Iron Dog Race – 2017 Coverage Day 2

Iron Dog Race - Day 2 - Pushing Toward the Coast

The evening of Day 1 found riders in the Iron Dog race stopping earlier than planned, some even backtracking on the trail, and a few teams also facing a forced scratch after insurmountable equipment damages very early on.  It is unclear why, but we saw several racers make the decision to hole up in Rohn, far from the normal first layover checkpoint of McGrath.  Palin/Quam, Morgan/Olds, Conlon/Fulsom, to name just a few have declared layover here, which could be a sign of early damage to the sleds from the blistering pace this trail is allowing this year. Team 18 Zwink/Watson are were having trouble and were back in Puntilla last night.  They took an early layover there yesterday and made some repairs.  Once back on the trail they were making good time up the Ptarmigan Valley headed toward Rohn.  At some point things must have gone south as they were back in Puntilla as of last last night.  They haven't officially scratched but the rules say you can't take 2 separate layovers at the same checkpoint, so the clock is ticking for those guys who are currently in last position, but still racing. As of 9am this morning leaders will have been back on the clock and moving their way through interior Alaska.  They will leave the town of McGrath (population 350) and head north toward the mighty Yukon River.  The next town they will see is Ruby (population 170) which rests on the bank of the Yukon.  It's about 240 trail miles from McGrath to Ruby.  Besides the refueling stations, which are set up at long ago abandoned mining sites, there is absolutely nothing between McGrath and Ruby.  For 240 miles you won't see any sign of human existence outside the tiny refueling checkpoint. To give an idea of what the trail looks like, here are a few photos of the  area between McGrath and Ophir, The fastest part of today's ride. This is outside of Ophir looking south toward the back side of the Alaska Range.  Teams are headed in the opposite direction of this picture. This is the Poorman Checkpoint.  This and a few dozen drums of fuel is all that is there. The Ophir checkpoint is nothing glamorous either.  This, and a 55 gallon drum structure is essentially all that exist here: The best part of the trail from Ophir to Poorman looks something like this. Here are the top 10 teams released from McGrath today.  You can see many of the front runners very close in time to one another. 2016 Iron Dog Race Champions Tyler Aklestad and Tyson Johnson were interviewed by SkiDoo earlier this month, giving a great insight on the Iron Dog race, preparations, and how they got started in this crazy annual journey across the largest state in the union. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgb66MsCuYM

Afternoon Update:

Many teams have been reporting that temperatures earlier in the day were well below -40 degrees with some veterans saying its the coldest they've encountered in the race.  Team #18 has unfortunately been forced to scratched.  Andrew Zwink is very sick with a stomach bug, and may have to be flown out of he can't ride back to Big lake.  What he has is not life threatening, but nobody wants to throw up in their helmet while riding in sub-zero temperatures while bumping down a trail. We also received confirmation that Brad George of Team 6 did sustain a crash in the gorge yesterday.  His machine suffered e broken A-Arms and possibly even a shock as well.  His teammate Robbie went to Rohn and grabbed parts.  The racers made the repairs on the trail and were back up to race speed.  They are about 1hr 50 minutes behind the leaders, which is a considerable amount to whittle away at, but as we know, anything is possible in this race. Speaking of crashes, there was a smartphone video of Team 12 (shown below) crashing roughly 2 miles from the starting line.  The first machine went right over the berm in question, but the second sled cartwheeled a few times, the first cartwheel it looked like the rider hung on and got slammed by the sled.  They towed it back to the Arctic Cat shop where they replaced the steering post, handle bars, windshield, side panels, etc. [video width="320" height="576" mp4="https://www.thealaskalife.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Iron-Dog-Race-snowmobile-crash.mp4"][/video] They returned to the race and shortly after going across the first big swamp about 10 miles from the starting line the other driver lost control and suffered a similar fate to the sled, but this time with a possible dislocated shoulder.  After two substantial crashes in short order, along with the injury, Team 12 decided to throw in the towel for their 2017 Iron Dog race.

All of the teams will take another layover this evening.  Many will push to Galena or possibly Kaltag, while some will stop in Ruby, the first village they get to on the Yukon River.  It all depends oh how their sleds are doing and what time of the day it is when they reach the Yukon. Teams are required to take 28 hours of layover on their northbound run to Nome.  The front runners have taken 14 hours so far.  They have 14 more hours to take before the get to Nome.  If the front runners reach the Yukon with 3 hours of daylight left they may try to push to Unalakleet before taking their next layover.  Then they would likely take 8hrs in Unalakleet, get back on the clock at about 3am, race across the coast to White Mountain where they would take their final 6hrs of layover.  The final sprint 90 miles to Nome would then happen Tuesday afternoon.  There is a $6000 prize for the fastest team from White Mountain to Nome, so lots of teams are gonna push it hard right there in hopes of a payout at the halfway point. The layovers in the Iron Dog race are all part of their individual strategy and where the sun is on the horizon, since driving into a setting sun slows you down due to inhibited vision looking into the light.  If you are limping along with a wounded sled it's best to just take a layover and wait for parts to show up.  Once off the layover they can fix the sled and be back up to race speed. There was a bit of confusion as to the departure time for Team 16 as they left McGrath, and we have received a bit of clarification on this.  When Team 16 went on the clock and tried to refuel their sleds all the pumps at the fueling station were frozen.  It took race officials a considerable amount of time to get things thawed out, and all the while, the clock was ticking for racers attempting to fuel their machines.  I think we will see a time adjustment at their next layover point, and we are hearing that Team 16 will get to leave ~19 minutes early to make up for the lost time refueling. It appears that Team 8, Team 41 and Team 16 are all through Ruby headed down the mighty Yukon River.  The three teams separated by a mere 9 minutes.  If this time holds then that means Team 16 is still in the lead by about 10 minutes once they get their 19 minutes adjusted to their overall course time. One of the top Polaris teams, Mike Morgan and Chris Olds, have scratched in McGrath.  Their Facebook page reported the scratch and when asked why, only a 'Mechanical' was given, but we now know that the track failed on one of the machines.  Without being able to get a replacement track in a reasonable amount of time, this has forced them from the race.  This makes, unofficially, 6 teams that have scratched, since the official Iron Dog race page has not updated Team 10's status. Tyson and Tyler of Team 8 giving you an idea of the pace these racers set during a 2,000 mile race across Alaska. Video from John Williams in Koyukuk. [video width="720" height="1280" mp4="https://www.thealaskalife.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Iron-Dog-Race-Team-8.mp4"][/video] Team 5 has apparently had a head on collision with another team coming out of the Poorman Checkpoint.  Jerrod's Polaris Axys Pro-S 600 is totaled and he may have substantial bodily injury, but nothing life threatening.  An airplane has just left for McGrath to pick up someone with 'broken bones' in Poorman.  It is reported that the collision was with one of the Team Maine guys but both Maine teams are moving toward the Yukon at speed...we shall see.