Village mushers ready for their toughest race: The Kusko 300

ANIAK – Two mushers in their 30s from the Kuskokwim River village of Aniak live maybe a mile apart by road and keep an eye out for each other during training runs across the tundra and on old mining trails. But mostly, it is a sport they do alone, running ever harder into the frosted wild country.

Richie Diehl, 31, and Isaac Underwood, 35, are preparing their own teams for the same big end: the upcoming Kuskokwim 300 sled dog race.

The main event starts at 6:30 p.m. Friday in Bethel on the frozen river alongside town, a scene of excited dogs and energized mushers, rumbling trucks and cheering fans, snowmachines and four-wheelers. Once the dogs clear out, fireworks explode.

The forecast is for below-zero temperatures but racers have seen much worse. Fresh snow dusted Bethel over the weekend. Aniak is the turnaround spot.

The Kusko 300 is the region's biggest sled dog race and, organizers say, offers the richest purse of any 300-miler in the world. This year, there's $150,000 in prize money for a field that as of Monday featured 22 teams.

They will travel up the frozen and nearly snowless Kuskokwim River and over tundra past the villages of Kwethluk, Tuluksak, Kalskag, Aniak and back again, an old mail route. Just after Kalskag, they veer off for a loop to Whitefish Lake that adds miles to a course that typically is a bit shy of 300 miles.

Diehl is a professional, competitive musher with 46 dogs and eight puppies. Last year marked his best racing season to date, with a fourth-place finish in the Kuskokwim 300 and 12th in the Iditarod, bringing in $35,000 in prize money combined.

Underwood's operation is more modest, with 31 dogs. But he too trains full time in the winter. He came in 19th in last year's Kusko 300, one of the last to finish, but still won $3,100.

Both have been winnowing down to the team that will be on the Kusko 300 start line.

"This is the 12, right there," Underwood said in his dog yard one recent afternoon. He was pointing to an ever-moving chart of his top dogs, with Sassy and her younger brother Chaga in lead. A salvaged dryer lid serves as his planning board. He shifts around dog names written on wooden rectangles that hold tight with magnets.

Diehl took off earlier, in the bare light of midmorning. He mushed down his street and over a dike onto the Aniak Slough as three moose hurried across nearby. He wouldn't return until some eight hours and 70 miles later.

Conditions are better that way, down an old mining trail, than on the hard-frozen river. He encounters shallow snow, windblown bare spots and stretches of ice.

"It's the best we've had in Aniak in probably four or five years," said Diehl, who some years leaves the region to find snow for training.

Biggest purse in the world

The lives of Diehl and Underwood unfold mainly outdoors, a rarity in the modern world. They along with other Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta residents embody why organizers started the Kusko 300 back in 1980 to begin with.

"We are trying to get the guys in who are watching and thinking 'That looks like fun,' " said Myron Angstman, the race founder, a musher, a lawyer and president of Kuskokwim 300 Race Committee Inc., which also runs a variety of shorter races in the region.

The race runs almost solely with volunteers. The race director, Madelene Reichard, is full time, but also works as a Bethel junior high math teacher. The Aniak checkpoint is run by the Kuspuk School District's acting superintendent.

Race organizers still are looking for volunteers including Bethel drivers with trucks to move dog teams. Mushers stay with local hosts in Bethel.

"We believe we have the largest cash purse of any volunteer community event in the world," Angstman said in a text message when asked about the prize money. "Skiing. Golfing, you name it.  For the size of our town this event is hard to imagine."

Bethel's population is just over 6,300. This weekend there is also the Bogus Creek 150 as well as the Akiak Dash, a 70-miler with a madcap mass start and a local field of competitors.

Sled dogs need care and feeding twice a day even when they are not running, Angstman said.

"The winters can get to you here," he said. "Even for me, I need a little reason to go out when it's cold. If we are providing that incentive, we are doing a service."

The Kusko 300 attracts a mix: locals pushing themselves, those rising up like Diehl and Bethel's Pete Kaiser, who has won it the last two years, and superstars including Jeff King, a four-time Iditarod winner and nine-time Kusko 300 winner, the most of anyone.

Absent from this year's roster: Martin Buser and son Rohn, both of whom have won it twice. The elder Buser, another four-time Iditarod winner, was penalized last year after getting off course and also for allowing children in a village to give a snack to his dogs.

Mushing may not be for everyone, Angstman said. Not that many young people are taking it up, but maybe the local races will inspire some, the way Diehl and Underwood were lured as kids, he said.

Fathers and sons

Both Diehl and Underwood are sons of mushers and both rely on their families to do what they do.

Underwood's father Nathan ran the Kusko 300 many times and in 2015 they tried it together though both scratched. Nathan, who just turned 59, is marking trail for the race this year but not running it.

One recent day, Underwood was getting a late start on his training run. He and his father spent the morning in the living room building a new sled. It will have a seat on a cooler, like the one Jeff King fashioned years ago for the Iditarod. Tools and parts were everywhere. It was his father's birthday and also the day that the family was preparing to host Orthodox church members for a Slaviq celebration.

Underwood first raced when he was 8 in a one-dog event in the village. He won. But he didn't really get into sled dog racing until he hit his 20s. He has finished two Kusko 300s.

