Iditarod

At least one musher was stopped by a half-dozen buffalo on the trail from Rohn to Nikolai.

Our Iditapod crew gets caught up - to get you caught up - as sled dog teams in the 2022 Iditarod race through the third full day of mushing the 1,000-mile trail. We'll hear about some of the most technically difficult sections and get an update on who is where... for now. We'll also hear from mushers Aaron Burmeister and Apayauq Reitan, among others, and we also have a bully of a Dog of the Day and a listener question about how to find the trail (because sometimes it's not so obvious).

One musher has regrets. Another is focused on canine appetite. And a third is relieved to have survived the "spiciest" trail.

Kaktovik dog musher Apayauq Reitan, the first out trans woman to compete in the Iditarod, talks to Iditapod colleague and Alaska Public Media contributor Shady Grove Oliver - originally for a piece in the Guardian newspaper - about Reitan's goals for this year's race, what it's like to mush dogs, her Alaska Native culture, coming out as trans and a lot more.

This is a story about a family and their names. Both hold deep meaning. That’s something Kaktovik musher Apayauq Reitan knows all too well.

All mushers in the nearly 1,000-mile race across Alaska must take three mandatory rest periods: a 24-hour layover at any checkpoint, an eight-hour layover somewhere along the Yukon River and another eight-hour layover at White Mountain, which is 77 miles from the finish line.

Iditarod mushers and their dog teams are now either in the middle of their mandatory 24-hour layovers or back out on the trail, if they opted to do that earlier. We've got the frontrunners at the Cripple checkpoint, as well as a chat with the folks who 24ed in McGrath, now making up the chase pack. There's also an old-timer for our Dog of the Day, a couple listener questions about how to get into dog mushing and, related, what it means to be a handler.

“It's kind of just a physical reminder that it doesn't really matter if the travel is bad, you know?” said one musher about the importance of carrying his mom's keychain.

Race officials say Jimbo has eaten a meal and is in "good health."

Then, it was back to racing.

The trail and the non-trail looked exactly the same on the way into McGrath. The only way to tell the difference: When they stepped off the trail, they sank into hip-deep snow.

The first musher to the Yukon River gets a $3,500 cash prize, plus a bottle of champagne and a gourmet meal, cooked up by chefs who fly in for the occasion. But Sass declined the meal when he arrived. 

With the northern lights dancing above, we talked to Iditarod leader Brent Sass as he danced through the Ruby checkpoint and onto the Yukon River, skipping a gourmet five-course meal in favor of more comfortable cold temperatures for his dogs. We'll also hear more from Sass and his fellow competitors on their 24-hour layover earlier, and from the back of the pack, a trio of women, who banded together in a snow storm. Plus we have a dog profile and THREE listeners asking the same question, with an answer straight from the musher in question and a separate listener... answer?

"We've been dealing with the moguls from the start," says Richie Diehl. "It'll be nice to be on the river."

Neff said he was given the choice of being disqualified or scratching because of concerns from veterinarians about his dogs.

Iditarod musher Brent Sass and his dog team raced out of Kaltag at 10:36 a.m. Saturday.

Mushers reported a hard and fast trail on the frozen Yukon River and temperatures below zero.

“A lot of dogs here, they love to be hugged and cuddled and snuggled. And she likes it to some extent, but then she wants her space,” said Anja Radano. “And I'm the same way.”

Tempest is Jessie Holmes’s lead dog. She’s a sweetheart who likes to bark at just about anything, he said. Without a dog like her, he said, “you just can’t pull off what we’re trying to pull off.”

“If the team slows down too much, then she starts barking to get them to go faster,” said Paige Drobny.