WHITE MOUNTAIN -- Redemption was waiting for musher Scott White in Nome in the next 24 hours. All he had to do was get his seven remaining dogs to grind out one last 80-mile march to grab it.

For a 9-year-old wheel dog named Earnhardt, as in race car driver Dale, it would be the last run. Retirement awaited her after the end of this Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. He wanted her to see the finish line, but she had twice before tried and failed.

One time a mushing friend of White's took her north along the 1,000-mile trail, but she was dropped before the finish line and sent home. And then there was the disaster with White in 2007.

That was the year of the big blow that pulled a curtain of snow across Rainy Pass in the Alaska Range. Some mushers decide to try to beat their way through it. White -- a sometimes musher whose real job is with a general contractor in Woodinville, Wash. -- was one of those who tried to give it a go.

"I went up there,'' he said Friday, "and I was lost up there for five hours.''

He wandered off the trail. His dog team got into deep snow and wallowed. Pretty soon the whole outfit was in an uncontrollable downward spiral.

"Dogs were frustrated,'' he said."They were fighting and chewing (their lines). Four got loose.''

Luckily, the loose dogs came when called, but more problems arose when White took off his mitts to re-rig lines and refasten dogs.

"When I took off my mittens,'' he said, "I frostbit my hands.''

Eventually, he did find the trail. But by then it was too late. Both he and his dog team were in such bad shape the only wise thing to do was retreat. Earnhardt was in on the withdrawal. They survived to fight another day.

They've done that this year, battling through deep snow and strong winds early in the race, and enduring vicious cold in the Interior before arriving at the doorstep of victory. Everyone in the White team seemed to be smiling Friday. It was hard to do otherwise. The Alaska that can be so cold and harsh had turned all warm and soft.

As White and friend Randy Adkins from Montana waited to complete their mandatory, eight-hour layovers at the penultimate checkpoint before Nome, their concerns were more about heat than cold.

The trail ahead over the Topkok Hills was softening in the midday sun. On the southwest-facing slopes of the river, snow was melting. Earnhardt was spread out full length on a bed of straw to try to stay cool. Most of the other dogs were doing likewise. Dressed only in a pile pullover and wind pants, White worried about sweating too much on the run out to the Topkoks.

What a change a week makes.

"Half our problem this year was that we were freezing to death,'' White said, careful to add that he didn't mean that literally. No dogs actually froze to death, he said. But it certainly seemed like everyone might.