Team 14 holding lead as teams gather in Unalakleet

Team 14’s Casey Boylan and Bryan Leslie were the first Pro Class team to arrive in Poorman on Sunday. IRON DOG PHOTO

Team 14’s Casey Boylan and Bryan Leslie led a flood of teams into Unalakleet on Sunday, where the wind was blowing 40 mph and the snow coming down hard.  With two runner-up finishes in the last three years, Team 14 is making an impressive bid for the top of the podium. They arrived just a few hours after the Ambassador Team, who was less one rider, 2024 Hall of Fame Inductee Pat Reilly, due to mechanical. 

 Team 14 has held onto a lead that started just a few hours into the race on Saturday. They have kept a steady just-under 50 mph average and were the first team to arrive in Unalakleet at 4:48 p.m.

 Behind them, however, continued a leapfrog race that includes Teams 6 (Mike Morgan and Bradley Kishbaugh), 9 (Evan Barber and Troy Conlon), 39 (Cody Barber and Brett Lapham) and 33 (George Lambert and Skyler Wells), rounding out the Top-5 positions. All but Team 6 was in Unalakleet by 6 p.m.

 “Team 7 (Tyler Aklestad and Nick Olstad) had an issue with an A-arm coming into Poorman, and Team 30 (Blake Elder and Kody Worley) was towing coming into Poorman,” said race marshal Stan Brown, who stays in contact with checkpoint leads and fellow race marshals Tyson Johnson and Jake Goodell. Team 3 (Kyle Conner and Andy Gocke) had some damage to the hood and lights, but we don’t know what happened there. … From what I can tell, it must have been fairly rough out there.”

 Team 6 seemed to be narrowing in on Leslie and Boylan on Sunday afternoon, but Brown said that momentum was lost after Kaltag. 

Team 6 Mike Morgan and Bradley Kishbaugh stop in Tatina before continuing their chase of Team 14. IRON DOG PHOTO

 “They were running in second place, left Kaltag, made it 15-20 miles, and turned back,” he said. “It sounds like a suspension problem.”

 The Barber brothers – one on Team 9 and the other on Team 39 – are staying in the mix, running almost identical average speeds to stay in the Top 5. And Kotzebue’s own George Lambert and Skyler Wells are traveling strong, too – if they can stay up front, Brown said, they will soon be entering a home turf advantage.

 “Team 33 is doing really well,” Brown said. “Now they’re getting to the coast where they’ve been riding all their lives.”

 Noticeably missing from the Top-5 lineup are defending Iron Dog champions Tyler Aklestad and Nick Olstad, Team 7, who were set back Saturday after going into the water – overflow created by this winter’s brutal freeze-thaw cycles is one of the race’s biggest obstacles.

Team 7 Tyler Aklestad and Nick Olstad work on one of their sleds at the Poorman checkpoint. They had an A-Arm problem that they were eventually able to fix in Ruby. IRON DOG PHOTO

 “That happened as they were coming into Tatina,” Brown said. “And then they did something to the A-Arm between McGrath and Poorman, then limped on to Ruby and were able to get it fixed.”

 Still, it’s anyone’s race, and Team 7 continued to creep up the rankings. They were the seventh team to leave Kaltag on Sunday, behind Team 10’s Chris Olds and Ryan Sottosanti. With Team 6 making repairs and taking a layover in Kaltag, it’s anyone’s guess who will be in the Top 5 come Monday morning.

 “I would assume there may be a lack of snow that may be beating up on these guys, and it’s probably flat light out there – not really a storm or anything, but cloud cover making it flat light,” Brown said.

 Three teams have already scratched from this year’s 40th running, which is living up to its reputation as the World’s Longest, Toughest Snowmobile Race. On Saturday, Team 5 Zack Weisz and Kruz Kleewein cut their race short at the new Whiskey Bravo checkpoint after Kleewein was injured as they headed toward Ptarmigan Valley.

 “We had just went across Puntilla Lake and I hit one of those wind drifts on top, and I couldn’t save it,” Kleewein said on Sunday. “I cartwheeled and drove my left shoulder into the ground pretty hard. It dislocated my shoulder, and obviously beat up the sled. It was a relatively high-speed crash.”

 Weisz was behind Kleewein when the accident occurred and rushed to check on him. Kleewein said his sled was upside down and he was laying on the ground noticing that his back hurt, but that his shoulder is where the pain was particularly sharp. Cody Barber and Brett Lapham stopped to help, too, propping Kleewein against his sled so he could regain his composure. 

 Kleewein said once their team pilot showed up, Lapham and Barber went on their way and he flew back to town, where he plans to see an orthopedic specialist. It wasn’t the way he wanted the race to go, especially after scratching last year when his brother Kenneth had a similar injury.

 “It was going really good until it wasn’t,” Kleewein said.

 Other race casualties include Team 49 Todd Palin and Klinton VanWingerden who called it quits at the Tatina checkpoint after VanWingerden went into overflow and was unable to continue.

 And after nearly 12 hours on the race clock, Team 19 Chad Moore and Tom Davis scratched out in McGrath. Brown said Davis appeared to have hit a tree, and although he was OK, his sled was not.

 “It took out their bulkhead,” he said, “so they ended their race there.”

 As is the case every year, weather will dictate how fast, how far and how beat up racers will get. Brown said so far this year, Mother Nature’s serving up wet and sloppy conditions.

 “So far, it’s not that cold, but there’s a lot of overflow,” he said. “You never know what will happen.”

Ambassador Team 99 works their way through Rainy Pass. The team reached Unalakleet on Sunday and were overnighting with the bulk of Pro Class racers also there. IRON DOG PHOTO

 On Sunday, Unalakleet looked to be the place to be for anyone who’s into Alaska winter sports. Three Iron Dog champs, a flood of 2024 Pro Class racers, and one Iditarod legend – DeeDee Jonrowe, who is part of this year’s Ambassador Team 99. The Iron Dog Helmet safety program also handed out helmets in Unalakleet, giving racers a chance to meet and greet with young fans.

 While the Pro Class teams are stacked up from Kaltag to Unalakleet, the Expedition Class riders are rallying into McGrath. All but five of the Expedition Class teams had reached McGrath by 7 p.m. Sunday. This is the first year these riders have started after the Pro Class, extending visiting hours for race fans in communities along the trail. Team 82’s Andy Swenson, Jon Wagner, Lindsey Wood, and Brandon Duvlea were the first to arrive.