RAINY PASS -- Twice on Tuesday, Coloradan Tracey Petervary pedaled her fat-tire bike down the Iditarod Trail to the notorious Happy River steps though this wasn't her plan. Blame the curse of the Iron Dog.

Beyond Red Lake below the Finger Lake checkpoint for the Iditarod Trail Invitational on the south slope of the Alaska Range, there are two well-marked Iditarod Trails -- the one the Iditarod Trail sled Dog Race followed when it first went from Anchorage to Nome, and another the Iron Dog snowmachine race, marked when the mechanical beasts chased the dogs up the trail from Wasilla to Nome for the first time a few years later.

Neither is the original Iditarod Trail. The original trail had been long abandoned by the time the sled-dog race got started.

So the sled dog trail, as a matter of convenience, followed one of Finger Lake dog musher Gene Leonard's trapping trails north along creeks, over beaver dams, across frozen beaver ponds and through willow thickets. The trail has never been good and at times has been very bad, with holes along the creeks waiting to waylay a snowmachine or dogsled. So the Iron Dog marked a variation on the dog route.

The Iron Dog trail leaves the dog trail at the edge of Finger Lake, rejoins it at Red Lake, and then shares the route for a few miles to where it takes a hard left, climbs a steep little hill, and settles into winding through the woods and a few muskegs to the top of the Happy River Steps. It is often the better of the two trails, and so the bikers, skiers and hikers in the muscle-powered race that follows Iron Dog up the trail tend to jump onto the Iron Dog route.

Petervary went out on that trail almost to within sight of the first of the three steps down to the Happy River. But just before she got there, she took a right turn that started her back to Finger Lake on the dog trail. It is easy enough mistake to make even if you're not tired. Both trails bend and kink so much that constant turns to the right and left are normal.

A veteran of the Iditarod Trail Invitational, the tired Petervary never gave a thought to the idea she might somehow lose her way on the trail, or had lost her way.

She was having a nice ride. The trail was firm. The temperatures were mild. It seemed like it was taking an awfully long time to get to the Happy Steps, but she pedaled on until she came to the base of the long, steep hill that drops from the Finger checkpoint to Red Lake.

She recognized where she was then, but didn't believe it.

"I was thinking, 'How could this happen?'" she said here Tuesday. "'How did I get back here?'"

She'd eventually figure it out after pushing back to the checkpoint, taking a nap, and then heading out on the trail again. "I went all the way back because I was almost there anyway," she said.

"Did you go all deja vu?" asked fellow cyclist Janice Tower from Anchorage.

"It was the Finger Lake One Lap," Petervary said. "That's what it was, but it wasn't bad."

Things might have been different if it had been a grueling push-a-thon on a soft and snowy trail, she added, but it wasn't. It was pleasant, night ride followed by a nice, 15-mile-long pedal through spectacular Alaska scenery on the sun-kissed day that followed. Petervary sunburned her face. Her sunglasses left her with a raccoon's mask. She was in a good mood when she checked in here.

So were Tower and Joe Pollack from Anchorage, who also got lost. They went down the dog trail, decided they were on the wrong trail, and then turned back to get on the Iron Dog trail, which is at the moment in better shape than the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Trail -- at least for people.

A monster of a windstorm that came roaring off the south slope of the Alaska Range during the Iron Dog left both trails littered with blown-down spruce trees. Many of the trees are still across the dog trail. Snowmachiners who went down the Iron Dog trail wove new tracks around the blowdowns there. The cyclists, skiers and hikers in the 350-mile Invitational race over the range to McGrath didn't have any problems following this serpentine route, but the confusion of options and the tight turns would be tough for a dog team.