Dog Sled Racing. March 28, 2019

Copyright © 2019                               John F. Oyler 

March 28, 2019

Dog Sled Racing

I have been a sports fan most of my life, but in recent years my interest in big time sports has declined significantly. I try to keep up with what is happening with the local professional and college teams, mostly so I can discuss them with my friends who are still addicted to following them. Dog sled racing is an exception; I still find it extremely interesting and am a little frustrated no one else is aware of it and that the local media ignore it completely.

I realize that writing a column about this subject will automatically trigger vehement responses from several organizations who are opposed to this sport. I respect their opinion and their right to express it, but I personally am comfortable with the domestication of wild animals and their relationship with humans. Hearing from these folks at least is an indication that someone is reading my columns.

Each year I follow two one-thousand-mile long races – the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod.  This year the Yukon Quest ran from Whitehorse in Canada’s Yukon Territory to Fairbanks, Alaska. The route is reversed in alternate years. Thanks to the Internet and a GPS tracker it is possible to keep track of each musher’s progress.

This year thirty mushers started the race; twenty-seven finished it with Brett Sass coming in first, followed closely by Hans Gatt. Allen Moore was third; Michelle Phillips, fourth.

Moore’s wife Ally Zirkle would compete in this year’s Iditarod as would Phillips’ husband Ed Hopkins. Fifth place went to Matt Hall and sixth to Paige Drobny; both of them would also be Iditarod competitors this year, as would Jesse Royer, ninth place, and Martin Apayauq Reitan, fourteenth place.

Twenty-one-year old Reitan was Rookie of the Year in this year’s Quest. He is the son of a Norwegian father, himself an Iditarod finisher, and a Inupiaq mother. His achievement came despite bitter cold (forty degrees below zero) weather in the first half of the race and a “whiteout” blizzard on Eagle Summit near the end of the race.

The Yukon Quest is, in many respects, more challenging than the Iditarod. However, expanded coverage and the tradition of the Iditarod make it even more enjoyable to follow. This year fifty-two teams started the race; forty finished. One of the twelve mushers who “scratched”, Nic Petit, provided the biggest story of this year’s Iditarod.

Petit is a highly competitive musher who had a comfortable lead in last year’s race when he went through the Shaktoolik checkpoint, mile post 777. About fifteen miles beyond Shaktoolik, the trail leaves the mainland and begins a thirty-five mile crossing of Norton Sound on (Bering) sea ice. 

Halfway across Sound Petit found his team in a blizzard that completely obliterated the trail markers. The GPS tracker’s record of their aimless wandering in circles was a tiny indication of the trauma the team underwent. Eventually the storm subsided and Petit was able to get back on the trail in time for a second-place finish to the ultimate winner, Joar Ulsom. 

This year Petit found himself in a similar situation when he reached Shaktoolik with a two-hour lead on his nearest competitors. When he reached Norton Sound, disaster struck again. This time, when he got onto the sea ice, his team refused to go on, apparently still traumatized by what had happened there a year ago. Being unwilling to subject his dogs to another terrifying experience, he led them back to the checkpoint and withdrew from the race.

His withdrawal provided Peter Kaiser with the opportunity to pass him and to eventually win the race, edging out Ulsom by twelve minutes. It is remarkable that two teams can mush a thousand miles in nine and a half days and still be only twelve minutes apart. 

This was Kaiser’s first Iditarod championship. He too is part Eskimo; his great grandmother was a Yup’ik who married a gold miner. Kaiser’s home is Bethel, Alaska, a primarily native community that is not connected to the Alaska highway system; it can be reached only by air or by sea. 

Ulsom is a native Norwegian who came to Alaska seven years ago and immediately made his mark as a competitive musher. This year, when Petit was struggling to get his team going, Ulsom stopped and attempted to help him. He is typical of the people who have chosen to compete as mushers, immensely likeable people who love competing more than they love winning and whose relationship with their dogs is their highest priority.

Jesse Royer had her highest ever Iditarod finish at number three. She is a special favorite of mine; in 2004 my wife and I met her at one of the stops on our riverboat cruise on the Tanana River. At that time she was working for Susan Butcher and just beginning to run Iditarods. 

