UNALAKLEET– Resident Cherie Larsen spent Tuesday morning inside the race checkpoint here preparing for Iditarod teams to race in. She cooked breakfast for volunteers, race staff and veterinarians as they kept their eyes on the race tracker.
“I just love to see the people and be a part of something that is bigger than myself,” Larsen said while cracking eggs. “Having the Iditarod come through here is something I don’t want to miss.”
On the menu: sourdough pancakes, eggs and bacon. Larsen said she hopes the smells of the sizzling, warm meal will spread outside, down to mushers on the Iditarod trail nearby.
“When the mushers start coming down the trail, they can always smell the bacon, and that lets them know how close that they are to our stop,” she said.
It’s the 8th day of the race, and in prior years, a winner finishes around this time. But this year’s trail is about 130 miles longer than normal and includes a loop from Kaltag, south to Eagle Island, Grayling, Anvik and Shageluk before heading back. Mushers said trail conditions on that loop have been awful.
Iditarod veteran Eric Kelly is volunteering as a race judge in Unalakleet this year. His job is to make sure everything runs smoothly when a musher arrives. He was expecting a musher by Tuesday afternoon, but said it’s been a tough trail.
“Everything's running a little slower,” he said. “The (Yukon) River, people thought it'd be easy. It's been really tough. It's been a hard, bumpy trail. The loop (has) been rough.”
Unalakleet is one of the more “plush” checkpoints, Kelly said. Mushers have access to showers and beds, and community members have a tradition of cooking breakfast. Kelly credits the checkpoint with saving his Iditarod when he raced a few years back.
“Just because of the beds, I ended up staying here 22 hours, rested my team up and finished really well,” Kelly said.
On the other side of the room, a large flatscreen TV displayed the Iditarod tracker, showing mushers spread across hundreds of miles of trail. It updates every once in a while, and when it does, eyes shoot to the screen.
Building a puzzle right in front of it was Patrice La Vigne.
“We try to keep on as much as possible,” she said. “It's been a slow race, so we check it probably every half hour or so.”
It’s her third time volunteering as trail crew for the race, but it’s her first time in the Bering Sea village. It’s a rush of excitement when a musher comes in, she said.
“It really does make it worth it to see the dedication that the mushers have and the excitement and the dogs,” La Vigne said. “I mean, the dogs are so amazing.”
She said she can’t wait to experience that feeling again this year.
By 3 p.m. Tuesday, the trio of mushers battling for first place were still a few hours outside of Unalakleet, with Jessie Holmes in the lead followed by Paige Drobny and Matt Hall.
