Iditarod

Nearly a third of the 57 mushers in this year’s Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race have scratched, including a Girdwood's Nicolas Petit, who activated an alert button seeking rescue Thursday morning because of weather conditions.

The mushers and dogs are in good health, Iditarod officials say.

What Matthew Failor did not know when he left White Mountain with two other mushers was the relentless wind was pushing ocean water onto the trail ahead.

Waerner has been living with friends near Fairbanks in Ester, all because of cornavirus-related, international travel restrictions, coupled with the normal difficulties and rules around flying dogs internationally.

Mackey’s 21st place finish in this year’s race will be vacated after the positive test from a sample collected in White Mountain, the Iditarod statement says. Mackey finished the race, his 16th Iditarod, in Nome on March 19.

Waerner won the race March 18th. But he couldn't get back to Norway because of coronavirus-related, international travel restrictions related to flying his dogs. So he ended up staying with friends near Fairbanks in Ester.

The Iditarod says it will work with an infectious disease epidemiologist to develop a plan for holding the 1,000-mile race during the coronavirus.

Teams will now travel on a 860-mile loop that starts and ends in the Southcentral community of Willow, instead of heading to Nome.

The sled dog race has called off this year’s 11-mile dash through Anchorage because of coronavirus concerns.

After more than two decades of competitive mushing, Aliy Zirkle posted a retirement letter on her kennel’s website Thursday evening.

This year marks Dallas Seavey’s 12th Iditarod. But it’s the four-time Iditarod champion's first since a dog-doping whodunit turned his mushing career upside down four years ago.

It’s set to be an Iditarod like no other. There’s required testing and face masks, plus a shorter trail and a smaller group of mushers signed up to compete.

The 2021 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is going to look a lot different, one year into a global COVID-19 pandemic. (The Iditapod’s going to be pretty different this year, too, as we'll explain). The ceremonial start is canceled, so the race begins Sunday in Willow under strict COVID-19 protocols, with a shortened trail that doubles back on itself, a challenge to sled dog teams to cross the Alaska Range not once, but twice, plus coronavirus testing along the way and less access to indoor spaces at checkpoints... This Iditarod is certainly going to be unique.

Race officials put tight restrictions on who could be near the Iditarod starting line on Sunday, as part of their COVID-19 mitigation plan, leading to a much smaller crowd.

With Gallea’s scratch, 45 teams remain on the Iditarod trail. There's still a long way to go, but by late Monday afternoon, Skagway musher Ryan Redington had taken over the lead.

Aliy Zirkle's race ended Monday night after she crashed on her way into the remote Rohn checkpoint. Race officials say she suffered a concussion and other injuries.

For Dallas Seavey’s first-place arrival, he won mittens made of beaver fur and moose hide, plus a beaver-fur hat. McGrath is roughly a third of the way into the race.

We rejoin the Iditarod something like 48 hours in, and, on what sounds like a hard and fast trail, mushers are pacing themselves for the shorter 850-mile race. There've been a total of three scratches so far, none bigger than Aliy Zirkle, who suffered a concussion and upper body injury in the Dalzell Gorge and had to be flown out of Rohn by helicopter. Also, we catch up with our pal Zachariah Hughes in McGrath.

The race director has chopped about 20 miles off this year's trail because of too much snow. Also, another musher has dropped out of the competition.

Alaska Public Media's Tegan Hanlon talks with four-time Iditarod champion Dallas Seavey in February in the dog lot at his Talkeetna-based kennel. Seavey is back in the Iditarod this year after taking three years off following a scandal in 2017's race, after which the Iditarod said two of Seavey's dogs had tested positive for a banned pain-reliever, then later cleared him of any wrongdoing.