Returning to Iditarod Trail after 23 years, Wally Robinson gets ‘back in the groove’

NIKOLAI — Twenty-three years have passed since Wally Robinson’s last Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, but the Nenana musher is back.

Robinson was a rookie in 2001, finishing 40th. It was his one and only attempt, until now.

“It’s awesome to be back on Iditarod, and just the whole culture and the whole lifestyle with the race, it’s just cool to be back, a part of it again,” he said.

Robinson and his 16 dogs were resting in Nikolai on Tuesday after safely making it through some of the race’s most treacherous sections, which he said had made him rethink his decision to return to the Iditarod.

But he said plenty of it had been familiar.

“Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely some locations that bring back memories that you go to, and yeah, just some checkpoint routines and different stuff like that, you kind of get back in the groove,” he said. “But yeah, it’s been a long time.”

[Previous coverage: ‘On my bucket list’: Why this musher is returning to the Iditarod 23 years after his last finish]

The last time Robinson was in the Iditarod, the race didn’t have beacons tracking the mushers in real time. He said that meant keeping up with the race required looking at checkpoint times that were sometimes posted 12 hours later. Robinson said adding GPS tracking changed how mushers strategize.

He’d moved to Alaska to run the Iditarod and never left. His daughter Emily, now a three-time Junior Iditarod champion, wasn’t even born yet.

When Robinson and his wife Alissa decided to have a family, he had to work to support them, and since then he’s been more of a mushing coach for his kids, including his son Stanley, who also runs sled dogs.

Then, Robinson’s friend and fellow dog musher Josh McNeal, following his own Iditarod dreams this year, hurt his shoulder in the Kuskokwim 300. So McNeal asked Robinson if he wanted to get back into the Last Great Race. Robinson said yes and added three of the Robinson Racing Kennel huskies to McNeal’s team.

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In Nikolai, Robinson still had all of his dogs.

“The team’s doing real good, yeah, I’m really happy with their performance, and we’re just taking it easy,” he said. “Still got a long ways to go, we’re only, whatever, 300 miles in, so, yeah, there’s a long, long race ahead of us.”

Robinson’s bucket-list Iditarod run continued after a long rest in Nikolai.

This story originally appeared on Alaska Public Media and is republished here with permission.