Iditarod mushers are preparing for a particularly bumpy, brutal ride on the trail’s first leg on icy terrain with little snow. Many have modified their run strategies, and adjusted one of the main tools for keeping a competitive edge: their sleds. Many mushers say durability is trumping speed this year as they expect to take a beating along the early trail.
Rookie Tim Pappas is running a fast, young puppy team, and made the decision to ride a heavier sled because it stands the best chance of not getting pulverized on ice and rocks.
“I can give the sled a little bit more abuse, it sounds like it’s gonna be kinda a rough trail this year, so I think it’s gonna be the right choice,” Pappas said.
Originally, he’d planned on switching sleds further along the trail, to one with wooden runners that would have been lighter and faster. But given that conditions through much of the race are looking bare and rough, he decided to stick with his beater.
It’s a design crafted in-house at Martin Buser’s Happy Trails Kennel, where Pappas is a handler. And Buser himself is opting for the same strategy: runners made from a heavy plastic composite that puts durability ahead of speed.
“I know it adds a bit of weight, it probably adds five or eight pounds to the entire rig. But it also guarantees you virtual success going through some of the rough sections because they literally cannot break," Buser said.
Buser says he isn’t racing to win, just finish.
“The joke is, this year’s motto is, ‘How slow can you go,’” Buser said.
Other mushers are building slow into their strategy, too. Or simply looking for ways to tamper their teams during a dicey, technical decent out of the Alaska Range and toward flatter trail conditions. Lance Mackey is spending the first part of the race on a bigger sled designed for the Yukon Quest.
“It’s indestructible, and if anybody can break it it’d be me," Mackey said. "It’s been tested and abused and it’s still functioning. I’m taking it to Nikolai to confirm that I’ll have a dog team when I get to Nikolai."
Mackey is taking other steps to budget his dogs’ energy. He modified his gang-line and harness system to give the team less pulling power. Then, from Nikolai onward: vroom.
“You get to Nikolai with a dog team and then you can race," Mackey said.
Another strategy for limiting pulling capacity in this first leg is just running fewer dogs on the line, as if you’re taking cylinders out of an engine. Race veteran Kelly Maixner is running an aggressive schedule for a top finish, but he left the start in Willow with a multi-part sled that included, among other things, a hip-high plastic dog crate.
“I’ll carry up to four dogs, maybe even more depending on what’s going on out there, just because, I’d rather be carrying dogs than slamming on my brakes," Maixner said.
While many of the sleds departing Willow Lake had a caboose attached, plenty of mushers left with short, unburdened sleds. Suggesting they’ve either dropped equipment at checkpoints further ahead, or are in for a fast ride to Rohn.