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Sanka W. Dog
The Alcan Highway is a part of every Iditarod for Ed Stielstra and his dog team. Musher, handler and dogs from Nature’s Kennel in the upper peninsula of Michigan have made the trek to the starting line of The Last Great Race seven times and will be heading to the start line again in 2013. …
Dogs in the Just Guts dog yard aren’t really concerned that school has recently started, we’re looking forward to the cooler mornings so that we can put our harnesses on and start running as a team with the 4-wheeler. Believe me though, we don’t just sit around in or on top of our houses all …
There are no roads to Nome so there are no roads home except for Aaron Burmeister who calls Nome home. Years ago, Mary Shields who was the first women to finish Iditarod, turned around and ran her dogs another 800 miles back home to Fairbanks. That’s good but what about the rest of the mushers …
Colleen Robertia is now a veteran of two Iditarod races. Colleen and husband, Joseph, don’t run a kennel that’s filled with designer huskies, they prefer to work with the three R’s – runts, rejects and rescues. Of note is the little lady running in single lead for the trip down Front Street. Her name is …
The father-son Buser teams were the first mushers to make Front Street on Thursday morning. We’d hiked several blocks down to the snow ramp behind the Subway and Gold Coast Cinema that brings the teams off the sea ice. We stood with Quest champion and Iditarod veteran, Vern Halter, and watched the Busers run in …
On the day Iditarod crowned its youngest champion ever, plenty of other things were going on three hundred miles away in the community of Unalakleet. There was a pie social at the Covenant Church. It was as much fun eating the pie as it was listening to people decide on what kind of pie to …
The checker’s list at Unalakleet this morning looked like Who’s Who in the long distance sled dog racing world – Lance Mackey, Martin Buser, Rick Swenson and Hugh Neff were amongst the teams resting on the coast. Consider the collection of Championship hardware between these men. Lance has four Iditarod and four Yukon Quest trophies. …
The population along the Kaltag to Unalakleet portage trail exploded over night. Looking at the Ionearth tracker, that area of the trail held the largest concentration of dog teams compared to anywhere else on the trail. As the mushers made the coast today, we heard one common comment – it was cold. Iditarod veteran, Ed …
In a race that’s this close, everyone is looking for some significant sign to predict who’ll be the 40th Iditarod champion. Past recipients of the Wells Fargo Gold Coast Award are listed on the trophy. Consider this – in fifteen of the past 19 years, the first musher to make the Gold Coast has also …
With the Unalakleet checkpoint prepared, race volunteers and villagers have time for some speculation. Aliy Zirkle is in a good position up front. She reached Kaltag three hours ahead of second place defending champion John Baker. Zirkle rested six hours then began the 83-mile trek across the portage trail through the Nulato Hills to Unalakleet. …