Outdoors/Adventure

Soggy Iron Dog racers bust out of McGrath; Johnson, Aklestad scratch

Dried out after a night in the tiny, riverside community of McGrath in Alaska's normally frigid Interior, the leaders in the 2,000 mile Iron Dog snowmachine race were paddling north again today into one of the weirdest Februarys in recent history.

Having spun their way over bare ground and flooded trail north of the Alaska Range after leaving Big Lake on Sunday, the race leader awoke Monday to what promised to be another wet and mushy day on the trail. The 10 a.m. temperature in McGrath was 37 degrees.

Just to be clear for Alaskans, that would be 37 degrees above zero. The average low for McGrath on this date is 8 degrees below zero. The record low for the date is 48 degrees below zero.

The warm weather conditions have made for sloppy going, but eight teams arrived in McGrath within an hour of each other. By midday, five were back on the trail, led by Marc McKenna from Anchorage and new partner Allen Hill from Big Lake. Just a minute behind them were 2008 champion Eric Quam and 31-year-old Scott Faeo, the son of John Faeo, who is tied with veteran Scott Davis of Soldotna with eight victories, the most in Iron Dog history.

Most major contenders are in the lead pack, sans Tyson Johnson from Eagle River and Tyler Aklestad from Palmer. They dropped out for unknown reasons.

Johnson is a three-time Iron Dog runnerup. It appeared from a GPS satellite tracker on his sled that he stopped on the Yentna River not far from Big Lake just after the race start and then returned to Palmer with Akelstad.

Racers compete in teams for safety reasons, and if one racer is forced to quit because of a mechanical failure or injury his teammate is out too.

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The official race leaders as of 11 a.m. were four-time race champ Mark McKenna from Anchorage and new partner Allen Hill from Big Lake, but there were so many top teams grouped at the front that their lead was pretty much meaningless.

The teams race to the historic community of Nome on the Bering Sea, pause for a day off, and then turn and race south and east to finish in Fairbanks on Saturday.

Craig Medred

Craig Medred is a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2015.

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