Iditarod

Four-time Iditarod champion Jeff King tapped Underwood, a 28-year-old from Atlanta, to take over his sled dog team after he had emergency surgery.

A small crowd gathered next to burning logs and a large welcome banner as Mitch Seavey arrived first to Takotna checkpoint in a light snow Tuesday night. Listen now

Iditarod racer Mitch Seavey is the first musher to reach the halfway checkpoint of Huslia. The two-time champion was the first to leave Galena early Thursday and arrived in Huslia more than 80 miles up the trail at 8:18 p.m. A big crowd lined the main street to welcome in Seavey.

The 44th annual Iditarod trail sled dog race gets underway on Sunday, although the festive ceremonial start in Anchorage happens tomorrow. This is one of the largest fields in the race's history at 85 mushers signed up to start. KNOM News Director Emily Schwing and Alaska Public Media's Zachariah Hughes will be reporting from the trail. Before they take off, let's find out who they're keeping an eye on and what to watch out for along the trail. Download Audio

The thousand-mile Iditarod kicks off with the ceremonial start in downtown Anchorage on Saturday, and this year's race will be the first for its new CEO Rob Urbach, who took over in July.

Organizers have decided that a lack of snow in the Anchorage area won't force a route change for this year's Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. The start of the race will be staged as usual in Willow, about 50 miles north of Anchorage. Download Audio

The Iditarod can be a cathartic experience, with all those good dogs, bad dogs, #uglydogs… In this episode we catch up on the race and discuss how it's nearly impossible to analyze who's really in the lead as mushers start to take their mandatory 24-hour layovers at different checkpoints. Alaska Public Media's Tegan Hanlon has a story about Jeff King's substitute Sean Underwood, AKPM's Zach Hughes and Ben Matheson take in the Blood Moon in Takotna, we have a somewhat surprising answer to a listener question, and Brent Sass talks about his lead dog, Jeep.

Bethel welcomed home its own Iditarod champion in grand fashion Monday night. Musher Pete Kaiser returned to Bethel on the evening jet after winning the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

Iditarod dog teams have travelled more than 300 miles down the trail in the last three days. Defending champion Dallas Seavey. Says they’ve reached a turning point in the race.

Mackey won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 1983 and his late brother, Lance, won an unprecedented four straight championships.

Alaska Public Media's reporter on the Iditarod Trail, Zachariah Hughes, talks from Nome about the scene there as race finishers mush into town, and KNOM interviews with third-place finisher Mitch Seavey shed some light on his race, including a tough trail along the Bering Sea coast and becoming better friends with Joar Leifseth Ulsom (the new champ!) and runner-up Nicolas Petit. Plus, we go rapid-fire with questions about how fast the dogs run, trail mail and the Burled Arch.

The roughly 80-mile stretch from Rohn to Nikolai usually has has some of the worst trail conditions anywhere along the 1,000-mile route. But not this year.

Jeff King took the lead in the 2014 Iditarod when he charged out of Cripple Wednesday night ahead of Sonny Lindner. King left about 8:30 and Lindner followed at 9:09. Both were racing with 14 dogs.

The 42nd annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race is underway. Dog teams left Willow Sunday. They’re making their way toward the Alaska Range, where the trail is reportedly extremely rough.

Mushers slept. Dogs slept. And sled repairs got underway.

The former amateur boxer and garbage truck driver had the best rookie finish since Jessie Holmes in 2018, finishing in seventh place.