Story by Alaska Public Media's Ava White
MCGRATH – Windchill, water and wildlife have marked the first third of the 2026 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, as teams raced through this Interior Alaska hub late Tuesday into Wednesday morning.
Frontrunning mushers like defending champion Jessie Holmes and frequent top 10 finisher Paige Drobny, both from the Denali Highway area, opted to blow through McGrath headed for the village of Takotna, where they bedded down their dogs to take mandatory 24-hour breaks. Others, like up-and-comer Riley Dyche and Matt Hall, the runnerup the last two years, passed those staying in Takotna and headed for the ghost town checkpoint of Ophir for their 24-hour rest.
Late Tuesday in McGrath, Holmes only stopped for a few minutes to grab supplies from his drop bags, including frozen fish to feed his team, and straw to camp farther along the trail before reaching Takotna.
“I’m getting these dogs well taken care of, getting ready for the next stages of the race,” Holmes said. “I expect it to continue to be tough, so I'm going to get well rested and get the dogs and myself refueled for the journey.”
Holmes won the Alaska Air Transit Spirit of the Iditarod Award for being the first musher to McGrath. The award came with a beaver hat and mittens, handcrafted by a local artist and decorated with beaded fireweed and aurora designs.
The strong wind teams experienced crossing the Alaska Range earlier in the race caused one musher, rookie Jaye Foucher of New Hampshire, to scratch early Tuesday at the Rainy Pass checkpoint. Her 15 dogs were in good health, according to a statement from the Iditarod.
Foucher wrote on Facebook that the trail to Rainy Pass was “the most intense and technically difficult trail I’ve ever driven.” She crashed several times and lost required gear, including one snowshoe, she wrote.
And it has been cold. Teams experienced windchill down to 45 below near McGrath, more than 300 miles into the 1,000-mile trail, and even colder in low-lying areas.
Sophomore Iditarod musher Keaton Loebrich pulled into McGrath in the morning twilight Wednesday with 14 sled dogs in his team. The Fairbanks musher said they’re used to running in cold temperatures, but not like this.
“My feet, I mean, these are frozen solid,” he said, gesturing to his stiff white boots with frozen creases.
Josi Shelley, another veteran musher from Fairbanks and the 2024 Iditarod Rookie of the Year, won the first Yukon Quest Alaska 750 in mid-February.
Shelley laughed when asked about the cold weather along the trail.
“I did the Yukon Quest and it was like 68 below,” Shelley said with a grin. “So this, I mean, I don't like the 40 below, but, like, it's fine.”
Shelley spent six hours in the McGrath checkpoint early Wednesday and squeezed in a two-hour nap, her longest since the race started, before heading for Takotna and beyond.
Not everyone continued down the trail. A handful of mushers had declared their 24-hour rests in McGrath by noon Wednesday, including Jeff Deeter, another Fairbanks musher, who’s competing in his ninth Iditarod.
Deeter said his 16-dog team is doing great and “eating like wolves.”
It’s a good sign, he said.
“I was trying not to go into my 24 with any sort of depletion of the team,” Deeter said. “I wanted to catch them while they're still sound and hungry and feeling their best, so that we can build on that and actually leave here really ready for the final two-thirds of this race.”
Deeter said he ran into overflow coming into the checkpoint that left the entire team soaking wet with an ambient temperature of 25 below. McGrath’s checkpoint building is relatively large, he said, which makes it easy to dry gear.
Mushers also spoke of running into bison earlier in the race, heading through the Farewell Burn after the treacherous Dalzell Gorge. Willow musher Gabe Dunham is terrified of the weighty megafauna and said they were standing right at the edge of the trail.
“Then they kind of moved off a little bit, and we snuck by them really quick,” she said.
There was no bison on the menu for Dunham in McGrath, where she was taking her 24-hour layover and had southwestern chicken and rice for breakfast Wednesday.
Stopping here, she said, is part of a challenging but strategic plan.
“I chose to come here because it sets me up to where now I'll go to Ophir, and I'll stay there for a break after this,” she said. “Then, that sets my team up for, hopefully, three runs into Ruby.”
The first musher to Ruby, where teams reach the Yukon River, wins a gourmet meal cooked by flown-in chefs that is sometimes eaten, like Dunham’s chicken and rice, for breakfast, depending on when they arrive.
