call an end to his race attempt.
“I didn’t stop to feed the dogs, I didn’t stop to eat, I didn’t stop for anything,” he said. “Every time I’d go ’round the bend I’d think I’m going to see Galena.” Finally, he saw a woman on the riverbank and asked, “How far to Galena?” She replied, “Twenty-six miles.”
His heart sank, and by the time he reached Galena, he and the team were exhausted. His hard-driving strategy had failed.
“I had no chance for anything other than the adventure of a lifetime,” he said. “If I had wisdom then, I would have known that. Still a great adventure, but not one I was able to complete. Physically, I was in great shape, but internal strength and wisdom are important, too.”
Of the 60 mushers who left Anchorage, 36, including 20 rookies, made it to Nome. The other 24, including Eckles, did not. The winner was Joe May of Trapper Creek, Alaska, with a time of 14 days, 7 hours, 11 minutes, and 51 seconds. He won $12,000. It was May’s third race, having finished 11th in 1976 and fifth in 1979.
Although Eckles didn’t finish the race, he learned valuable lessons: Starting something without serious thought and reflection is a bad idea. He wasn’t nearly as tough as he thought he was. He needs other people to succeed.
After a series of jobs and ventures, some successful and some not, in 1998, Don and Linda Eckles opened their first Scooter’s Coffee location in Bellevue. Today, Scooter’s has about 800 locations.
At the 2022 ceremony inducting the couple into the Omaha Business Hall of Fame, Eckles didn’t mention the Iditarod, but talked about going broke in his early businesses.
“People just don’t say that out loud very often,” he told the Omaha business leaders at the dinner event. “They don’t say that business is hard. You work and you try to find a way and you don’t find it, and you try again and you don’t find it again. You just keep doing it.”
Visit scooterscoffee.com for more information.
This article originally appeared in the October/November 2024 issue of B2B Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
