More like iron ducks than Iron Dogs, the teams of snowmachines racing in what is supposed to be the world's longest, toughest snowmobile race were paddle-tracking their way through the Alaska Range late Sunday afternoon.
Never in the 31-year history of the 2,000-mile epic race had anyone seen anything like this. On a balmy day, racers started at two-minute intervals down a water-covered chute at Big Lake north of Anchorage and then slush-cupped their way north.
"Looks like we're going to get our feet wet," Brett Lapham, a rookie from Willow, said just before the start. More than feet were wet before the day was over.
Like wet cement
Snowmachines speeding through wet, heavy glop sprayed slush everywhere. The snow resembled wet cement, and it slowed the early going.
"It took the first team about an hour to go by, usually (it's) around 40 minutes," Jean Gabryszak reported from the Yentna Station Roadhouse along the white-mush-covered Yentna River about 40 miles north of the start line.
"Slushy but not raining" came the report from the Skwentna Roadhouse near mile 90 farther along the Iditarod Trail. The snowmachiners follow the Iditarod route north to Nome, before reversing their course back to the Yukon River village of Kaltag and following the big Interior Alaska rivers to Fairbanks.
It is at Skwentna the teams jump off the frozen rivers of Southcentral Alaska and begin the climb into the mountains that span the middle of the state. Normally, even in warm years, this is where temperatures begin to cool.
Not in 2015. Mother Nature this year seemed intent on making sure the Iron Dog remained a wet dog. The temperature in Skwentna was 40 degrees. Finger Lake, on the south edge of the Alaska Range, was at 46. Higher up at Rainy Pass, at an elevation of more than 3,000 feet, the temperature was 36 degrees.
Photos of flooded woods
A recreational class of snowmachiners called trail riders started up the trail Friday ahead of the racers, and they were sending back photos from McGrath of rivers breaking up and woods flooded with water. McGrath is about 350 miles up the trail on the north side of towering mountains that usually block warm, Gulf of Alaska air from pushing into the Interior.
A regional hub for the Iditarod Trail, McGrath was coping with 44-degree temperatures Sunday. That would be 44 degrees above zero. The community more often sees temperatures of 44 degrees below this time of year.
"We're thinking about putting on bathing suits," Jennifer Baumgartner said from the Hotel McGrath. "I took a picture this morning, and it was a full-on rainstorm."
Born and reared in McGrath, the daughter of Ernie Baumgartner, a veteran musher who started six Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Races, Jennifer said she'd never seen anything like this before. The good news, she added, was the rain had stopped. She went out to take a photo of the rainbow over the Iron Dog welcoming banner in the community.
"I've never seen a rainbow in February in McGrath," Baumgartner said.
While it's hard for anyone to complain about warm weather in Alaska in the winter, she noted that it does make things difficult in a land adapted to near-Arctic conditions.
Trail-class Iron Doggers, she said, reported needing to stop regularly along the Iditarod Trail north of the Alaska Range to comb the woods for snow to carry back to their snowmachines to throw over heat exchangers to keep the machines from overheating.
In year with no Iditarod, Iron Dog helps
Once primarily air-cooled pieces of equipment, most of today's snowmachines are liquid-cooled. Liquid-cooled engines run more efficiently, which yields benefits in both increased speed and decreased fuel consumption. Many of the machines need snow kicked up from trails onto heat exchangers to help with cooling, although some now sport front-end radiators similar to what is found in automobiles.
Baumgartner said the trail-class riders reported riding across miles and miles of bare ground north of the range, but were in good spirits. Everybody is trying to stay upbeat about a very odd winter, she said, but it is a constant reminder "we need these Arctic conditions for our economy,''
The Iditarod dog race is usually a huge deal in McGrath. The city airport starts buzzing with traffic more than a week before the event and continues long after the dog racers leave town. But this year, Iditarod moved its March 9 restart north to Fairbanks. The race will bypass all the villages south of the Yukon River.
Baumgartner was happy to see the Iron Dog riders and racers, and was thanking her lucky stars for the Iditarod fans who booked reservations to go to McGrath to watch that race and decided to come even after the race was rerouted.
"We're going to put on un-Iditarod event for them,'' she said. There is hope that by the time the Iditarod starts conditions will be more Alaska-like than Seattle-like.
Temperatures are forecast to start moving back to normal by the end of the week, but Iron Doggers are still looking at racing through a lot of spring. The rain was ending in Nome on Sunday, but temperatures were predicted to stay up into the 30s through midweek.
The race was led by seven-time Iron Dog champ Scott Davis from Soldotna and partner Aaron Bartel from Anchorage as leaders neared the Native village of Nikolai, about 50 miles east of McGrath. But the lead was meaningless.
More than a half-dozen of the Iron Dog's top teams were within minutes of the 55-year-old Davis and his 24-year-old partner. Who's in the lead in the Iron Dog usually doesn't start to shake out until the teams reach Nome.
All the drivers race in pairs for safety. One of the big safety concerns this year is open water. Iron Dog officials have rerouted the trail from Galena to Nulato off the Yukon River and overland to avoid open water.
Contact Craig Medred at cmedred(at)alaskadispatch.com