We also visited Jeff King’s “Husky Haven” at Denali that year. It is easy for me to root for him; this year he came in thirteenth. When his dogs passed under the “Burled Arch” at the finish in Nome, they looked like they were ready for another thousand miles.

Ed Hopkins is the other musher we met in 2004, at Tagish Lake in the Yukon Territory. Most years Ed has run in the Yukon Quest and his wife Michelle Phillips in the Iditarod. This year they traded places. Ed came in a respectable twenty-second this year; it will be interesting to see what their plans are for next year.

Fourth place went to Ally Zirkle, the seventh time she has finished eighth or higher. Travis Beals came in fifth, followed by Matt Hall (sixth) and Paige Drobny (seventh). The fact that three women finished in the top seven is another interesting characteristic of this sport – it is the only major one in which men and women do compete equally.

Strategy plays an important role in long distance dogsled racing. Throughout most of the race the mushers alternate runs with rest periods. Winner Peter Kaiser typically ran six hours, then rested four. Sometimes the rests were taken at checkpoints, but frequently the mushers and dogs camped out in the wilderness.

There are three mandatory rests that must be taken at checkpoints, primarily to permit veterinarians to check out the dogs. One mandatory eight-hour stop is at White Mountain, 77 miles before the finish at Nome. Another one must be taken at one of the three checkpoints on the Yukon River. The twenty-four-hour stop may be made at any checkpoint, at the discretion of the musher. This decision frequently affects the outcome of the race, especially when weather conditions change unexpectedly.

Weather is a major variable. This year’s Iditarod was warm enough (temperature in the 20s in the afternoon) that many mushers chose to rest in the afternoon and run overnight. There were also long stretches where high winds and heavy snow made the going particularly slow.

Each team started out with fourteen dogs and dropped dogs off at checkpoints whenever they detected any indication of a problem. The dogs were then air-lifted back to Anchorage by the Iditarod Air Force, a collection of volunteer bush pilots. It is interesting that the four men finishing in the top seven finished with eight dogs, while the three women finished with eleven. I wonder if that is a coincidence.

The contribution of volunteers to provide logistics for such a race is immense. The mushers provide bags of food that are left for them at each checkpoint. Also available at each checkpoint is a bale of straw for each musher; straw is spread out for each dog to sleep on whenever they rest. One wonders how this was handled in the early days of the Iditarod.

I paid thirty-five dollars for “Insider” privileges on the Iditarod website. This gave me access to the GPS Tracker and frequent videos from the checkpoints. Consequently, I was able to follow the race closely and understand some of the strange things that occurred.

So why am I so intrigued with this event? I suspect it begins with the dogs; who wouldn’t be impressed with dogs running a thousand miles in ten days in the Alaska wilderness? And, the mushers and their obvious love for the dogs cannot be ignored. The contrast between these wonderful people and the prima donnas who populate big time professional sports is dramatic. 

Jeff King is the current all-time money winner in the Iditarod. He has competed twenty-six times, won four times, and earned a little less than one million dollars. I suspect the number of professional athletes who earn that much each year is in the thousands. And I wonder how many of them could finish an Iditarod.

Another factor is that, like golf and tennis, the competitors are individuals, not highly recruited teams representing universities or cities. It is nice to be able to foot for all the competitors rather than being required to develop a hatred for Ohio State or the Baltimore Ravens. There should be more to sports than proving your community is superior to every other community.

It does appear that the mushers are more interested in helping each other than in their own success in the race. This year Linwood Fiedler’s team ran away when the guide line connecting them to their sled broke. A few minutes later Mats Pettersson arrived, sized up the situation, attached Fiedler’s sled to the back of his, and proceeded to tow both sleds and mushers down the trail at a greatly reduced speed.

Eventually they found Fiedler’s dogs, got them untangled, and hitched up to their sled. All told Pettersson lost four or five hours and probably four places. He eventually finished in twentieth place; Fiedler, in twelfth. When interviewed after the end of the race Fiedler was quite emotional about Pettersson’s help and gave it as an example of the kind of people all the mushers are.

The overall drama of the race and the instantly changing weather and trail conditions are quite intriguing. Nonetheless I guess I am most impressed with the picture of a musher and a team of dogs in the middle of the night with the temperature thirty degrees below zero, just as happy as can be to be sharing the experience together.