Crews work through the night to clear Iron Dog trail for racers
Team 7, Tyler Aklestad and Nick Olstad, arrive first in Ruby. Heavy snow from the past few days prompted the four leading teams to declare back-to-back 10-hour layovers to avoid slogging through unbroken trail. (Courtesy Melissa Captain)
The winter storm that blasted across western Alaska over the past week has wreaked havoc on the southbound Iron Dog trail, and the four frontrunners in the race are holed up in Ruby trying to figure out how to deal with it. Teams 7, 10, 16 and 14 all declared 20-hour layovers in Ruby, hoping that will give trail breakers enough time to clear sections of trail that have been reported as snowed in.
“There was a tremendous amount of snow that happened there in those areas between Poorman and Ophir and Rohn and Puntilla,” said Race Marshal Dave Bathke. “And there is a tremendous amount of work going into clearing them.”
Fortunately, the snow appeared to have lessoned by late Thursday night.
“It’s just a little light snow right now,” said Ruby checkpoint leader Chris Williams. “It’s snowed just enough to cover the seat covers on the sleds, so it’s not bad.”
Team 7, Tyler Aklestad and Nick Olstad, remain the leaders – they arrived in Ruby at 5:15 p.m., followed by Team 10, defending two-time champions Chris Olds and Mike Morgan, at 5:54 p.m. Team 16, Daniel Thibault and Todd Minnick, and Team 14, Casey Boylan and Bryan Leslie, are also in Ruby.
All four teams opted to take their two required 10-hour layovers back-to-back, gambling that it will make for smoother and faster riding once back on a groomed trail.
“Nobody wants to go out the road first,” Williams said. “We’ve got a couple of trailbreakers who left here to get that last 45 miles punched in. They know the area pretty well.”
John Woodbury, Iron Dog executive director, reported at 8:30 p.m. Thursday that board member Roger Brown was out grooming trail during the day.
“He is 30 miles south of Cripple and 60 miles north of Ophir,” Woodbury wrote on an Iron Dog Facebook Group Post. “Poorman Crossing is not punched through yet.”
By 10 p.m., Bobby Frankson from Galena had arrived in Ruby and was headed toward Poorman.
“We anticipate trail-breaking of the Poorman Crossing to go through the night,” Woodbury said. “We are not sure how long this task will take, so racers please employ your strategy, and employ much caution for potential two-way traffic along the crossing.”
By taking their layovers back to back, the front-runners will now have just one six-hour flex layover left between Ruby and the finish in Big Lake, roughly 575 miles away.
“It’s allowed by the rules, and it’s well played on their part based on the information they had when they checked in,” Bathke said. “You make decisions based on the information you have at the time and that’s what they did.”
Meanwhile, Williams said, the bed and breakfasts are filling up in Ruby, with eight talented racers who, coming off a long layover in Nome with tuned-up sleds, don't have a lot to do but rest.
“All those guys are at the same bed and breakfast so they’re probably all up there talking about what they’re going to do, who’s going to go first,” Williams said. “It’ll have to be Team 7; their layover will be up first.”
“This is quite the testing ground right now,” Bathke said. “It’s like a chess game. At the end of the day you go back to ‘What is Iron Dog’?”
The answer: The World’s Longest, Toughest Snowmobile Race.