{"id":518159,"date":"2026-03-12T01:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T01:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/518159\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T01:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T01:38:09","slug":"iditarod-teams-contend-with-whipping-wind-watery-overflow-and-wild-bison-in-races-first-third","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/518159\/","title":{"rendered":"Iditarod teams contend with whipping wind, watery overflow and wild bison in race\u2019s first third"},"content":{"rendered":"

MCGRATH \u2013 Windchill, water and wildlife have marked the first third of the 2026 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, as teams raced through this Interior Alaska hub late Tuesday into Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

Frontrunning mushers like defending champion Jessie Holmes and frequent top 10 finisher Paige Drobny, both from the Denali Highway area, opted to blow through McGrath headed for the village of Takotna, where they bedded down their dogs to take mandatory 24-hour breaks. Others, like up-and-comer Riley Dyche and Matt Hall, the runnerup the last two years, passed those staying in Takotna and headed for the ghost town checkpoint of Ophir for their 24-hour rest.<\/p>\n

Late Tuesday in McGrath, Holmes only stopped for a few minutes to grab supplies from his drop bags, including frozen fish to feed his team, and straw to camp farther along the trail before reaching Takotna.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m getting these dogs well taken care of, getting ready for the next stages of the race,\u201d Holmes said. \u201cI expect it to continue to be tough, so I’m going to get well rested and get the dogs and myself refueled for the journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holmes won the Alaska Air Transit Spirit of the Iditarod Award for being the first musher to McGrath. The award came with a beaver hat and mittens, handcrafted by a local artist and decorated with beaded fireweed and aurora designs.<\/p>\n

The strong wind teams experienced crossing the Alaska Range<\/a> earlier in the race caused one musher, rookie Jaye Foucher of New Hampshire, to scratch early Tuesday at the Rainy Pass checkpoint. Her 15 dogs were in good health, according to a statement from the Iditarod<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Foucher wrote on Facebook<\/a> that the trail to Rainy Pass was \u201cthe most intense and technically difficult trail I\u2019ve ever driven.\u201d She crashed several times and lost required gear, including one snowshoe, she wrote.<\/p>\n

And it has been cold. Teams experienced windchill down to 45 below near McGrath, more than 300 miles into the 1,000-mile trail, and even colder in low-lying areas.<\/p>\n

Sophomore Iditarod musher Keaton Loebrich pulled into McGrath in the morning twilight Wednesday with 14 sled dogs in his team. The Fairbanks musher said they\u2019re used to running in cold temperatures, but not like this.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy feet, I mean, these are frozen solid,\u201d he said, gesturing to his stiff white boots with frozen creases.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Ava White<\/p>\n

\/<\/p>\n

Alaska Public Media<\/p>\n

Jason Mackey feeds his team in McGrath on March 11, 2025. Mackey was taking his 24-hour mandatory rest in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, along with a handful of other mushers.<\/p>\n

Josi Shelley, another veteran musher from Fairbanks and the 2024 Iditarod Rookie of the Year, won the first Yukon Quest Alaska 750<\/a> in mid-February.<\/p>\n

Shelley laughed when asked about the cold weather along the trail.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did the Yukon Quest and it was like 68 below,\u201d Shelley said with a grin. \u201cSo this, I mean, I don’t like the 40 below, but, like, it’s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shelley spent six hours in the McGrath checkpoint early Wednesday and squeezed in a two-hour nap, her longest since the race started, before heading for Takotna and beyond.<\/p>\n

Not everyone continued down the trail. A handful of mushers had declared their 24-hour rests in McGrath by noon Wednesday, including Jeff Deeter, another Fairbanks musher, who\u2019s competing in his ninth Iditarod.<\/p>\n

Deeter said his 16-dog team is doing great and \u201ceating like wolves.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good sign, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was trying not to go into my 24 with any sort of depletion of the team,\u201d Deeter said. \u201cI wanted to catch them while they’re still sound and hungry and feeling their best, so that we can build on that and actually leave here really ready for the final two-thirds of this race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deeter said he ran into overflow coming into the checkpoint that left the entire team soaking wet with an ambient temperature of 25 below. McGrath\u2019s checkpoint building is relatively large, he said, which makes it easy to dry gear.<\/p>\n

\"Sled<\/p>\n

Ava White<\/p>\n

\/<\/p>\n

Alaska Public Media<\/p>\n

Sled dogs in the 2026 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race nap during a 24-hour break in McGrath.<\/p>\n

Mushers also spoke of running into bison earlier in the race, heading through the Farewell Burn after the treacherous Dalzell Gorge. Willow musher Gabe Dunham is terrified of the weighty megafauna and said they were standing right at the edge of the trail.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen they kind of moved off a little bit, and we snuck by them really quick,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

There was no bison on the menu for Dunham in McGrath, where she was taking her 24-hour layover and had southwestern chicken and rice for breakfast Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Stopping here, she said, is part of a challenging but strategic plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI chose to come here because it sets me up to where now I’ll go to Ophir, and I’ll stay there for a break after this,\u201d she said. \u201cThen, that sets my team up for, hopefully, three runs into Ruby.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first musher to Ruby, where teams reach the Yukon River, wins a gourmet meal cooked by flown-in chefs that is sometimes eaten, like Dunham\u2019s chicken and rice, for breakfast, depending on when they arrive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MCGRATH \u2013 Windchill, water and wildlife have marked the first third of the 2026 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-518159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}