Iditarod

Race commentators said two-time Iditarod finisher Zoya DeNure was having health issues. Her husband, John Schandelmeier, is taking over the sled dog team.

Among the 57 mushers, a dozen are rookies competing in the Iditarod for the first time.

The 2020 Iditarod began in earnest Sunday with the official restart in Willow, where, to the surprise of many, musher John Schandelmeier replaced his wife, Zoya Denure, who reportedly had some last-second health issues. What wasn't a surprise, at least for this winter, was more snow!

The Iditarod rookie came in for a rather lengthy interview last week. We talked about his past and present, and, among other things, Quince’s experiences being transgender. As far as we know, he’s the first openly trans person in the Iditarod.

It’s Monday, and Iditarod sled dog teams are heading into their second full day of racing after the official start yesterday in Willow. From there they mushed west to the Yentna checkpoint about 50 miles into the race, on to Skwentna at about 80 miles, and the front-of-the-pack teams are already heading up and up and up into the Alaska Range, toward the mountainous checkpoint of Rainy Pass.

Although they battled storms and deep snow the first dozen miles, many mushers said the trail ascending the Alaska Range to the Rainy Pass checkpoint was as good as they ever remember it.

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.

With plenty of snow on the Iditarod Trail this year, some of the more technical runs have not been as difficult as years past. But the Happy River steps and the Dalzell Gorge are always a challenge, and Alaska Public Media's Tegan Hanlon joins Iditapod host Casey Grove to discuss why we call both of those sections "technical."

The roadhouse in the community of about 300 people has many roles: It’s an Iditarod logistics hub, community center and a burger stop.

Sean Underwood got the surprise of a lifetime last week. The 28-year-old musher found out four days before the start of the 2020 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race that he'd be competing in the event. Long-time musher and four-time Iditarod champion Jeff King had to drop out of the race at the very last minute, and tapped Sean, one of his dog handlers, to fill in.

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.

With temperatures plunging deep into the negatives on Tuesday, mushers and dogs sported a coating of frost when they pulled into Nikolai, a small village about a quarter of the way into the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

With more than a quarter of the trail behind them, some teams in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog were parked at checkpoints on Wednesday, taking their required daylong breaks.

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.

The mushers and their sled dogs banked rest and calories during their longest rest of the race.

While the teams race to the finish line, we’re featuring a sled dog a day on our Iditapod podcast.

A snowy patch of land in Takotna quickly turned into a sled dog hotel on Wednesday, with napping dogs curled up on straw and under blankets throughout the afternoon.

The City of Nome will not be hosting any race-related festivities due to concerns about the coronavirus.

When it comes to concern about the coronavirus, the Iditarod is no exception. In Nome, the city council is considering calling off Iditarod festivities, and we’re also hearing about a big announcement coming from the Iditarod itself, though we’ve been told by someone close to the race that they are not going to be canceling the rest of Iditarod altogether. Meantime, we have a more positive update about Jeff King's health status, a race update, a story about a volunteer passing time tinkering on an old chainsaw, a listener question about who's the best dog whisperer and another dog profile, this one about Juke, in Karin Hendrickson's team.

This is a brief report from our morning radio coverage at Alaska Public Media. We call it a radio module, it’s only five minutes, and it'll sound a little different. But as we’re working on a full episode of the Iditapod for Friday, which will include talking to Iditarod CEO Rob Urbach about coronavirus concerns, we figured this is the fastest way to bring you some important news since we last left off.