1925 serum run to Nome participant Togo
Problem solving
At the January 24 meeting of the board of health, superintendent Mark Summers of the Hammon Consolidated Gold Fields proposed a dogsled relay using two fast teams. One would start at Nenana, Alaska, the closest railhead on the Alaska Railroad, and the other at Nome, and they would meet roughly halfway in the town of Nulato. The trip from Nulato to Nome normally took 30 days. Curtis Welch estimated that the serum would last only six days under the brutal conditions of the trail. Summers's employee, the Norwegian sled dog trainer and musher Leonhard Seppala, was chosen for the 630-mile (1,014 km) round trip from Nome to Nulato and back. He had previously made the run in a record-breaking four days, won the All-Alaska Sweepstakes three times, and had become famous for his athletic ability and rapport with his Siberian huskies. His lead dog, the 12-year-old Togo, was equally famous for his leadership, intelligence, and ability to sense danger.
Maynard proposed flying the antitoxin by plane. In 1925, planes were a relatively new technology, and Alaska's harsh winter weather made them unreliable. Several test flights had been conducted the previous year between Fairbanks and McGrath, Alaska, to determine how well a reliable aircraft could handle the winter conditions. The longest test flight flew a distance of only 260 miles (420 km), a little under half the necessary distance between Nenana and Nome. Furthermore, the only planes operating in Alaska in 1925 were three vintage biplanes, which had been dismantled for the winter; their open cockpits and water-cooled engines would make these planes unfit for the trip as well. Although it was potentially quicker, the proposal to deliver the antitoxin by flight was rejected by the board of health. Instead, they voted unanimously for the dogsled relay. Seppala was notified that evening and immediately began preparations for the trip.
The U.S. Public Health Service had located 1.1 million units of serum in West Coast hospitals which could be shipped to Seattle, Washington, and then transported to Alaska. The next ship north would not arrive in Seattle until January 31, and it would take another six to seven days to arrive in Seward. On January 26, however, 300,000 forgotten units of the antitoxin were located in a hospital in Anchorage. The supply was wrapped in glass vials, then padded quilts, and finally a metallic cylinder weighing a little over 20 pounds (9 kg). At Governor Scott Bone's order, it was immediately shipped to Nenana and arrived the next day. While not sufficient to defeat the epidemic, the 300,000 units could slow the spread of the disease until the larger shipment arrived.
The temperatures across the Alaskan Interior were at 20-year lows due to a high pressure system from the Arctic; in Fairbanks the temperature was −50 °F (−46 °C). Winds reaching speeds of 25 mph (40 km/h) caused snow to cover the Alaska Panhandle in snowdrifts up to 10-foot (3 m) tall. Travel by sea was hazardous, and across the Interior, most forms of transportation shut down. Furthermore there were limited hours of daylight to fly due to the polar night.I never had a better dog than Togo. His stamina, loyalty, and intelligence could not be improved upon. Togo was the best dog that ever traveled the Alaska trail.
Katy Steinmetz, writing in Time magazine, also thought that Togo was the greatest sled dog of all time. In the serum run, she wrote, Togo was the real hero:... the dog that often gets credit for eventually saving the town is Balto, but he just happened to run the last, 55 miles [89 km] leg in the race. The sled dog who did the lion's share of the work was Togo. His journey, fraught with white-out storms, was the longest by  200 miles [320 km] and included a traverse across perilous Norton Sound – where he saved his team and driver in a courageous swim through ice floes.