MONDAY, FEB. 19, 2024 — A tightly packed field of teams kept fans on edge all day as Iron Dog 40 heated up into Kotzebue. Team 14’s Bryan Leslie and Casey Boylan held onto their lead, arriving in Kotzebue at just before 4:30 p.m. Not too far behind them, though, were Teams 39, 10, 9 and 6. At the time, all those teams were between 20 and 70 miles away from Kotzebue, and they trickled in during dwindling daylight and visibility as a ground storm took over the area.

“It’s real whiteout conditions here, and you can barely decipher the ice from the clouds,” said Paulette Schuerch of Kotzebue, who was reporting on the race for KOTZ-AM, while simultaneously keeping an eye out for her son, George “Radar” Lambert of Team 33, who was not far behind. “The snow is blowing, and everyone is really excited in all our rural communities for this race.” 

The day was not without some mishaps, though.

Hometown Kotzebue favorites Lambert and Skyler Wells had been in the Top 5 until just before Selawik, Schuerch said. Suddenly, their GPS showed no movement, and she itched to know what was happening. Finally, the word came in: Her son was OK; his sled, not so much.

“I’m OK now that I know he’s OK,” she said, laughing. “He apparently had a crash, and Skyler dragged him in to Selawik.” Schuerch said Lambert and Wells took a two-hour layover in Selawik, where locals had spare parts from identical sleds available. They were back on the trail by 7 p.m.

Proving even that champions are not immune to misfortune, Team 7’s bid for a three-peat victory came to a disappointing end, after Nick Olstad and Tyler Aklestad towed a broken sled from Koyuk to Kotzebue. After two earlier setbacks – a dip in overflow on Day 1 and a damaged A-arm on Day 2, today was the last straw.

Speaking to Iron Dog Board of Directors member Johnny Dean Monday evening, Aklestad described coming up off the ice out of Buckland in near-zero visibility and running into steel drums and other debris on the trail.

“All of a sudden, it was 2 feet in front of me and then it was gone,” Aklestad said. With the damage to his sled, he and Olstad made the decision to double back on the more direct route from Buckland to Kotzebue. They scratched in Buckland.

“Since Day 1, we kind of had that snowball effect where once it starts going bad it keeps building,” Aklestad added. “It wasn’t our year, but props to those guys up front; they are all having a good run, and we’ll be back next year.”

Dean said weather is proving to be the primary challenge for all racers, particularly lack of visibility.

“If it’s this bad tomorrow, it’s going to be tough,” he said. “There’s supposed to be a storm all the way through tomorrow, and it’s supposed to let up Wednesday. Pretty much everyone’s saying you might as well put a white bucket over your head.”

Dean noted that local search-and-rescue is on standby; if experienced racers like Aklestad and Olstad are struggling, it’s hard to imagine what first-timers are experiencing.

Take the youngest team on the trail, for example. Team 41, with a combined age of 37, took a one-hour layover so racer Tyler Reese, following a get-off at high speed, could have his chin stitched up at the Buckland clinic. It was a momentary setback, but one that proves that it takes mettle to tackle the World’s Longest, Toughest Snowmobile Race.   

Those at the front of the pack know this well. Second into Kotzebue was Team 39, Cody Barber and Brett Lapham, who were happy to have a break from the whiteout conditions that plagued them all day.

“We had a very good ride into Kotzebue today,” Barber said. “It was very whiteout, blizzard, no trail, so we were kind of just keeping her clean, running a safe pace. Now we’re just waiting for my brother (Evan Barber of Team 9) to get here.”

Lapham, Barber’s brother-in-law, said the goal was a clean race – “it was a good day, and we definitely had luck on our side today,” he said.

“No wipeouts today, and that’s our goal for the rest of the race,” Barber added. 

Tuesday’s restart from Kotzebue will begin at 9 a.m., said race marshal Stan Brown.

“The Top 5 teams will go out on their actual splits times, not to exceed 30 minutes,” he said, “and the remainder of them will be released on their actual split times, not to exceed 5 minutes.” 

With teams still stacked up on the east side of the Red Dog Loop, some may opt to layover outside of Kotzebue, Brown noted. Not a problem, as long as they don’t leave Kotzebue before 9 a.m. Tuesday and are beyond Kotzebue by 11:59 p.m. Tuesday. 

 “Everybody doesn’t have to be present for that restart; they just have to be beyond Kotzebue by the deadline,” he added.