Iron Dog rookies Ray Wells and Norman Sheldon were late to Finger Lake on the south slope of the Alaska Range Sunday, and they paid the price. While the leaders in the world's longest, toughest snowmachine race were through the mountains and raicng for McGrah on the Kuskokwim River in the Interior, Wells and Sheldon were taking a beating from an unfriendly Iditarod Trail as they climbed into the mountains.
"The trail was just totally banged out,'' the 53-year-old Wells said Sunday night after he and his 26-year-old partner limped their machines into Perrins Rainy Pass Lodge on Puntilla Lake.
Ahead of them, 58 snowmobiles in 29 teams of two had gone bouncing and track spinning their way north into the mountains. The landings that followed the bouncing cratered the trail. The tracks spinning dug big ruts. Wells, an employee of ASRC Energy Services who splits his time between Anchorage and Fairbanks, and Sheldon, a resident of the remote Northwest Alaska community of Selawik, had to battle it all.
They got stuck. They got off their machines. They went into the snow waist deep. They struggled to get their machines moving again. Wells' broke. He looked tired and Sheldon looked to be sporting some bruises when interviewed by Alaska Dispatch's Alice Rogoff at the lodge.
Here's they're account of what it's like to ride the first leg of the 2,000-mile Iron Dog:
Video shot by Alice Rogoff. Contact Alice at alice(at)alaskadispatch.com and Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com