Iditarod

The former amateur boxer and garbage truck driver had the best rookie finish since Jessie Holmes in 2018, finishing in seventh place.

Mushers’ family, friends and fans began calling Peace on Earth weeks ago to place pizza orders. Many asked for special messages to be written on the boxes.

Halfway to Nome, teams’ locations on the map are just dots, or perhaps more appropriately, asterisks. The question this morning is not “where are...

Brent Sass has been hard to catch in this year’s Iditarod. He has camped outside of checkpoints for the majority of the race, stopping only long enough to grab food and supplies, running his team much like he would in Alaska’s other 1,000 mile sled dog race, the Yukon Quest. Download Audio

In Episode 8, we talk about Nicolas Petit being the first to the Yukon, Martin Buser's recovery from last year's injury, Yukon Quest v. Iditarod, and veteran dog teams.

Long before the race ever starts, mushers pack their drop bags with gear and food to so that they have options for where and when to take their 24-hour mandatory rest along the Iditarod Trail. This year, some of them tried something new, while others are doing what they know. It’s only a matter of time before it becomes clear who has the winning strategy now that dog teams are starting to come off their long rest.

In this episode, we hear from Iditarod mushers in the midst of their required 24-hour layovers and from our current Red Lantern musher. We also have a chat with a former top 10 musher who’s returning to the race and running a team of mostly rookie dogs, plus a look at the Iditarod's new pilot program for tracking dropped dogs. And as always we have our Dog of the Day -- not a new dog but a dog who got a new name -- and a listener question with answers from several mushers this time. (Hint: This one might make you hungry).

Mushers reported a hard and fast trail on the frozen Yukon River and temperatures below zero.

More rookies in the 2011 Iditarod have reached Nome including: * Kelly Maixner with 11 dogs. * Jodie Bailey with 13 dogs. * Magnus Kaltenborn with 9...

Musher Jessica Klejka got Ralph for a bargain.

Top teams in the 2019 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race are reaching the Yukon River on Friday as the race enters its fifth day, with snow and more warm temperatures in the forecast. Girdwood's Nicolas Petit and Norwegian-by-way-of-Willow musher Joar Leifseth Ulsom have continued to leapfrog each other, with Nic winning a five-course meal in Anvik. We hear more about the different strategies as they came into focus earlier in the race and take a listener question about team positions for dogs.

“She cheers up everybody," said said musher Mats Pettersson. "She’s happy and wants to kiss everybody.”

The first three mushers to arrive in Huslia all had 16 dogs on the line—the same number they started the race with nearly 500 miles ago. Up and down the leader-board mushers are arriving with big teams, and dropping far fewer dogs than in recent years. Listen now

Race officials put tight restrictions on who could be near the Iditarod starting line on Sunday, as part of their COVID-19 mitigation plan, leading to a much smaller crowd.

The Iditarod has crowned a new Norwegian champion: Joar Leifseth Ulsom. The 31-year-old pulled under Nome’s Burled Arch at 3 a.m. Wednesday with eight dogs in harness to claim his first championship, taking the win in Iditarod 46. Ulsom is the first Norwegian musher to win the thousand-mile sled dog race since Robert Sørlie in 2005. Girdwood's Nicolas Petit arrived a little over two hours later, and he spoke to reporters about how his race went and where it went wrong.

The Iditarod - and Iditapod - are heading into the Nome stretch, as Eureka's Brent Sass has maintained his lead, aiming for his first win, with five-time champ Dallas Seavey still on his tail. We’ll have more about the race at the front, as well as more about musher mistakes, how things are going for the top rookie - Hanna Lyrek - and the speedy team of Dan Kaduce. Plus… more pizza? Yep, and another peppy dog of the day, a listener question and an answer from the trail.

Editor's note: This extended interview discusses a violent encounter with a moose and might not be suitable for all listeners. Alaska Public Media's Lex Treinen gets all the details of rookie Iditarod musher Bridgett Watkins' run-in with a moose while on a training run near Salcha, in Interior Alaska, in early February.