Thirty-seven pro-class teams are set to race more than 2,000 miles from Big Lake to Nome and on to Fairbanks for the 2015 Iron Dog, and several western Alaska teams and racers are among them.
Nome’s Mike Morgan is again teaming up with former race champion Chris Olds of Eagle River, riding their Polaris Switchback Pro-S sleds this year. This will be the team’s fourth race together after the pair finished third last year.
Galena’s Tyler Huntington, who took first in 2010 and 2011, is pairing up with another past race champion, Todd Palin. Palin won the race first in 1995, and again in 2002 and 2007. The team is racing Polaris AXYS sleds.
Those teams packed with past champs will be chasing last year’s winners, Wasilla’s Todd Minnick and Nick Olstad, racing an identical sled to the Huntington/Palin duo, the Polaris AXYS.
Robert and Steffen Strick, “The Super Strick Brothers” of McGrath, are returning to the race after completing a rookie run last year. They’ll ride Polaris Pro-R sleds. Also relatively new to the race is the Kotzebue rookie duo of Rick Lie and John Schaffer.
Nome’s John Banhke and Kotzebue’s Chris Collins are pairing up to bring their Nome/Golovin experiences and wins to the Iron Dog. Both last ran the Iron Dog in 2013.
Bethel’s Steve Boney will race his Yamaha VIPER with Anchorage’s Doug Dixon. And 64-year-old musher and Iditarod mainstay Sonny Linder will bring a team of “iron dogs” to Nome this year, making his rookie run of the snowmachine race with his son Rurik.
Similar to last year, poor snow conditions prevail in Southcentral Alaska and north of the Alaska Range. The Iditarod has shifted its trail north for the first portion of the race following a relocated Fairbanks restart. The Iron Dog is maintaining its traditional route, for the most part, with only a few restrictions to keep off portions of the Kuskokwim River and a stipulation that racers must travel overland along the Norton Sound coast.
The last time the Iditarod moved the race north to Fairbanks due to poor snow was 2003; that year, race officials canceled the Iron Dog.
The 2015 Iron Dog begins in downtown Anchorage Saturday with a ceremonial start, with a Sunday re-restart at Big Lake.
