Iron Dog riders battle storms, deep snow

Iron Dog racers battled through a series of intense winter storms on their way up the western coast, to Kotzebue and Nome. High winds and snow prompted a holdover in Kotzebue for a Wednesday morning restart. Wrench day was moved from Wednesday to Thursday. On Tuesday, a group of expedition class racers got stuck in a ground blizzard outside of Golovin and were rescued by locals. On Wednesday, the sea ice broke off in front of Elim and the race was forced to take an unused overland route. A group of pro class racers, trail ambassadors and three locals from Elim spent over ten hours breaking trail in deep snow on the bluffs beneath Haystack Mountain between Elim and Golovin.
Jeff Gorton and the rest of Expedition Class Team 87 were on their way to Golovin on Tuesday when a machine broke down on and another got stuck Little McKinley. After getting the machines moving again, they didn’t make it far. “We get half a mile, and the wind’s blowing so hard it blows one snowmobile over and then we parked another one next to it and made a wind block,” he said.
The wind was blowing hard, obliterating any sign of the trail. “We're on the trail there, but we couldn't find where it went next, right? It was impossible to see where it went next,” he said.
The team hunkered down in their bivy sacks to wait for help. About an hour later, it came. “Four guys like knights in shining armor, they just ride right up,” he said.
John Peterson, Dale Aukongak, Sr., Lonnie Gooden and Darrell Takak came to rescue the stranded snowmachiners outside of Golovin. Gorton said that the Golovin locals knew exactly what to do. “They were really, really nonchalant. They’re just that good,” he said. “They were like, ‘Is anybody cold? Is anybody hurt? And they just basically loaded up people.”
Expedition class racers rode to their finish in Nome starting Tuesday afternoon.
On Wednesday, locals in Elim woke up and saw that the sea ice was out, and along with it, the trail to Golovin. Instead, racers would have to head out on the alternate route, the Mail Trail, between the bluffs and Haystack Mountain.
Steffen Booth of Team 3 said that he and Evan Barber, his teammate, heard that the ice was out when they passed through Buckland. Booth said that they headed toward the Mail Trail and once they hit the group ahead, could not turn around. “More teams are coming in behind us, and it's a tight trail, and there's snow in front of you that's super deep, and you get off the trail, it's deeper,” he said. There's no turning back.”
Dan Zipay, a race marshal, said that officials called Koyuk and told the checker there to make sure all the riders knew the ice was out and they would have to take the Mail Trail. Officials didn’t know there was a problem with the trail until they saw that the ambassador team had stopped. “By that time our racers were already through Koyuk,” he said. “Some took a layover, some didn't. When they caught up to the ambassador team, they saw there was gonna be a little problem getting over the hill.”
Elim locals Thomas Saccheus, Eric Amuktoolik and Mitch Aukon helped break trail on Wednesday outside of Elim. The local men didn't intend to break trail – they knew it would take hours. “We told them which way to go, and we were just gonna turn around and come back,” said Amuktoolik. “That's when team 14 showed up and kind of talked us into showing them the trail, breaking the trail in.”
Amuktoolik turned around and went back to the village to get more help and fill up his machine. He managed to convince Aukon to come along and help break trail.
The trail had been broken in before, but with the new snow from the recent storms, it was drifted in. On the trail, the snow was about six feet deep, and off trail was much deeper. “We would walk through the snow, and then we'd be up to hip deep, and we'd step off to almost chest deep, and it was like, ‘Oh, we're off the trail,’” said Amuktoolik.
David Spain, from Team 34, was one of the teams that got stuck breaking trail. He said that it was hours of stomping out a trail, driving the snowmachines up a little further, stomping more trail.  “I had moved one sled up 100 yards, walk back, grab another sled, move it up to that one, and then daisy chain,” he said.
Saccheus said that the locals knew the trail would be hard going because of how much snow had fallen. He said that it would have been better for the racers to have waited.
Spain is frustrated that it came down to one group of racers and locals busting out the trail while other racers stayed in Koyuk. “In my opinion, everybody should have been held in Koyuk until we knew that there was a possible trail,” he said.
Booth expressed frustration at the situation, too. “There's an extent to breaking in a trail where racers are gonna have to deal with it,” he said. “If the trail is too nasty, too deep, too much brush, trees falling over, you can't get through that just as a team.”
Evan Booth, the father of Steffen Booth and a two-time Iron Dog winner, said that every racer is prepared to break trail, but this circumstance was different. “This was a not raceable section,” he said.
The older Booth said that the race officials should have stopped racers at Koyuk and hired locals to break trail between Elim and Golovin. When racers land in bad conditions, the local search and rescue is put on the spot.
Zipay noted that in the years he raced Iron Dog, from 1984 to 2004, situations like the one on Wednesday were common. “There’s probably at least three or four situations exactly like this. You group up with all the other riders, and there's guys that were three, four hours behind. They catch back up when you’re breaking trail,” he said. “Try to get everybody to help out, get the trail broke open, and then you just go from there.”
Zipay said that he’s heard some suggestions on what Iron Dog can do next. He’s heard suggestions about a coastal committee, where locals from Nome to Unalakleet can monitor trail conditions and weather and give recommendations to race officials. “Then if situations like this come up, we can have a lot better communication,” he said. “If the trail needs to be broke, we can have somebody set up to break the trail.”
Evan Booth said he’s pushed for a coastal advisory board for the Iron Dog. “It's something that they could institute so they have a better decision making,” he said. 
Zipay said that if all the racers left Koyuk at one time and got stuck all together, the situation would have been different. “We could have stopped the race right there,” he said. “Waited for them to get the trail put in, and then we could have started.”
After breaking trail, the racers quickly sped towards Nome and raced up the ramp next to Subway that evening.
Booth, the only Nomeite remaining in the race, and Barber, were first to Nome on Wednesday evening at 8:26 p.m., arriving to a cheering crowd that waved signs and filmed their entrance. Despite arriving first, Booth and Barber were not in first place. Hours spent breaking trail had cost them time.
Racers arrived in spurts over the next four hours, with Kris Kaltenbacher and Cole Sabin being the last to arrive in Nome at 12:27 a.m. Thursday.
The restart took place on Friday morning. Tyler Aklestad and Nick Olstad were the first to depart Nome at 6 a.m. The next four teams departed in the order of lead times. Starting at 8:44 a.m., racers departed every five minutes. Racers are expected in Fairbanks on Saturday.