One time on the final leg to Bethel, Akiak musher Mike Williams Sr. was just ahead of him out of sight. The chase was on.

"I wasn't sure I was going to catch him, but I did in the last couple of miles," Underwood said. He came in four minutes faster than the veteran.

Experience is the key to success in sled dog racing, he said.

He feeds his dogs kibble and fish, mainly salmon, that his family catches in big numbers with a fish wheel. A friend gave them beaver, an excellent protein and fat source for the dogs.

During racing season, Bethel doctors Bill Eggimann and wife Jane McClure sponsor his team by providing kibble, a big help, Underwood said.

He's worked the last couple of summers for the state Department of Fish and Game, netting salmon for a test fishery that gauges the timing of various runs.

From the family's own stock, Underwood is building his pool of dogs. This year, he is running 4-year-olds and 7-year-olds but has some strong yearlings that he is looking forward to bringing in.

He will haul his team to Bethel Wednesday. At first he planned to go by snowmachine with dogs in crates on a long wooden toboggan. But the truck road on the Kuskokwim is so good he may do that instead.

To preschool by dog team

Back in the late 1970s, Dave Diehl hauled firewood by dog team to the upriver village of Stony River, where he was a schoolteacher. He got into competitive racing but mainly ran dogs for fun.

When son Richie was a toddler, he refused to go to preschool except by dog team so that's how his mom got him there. His transportation to elementary school was by sled pulled by his dog Smokey. One year he had to keep a journal for school and wrote all about dogs, says his mother, Esther Donhauser.

Diehl considered becoming a commercial pilot. He has his general aviation license and his own Cessna. He went to University of Alaska Anchorage and graduated with an aviation degree.

But what he really wanted to do was mush.

"I like the quiet. I like being by myself," Diehl said. "I like Aniak and I like the village life."

He lives in his own little blue house with girlfriend Emerie Fairbanks next door to his parents' home and business by the airport. His mother runs a takeout restaurant, the Hound House, with burgers, sandwiches and pizzas that pilots often grab and go. Emerie is a kindergarten teacher working on her master's in applied linguistics.

After college, his father asked if he wanted to do the Kusko 300.

"If you're into it, I'll do it," Diehl answered.

He scratched that first time in 2009, in his hometown.

"I was in way over my head," he said. He knew he needed to train more and also build his own team.

He had bought a dog named Tater from a litter bred by Jeff King. Diehl's dad at first didn't understand paying top dollar for husky mixes but came around.

"It was probably the best $750 I ever spent," Diehl said. Tater fathered most of the dogs in his kennel and has been one of his best leaders. He's 10 years old and a sweet house dog now. One of Tater's sons, Willie, is an even better all-around dog and leader, Diehl said.

Now Diehl has finished six Kusko 300s and four Iditarods. His operation costs in the range of $75,000 a year. He works construction during the summers in Bethel installing siding and roofing and building houses and school playgrounds. His father helps clean up the dog yard and also helps hook up the dogs for runs.

Diehl also benefits from an array of sponsors including his mother's restaurant, Alaska Commercial Co., Aniak Light and Power and main backer The Kuskokwim Corp., an Alaska Native corporation for 10 villages along that stretch of river. ACE Air Cargo gives him a deal on bringing in food for his dogs. Ryan Air donates the cost of flying his dogs home from Nome after the Iditarod.

Diehl uses his father's meat saw, bought for cutting moose, to slice Kuskokwim River salmon, slabs of chopped beef and a specialized high-protein, vitamin-rich mixture that he buys from musher Aaron Burmeister's Eureka Meats.

Every day in winter, he goes through 65 to 70 pounds of meat plus almost a bag of dry kibble. He stores meat and fish in a big, walk-in freezer that he unplugs once it's cold enough.

Warming up to 30 below

Diehl has had wild times on the trail. The year the temperature with windchill for the Kusko 300 was 65 below. The time the race was delayed as a storm ripped through, flipping planes and taking out a wall of a Quonset hut in Bethel. The 2014 Iditarod with a hair-raising ride on glare ice down Dalzell Gorge.

Once, Diehl and Bethel's Kaiser geared up for a long training run from Aniak to Bethel when the temperature rose — to 30 below. Then it dropped again. They took off anyway.

"It was a cold night," Diehl said.

The summer of 2015, he was working in Bethel when wildfires near Aniak led to evacuations of some village residents. He worried for his dogs, being cared for by his father. The smoke was too thick for him to fly there. Kaiser brought him by boat up the Kuskokwim. They prepared to evacuate the dogs on the river, but the fire was controlled in time.

Diehl says his hometown race is tougher than the Iditarod because of the long runs with limited rest, just 10 hours during 40-plus hours on the trail. And mushers are caring for their dogs during their allotted rest time.

"In the Iditarod you can slowly lead them into a rhythm. The Kusko is kind of go-as-fast-as-you-can without having everything fall apart," Diehl said. "The Kusko to me is the toughest race that I have run and will probably run."

Could he one day win it?

"I wouldn't do it if I didn't think so," he said. He has promising young dogs that are big, strong and durable, that move easily. He has the support of family and the community. He has what he thinks might be the biggest part, a work ethic.

"The Kusko is what triggered everything for me," he said. "If I could win the Kusko at some point in my career, that would be huge."