Anchorage Daily News

Polaris Dragon drivers Todd Minnick and Nick Olstad were laughing and relaxing in the village of Kaltag on Monday evening, wondering what the rest of the Tesoro Iron Dog snowmobile leaders were doing camped out back down the Yukon River in Galena.

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"I don't know why they stopped in daylight,'' Minnick said.

Better, he thought, to run up the frozen Yukon River in sunlight with the temperature at 40 below than make the run in the dark at 50 below.

"I think the guys are going to have fun tonight,'' he said, but he did not mean "fun."

Even if nothing breaks at 50 below -- and everything is far more prone to break at that temperature than at zero -- operating problems arise. For one thing, goggles frost up, and it's impossible to run without them and not freeze your eyeballs.

Even at 30 to 40 below Monday afternoon, Minnick said, he and Olstad had "lots of google problems.''

What Minnick expected to be a run of just a little more than an hour on the 95 miles of trail between Galena and Kaltag took 80 minutes because the racers had to keep stopping to clear frost off their goggles.

They were happy to finally reach the checkpoint where the Yukon River makes its big bend south.

"It's beautiful here,'' Minnick said by telephone from a host's home in the village. "It's crisp and cold. Getting here was really chilly. It was so sunny, it kind of fooled you. (But) it was frickin' cold.''

Minnick, a 29-year-old racer from Palmer, and Olstad, 26, from Wasilla, pulled into the village just before 4 p.m. and declared a 10-hour layover, one of many that must be taken along the trail. It is a safety precaution, as is requiring the racers to travel in pairs.

Little or no help -- except that which racers can provide to each other -- is available across most of the state north of Big Lake, where the Iron Dog race began Sunday. It heads up and over the Alaska Range, across the desolate Interior and on to the Bering Sea coast for about 1,100 miles to Nome. There racers take a long break, hold a halfway celebration, and then resume racing back to Fairbanks.

The first team there Saturday is guaranteed at least $25,000 from the $160,000 purse. Thousands more are to be had in checkpoint prizes along the race or course or in incentives from businesses.

Global Fuel in Nome offers $2,500 to the first team reaching that city. Polaris and Arctic Cat both promise $3,000 to a team that can win on their machines. A win on a Ski-Doo, meanwhile, is good for $6,000.

If two rookies can win, they stand to make an additional $10,000 from something called the Rookies Finish Line Challenge. No rookie teams were in contention Monday night, although a couple rookie drivers paired with veterans were doing well.

The chase pack in Galena behind Minnick and Olstad was being led by Ski-Doo jockeys Tyler Aklestad from Palmer and Tyson Johnson from Eagle River, who though young -- 23 and 29, respectively -- are experienced. This is Aklestad's fourth Iron Dog, and Johnson's 10th.

Within minutes of those two came a gaggle of old vets:

• Twenty-two minutes back were Marc McKenna, 34, from Anchorage and Dusty Van Meter, 39, from Kasilof on another pair of Ski-Doos. McKenna won with Eric Quam last year and with Olstad in 2005. Van Meter is a three-time winner, who also happens to be the only man in the state to have won both the Iron Dog and the junior Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. He did his first Iron Dog in 1994.

• Thirty-six minutes back were Quam, 38, from Eagle River and Bradley Helwig, 35, from Anchorage, aboard Arctic Cats. Helwig, the general manager of Anchorage Suzuki and Arctic Cat, is a rookie to the Iron Dog but no rookie to snowmobile racing. He was the top-running rookie Monday night.

• Sixty-one minutes back were Scott Davis, 49, from Soldotna, and Todd Palin, 44, from Wasilla. Davis is tied with the now-retired John Faeo for the most victories in Iron Dog history with seven. Palin, husband of Gov. Sarah Palin, has won four times. He and Davis were second in 2006 and 2007 and won in 2008. But they dropped to fourth last year after Palin crashed going into Galena and broke his arm.

• Ninety minutes back was one of the few surprises in the race, the team of 23-year-old Tyler Huntington from Galena and 23-year-old Mike Morgan from Anchorage. Huntington is a veteran with an impressive third-place finish last year, coming off a seventh place showing in 2007. But Morgan is a rookie. He has, however, twice won the always hotly contested Nome-Golovin snowmobile race.

• And a little under two hours back were Dwayne Drake, 44, from Fairbanks and Andy George, 45, from Wasilla. The 2006 winners, they were second last year to McKenna and Quam.

Weather conditions for today look good -- clear and cold -- but Minnick noted that can change fast.

"We've already had every kind of weather but rain,'' he said.

Find Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.

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