Barber/Lapham win Iron Dog, Morgan/Kishbaugh place third
Cody Barber and Brett Lapham, team 39, were the first to cross the Iron Dog finish line in Big Lake on Sunday afternoon after battling challenging weather throughout the 2,500-mile race. The first-time champions arrived just after 12:20 p.m. with a course time of 54 hours, 36 minutes and 10 seconds.
Casey Boylan and Bryan Leslie of Team 14 finished in second place, 12 minutes behind the winners, despite overcoming a setback in White Mountain. Boylan’s snowmachine caught fire when refueling in White Mountain on the way back from the halfway point in Nome. It took two fire extinguishers to extinguish the flames, Alaska’s News Source reported, and after a two hour break, the racers were back on the course where they went on to finish in second place.
Nome’s Mike Morgan and Bradley Kishbaugh of Soldotna, team six, claimed third place almost an hour later.
Halfway point in Nome
The Iron Dog passed through Nome last Tuesday Feb. 19 in a frenzy of snowmachines, barreling down Front Street for the first time in years. Iditarod musher DeeDee Jonrowe, who traded the dog team for an iron dog, was part of the ambassador rider team and was waiting at the inflatable finish line arch presenting big hugs to the teams that crossed it. It was her first time to come to Nome by snowmachine, but it wasn’t any easier, Jonrowe said.
The Pro Class teams and many expedition teams arrived in the afternoon after 3 p.m. with team 39 first in. Just in time, as winds picked up into a winter storm that lasted most of the night and through the next day. With machines parked safe and sound in the Nome Public Works building, the racers hunkered down for a rest before wrenching activities the next day.
Wrenching
Rows of machines sat patiently waiting for repairs the morning of Feb. 21 with competitors buzzing around them, making lists and checking twice what they needed to complete before hitting the trail the following day. Racers had unlimited time to work, but every second counts as it’s added to their total race time. Around noon the first teams began work, in a frenzy they checked under the hood, some of them replacing the whole front panel of their machines. Crowds gathered in the garage as community members and other teams looked on at the work being done. Some teams were in and out in five minutes, others took almost an hour to get their rigs back to racing standard. A brief pause in work was held at 4 p.m. for the halfway banquet to take place.
Banquet
Iron Dog Executive Director Mike Vasser presented at the halfway banquet in the Nome Mini Convention Center while the full crowd looked on, many of them still exhausted from their journey to Nome. Some Expedition Class teams had yet to arrive, they fought through a winter storm while Vasser read off contingency prizes like the $10,000 prize for fastest course to Nome which went to team 39.
About an hour into the banquet the last Expedition Class riders arrived, looking haggard from their journey through the white-out storm. Vasser brought them up on stage to cheers from the crowd. Nick Gustafson and Taylor McLean are Polaris snowmachine engineers. “Thank you to everyone who helped make this possible. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Gustafson said.