Cold, smooth run up the coast for Iditarod frontrunners
Covering more than 1,000 miles of Alaska, the Iditarod Trail winds through vastly different landscapes. Perhaps no bigger change occurs than when the trail spills out from the Interior onto the Bering Sea coast at Unalakleet.
Veteran Iditarod musher Lev Shvarts said that comparing the two landscapes would be like comparing apples and motorcycles.
“It’s a completely different type and texture of snow,” Shvarts said. “The wind is an issue on the Yukon some years, but it’s nothing like it is on the coast. And the coast is hilly country, but it’s also more well-traveled country, so there’s really no comparison.
Shvarts wasn’t competing in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race this year. Instead, he was stationed in Unalakleet as a race judge. From that vantage point, the competition still looked tight over the weekend, with the lead mushers often switching positions.
Jessie Holmes was the first to reach the checkpoint in Unalakleet on Sunday. He arrived at 12:33 p.m. with 11 dogs in harness. Five-time Iditarod champion Dallas Seavey was just 17 minutes behind fhim. While Holmes rested his team, Seavey pushed on through. Travis Beals, who had held a lead earlier in the race, pulled in a couple hours later, with Matt Hall close behind him.
By the time they reach Unalakleet, the mushers and their dog teams have already covered about 700 miles. And the next stretch will make or break their finish.
“In every Iditarod I’ve run, I’ve always been incredibly happy to finally see Unalakleet,” Shvarts said. “I think there’s a point in the race where the dogs have been running for so long, they hit another gear, and that usually happens around Unalakleet.”
The teams need that momentum once they leave the checkpoint. The run up the coast to Nome can present a host of notoriously difficult and unpredictable challenges. There’s often glare ice, jumble ice and whipping winds across Norton Bay. Raging windstorms with whiteout conditions in the Topkok Hills have stomped many mushers’ dreams of finishing the race. By that point in the race, the frontrunners have racked up a big deficit of sleep.I
Another Iditarod veteran Eric Kelly was stationed as a volunteer at the next checkpoint in Shaktoolik— where he had a harrowing experience last year and scratched from the race.
When he was between Unalakleet and Shaktoolik in 2023, winds were howling at 50 miles per hour, and he couldn’t see from one trail marker to the next.
“Then it got to where I couldn’t see the trail markers for few miles,” Kelly said. His goggles filled with snow, but he could just make out the haze of the lights of Shaktoolik for what felt like hours without getting closer. Then, his dogs quit.
Gloria Andrew, the custodian of the Shaktoolik School, went out to check on Kelly on her snowmachine and then sent for help.
As of press time this year, there were no such rescues. The mushers in the front of the pack were blessed with much more favorable weather. On Monday afternoon, Kelly said he had been hearing from the arriving mushers that the trail between Unalakleet and Shaktoolik was cold and windy, but he didn’t hear of any ground blizzards.
“The skies have been clear,” Kelly said. “The temperatures are much colder than the year before. With a light wind, it’s been getting to 55 below here at the checkpoint.”
The stretch of trail between Shaktoolik and Koyuk goes across the sea ice—and in some years has been the site of disorienting ground storms, as Kelly experienced during another Iditarod run.
“It was a weird thing where I could stand up on my sled and I could see to Koyuk, but I couldn’t see my dogs because the ground blizzard was about four feet off the ice,” Kelly said. “It was one of the weirdest, strangest mushing experiences I’ve ever had in my life.”
But this year, again, conditions of the sea ice worked in the frontrunners’ favor.
“It’s really nice because the trail this year from Shaktoolik to Koyuk is straight across,” said Iditarod Race Director Mark Nordman.
After flying over the trail on the Norton Sound coast, Nordman told the Nugget that looks “hard and fast.”
Seavey was proving that to be true. He arrived in White Mountain at 11:53 p.m. Monday night with 10 dogs. He promptly dressed and fed his team under the watchful eye of a few dozen residents, volunteers and media. The temperature dipped to 25 Fahrenheit with windchill.
“Man, I’m sore,” Seavey said as he prepared the food for the dogs. “I can’t wait to get to Nome,”
He moved efficiently through his tasks, handing out booties to kids that stuck around to watch him. On Tuesday morning, at 7:53 a.m., exactly eight hours later, he headed for Nome with the 10 dogs he arrived with.
Following Seavey was Matt Hall, who arrived in White Mountain at 3:01 a.m., and Holmes, who arrived at 4:35 a.m. White Mountain is the last village checkpoint of the race, where team have to take a mandatory eight hour rest before covering the last 77 miles to Nome.
The weather on Tuesday morning was mild with a shining sun, clear skies and little wind. The -15°F temperatures got warmer as the day went on. Seavey kept a quick pace between White Mountain and Nome,
arriving under the burled arch at 5:16 p.m. and taking his sixth championship
about nine hours after leaving his final rest stop.