Alaska News

Madcap mass start makes Akiak Dash wackiest of Kusko races

BETHEL — It wasn't exactly like "Ben-Hur," but the mushers and their eager dog teams raced away from Bethel in a mass — even madcap — start to the Akiak Dash on Saturday afternoon.

Fourteen teams lined up just a few feet from one another on the frozen Kuskokwim River, dusted with an inch or so of fresh, dry snow that kept falling. Six rookies were in the mix. When race marshal Bill Eggimann ?— a Bethel family doctor — gave the sign, racers charged up the trail and some sleds looked to be almost on top of each other. But no one fell off, flipped or ran over anyone else's team.

"There's about four of them there that one little wrong move would have had a very chaotic effect," said Zach Fansler, Kuskokwim 300 race manager. But the mushers drove well, he said, resulting in a "very clean" start.

The quick 65-mile run on the Kuskokwim to the village of Akiak and back is one of the high points of a weekend of intense sled dog racing out of Bethel that includes the flagship Kuskokwim 300 race.

While the big-money Kusko 300 is loaded with Iditarod elites, the lower-key Akiak Dash provides entertainment, competition and an opportunity for locals, some of whom are relatively new to mushing, to cash in.

As mushers and their seven-dog teams left Bethel, fans, family, friends and helpers took off after them on the river ice road in trucks, cars, snowmachines and four-wheelers.

By 4:31 p.m., Johnnie Evan, 56, of Napaskiak, one of the older Dash mushers, had reached the Akiak halfway point, chased by race newcomer Cukayak Olick, 18, of Kwethluk. Mushers take a one-hour break there before the push back down the ice to Bethel.

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"It's chaos, but it's fun," said Patrick Jones, father of one of the rookies, 16-year-old Kyle Jones of Bethel.

At the start line, the younger Jones glanced up and down the close line of racers.

"I'm just hoping we don't get all tangled," he said.

Next to him was a young veteran, Joan Klejka, a high school junior from Bethel in her third Akiak Dash.

Her advice for the mass start: "Have your foot over the brake the entire time."

That's akin to what Kwethluk's Evan Olick told his son, racer Cukayak, running a team from uncle Max Olick's Bad River Kennels. Drag on the way out of Bethel, but not so hard that it tires the dogs.

"Take your time on the way up," Evan Olick told him. "Work hard on the way home."

It's all a learning experience for the young people, Evan Olick said.

And in Yup'ik, he told his son to "watch out" for the musher to his right.

At the mushers' meeting Friday night before the race, another rookie, Rayme Nose, 17, of Akiachak, said he is becoming immersed in mushing but finds dog care challenging. His dogs eat well on subsistence-caught foods: whitefish, red salmon and "all the kinds of fishes," plus beaver and sometimes caribou.

As mushers head back into Bethel on Saturday night, they'll be aiming for a share of the $12,500 purse, with $3,500 to the winner, $2,500 for second, $2,000 for third and $1,000 for fourth place. Payoffs go down from there, but everyone who finishes should get something.

Johnnie Evan came in at 8:30 p.m to win the Akiak Dash, according to the K300 trail committee.

Lisa Demer

Lisa Demer was a longtime reporter for the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Dispatch News. Among her many assignments, she spent three years based in Bethel as the newspaper's western Alaska correspondent. She left the ADN in 2018.

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