Wildlife encounters, sled designs and dog booties: Mushers answer your Iditarod questions

For fans of sled dog racing, it can be tough to get a close look at what goes on after the teams leave the starting line in Willow.

But what the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race lacks in spectator opportunities as teams traverse the wilderness, it makes up for in unique stories the mushers collect as they move down the trail.

We asked readers what they wanted to know about competing in the Iditarod. Dozens of questions came in. Then we reached out to several mushers to answer those questions directly.

Here are their answers to five questions.

Ed Ward asks: “What are some of the personal, non-required items that mushers carry in their sled bags?”

Ask this year’s 52 mushers, and you’ll surely get 52 different answers.

We reached out to race rookie Jessica Klejka (pronounced “CLAY-ka”), who lives near Point MacKenzie. She had items spread out in her garage Tuesday ready to pack in her sled. For her, personal items include lots of water bottles, dog toenail clippers that can also be used to cut open bales of straw, and toilet paper, which she always carries in her pocket.

One of her most special items is a pair of beaver mitts, hand-sewn by a friend in Bethel whose mother once dreamed of running the Iditarod.

“Her mom passed away, and so she made me a pair of gloves to take on the trail,” Klejka said.

Klejka said she also plans to attach a small thermometer to her sled. During the race, she hopes it will often display temperatures between 10 below and 10 above.

“Fifteen’s OK. Once we hit 20, it’s getting warm. Thirty’s too warm,” she said.

Fred Hoyt asks: “What makes one sled better than others?”

Four-time Iditarod winner Jeff King prides himself on improving sled design. A sled that allowed him to sit down turned a lot of heads when he started using it 15 years ago. Now the “tail dragger” design is distance-mushing standard equipment.

Strong sleds are made of aluminum alloy, stainless steel and nylon, King said. Engineers have helped strengthen the design over the years.

“Historically, sleds broke way more often than they do now,” King said.

King said a good sled positions the weight of the musher near the center of the runners.

“If the musher’s weight is too far forward, the sleds don’t tend to steer well,” King said. “Mushers have now learned that standing on the middle of the runner is the place to be.”

King’s sled evolution continues this year. Instead of a zippered fabric sled bag, he said, his sled will feature a compartment made of taut, cold-resistant plastic. That will provide a better ride for a resting dog.

“I have a lid that opens up like you might imagine the cockpit of a jet fighter that folds up over their head,” he said.

“I wanted the dogs to ride more comfortably, and this provides headroom that the bag would never provide.”

The changes should also allow for easier access to the contents of the sled, as well as keep snow and ice from collecting on it, he said. That helps shave weight on the trail.

Curious what that looks like?

Linda Forsberg asks: “How long does it take Aliy to prepare the dogs with booties, leg wraps and coats before each run?”

Two Rivers musher Aliy Zirkle, a three-time runner-up, said the answer depends on the needs of her dogs at any particular stage of the race.

Before she naps, she makes a mental calculation of how much time she’ll need to outfit the team for the next leg of the journey. During a hypothetical stop at Rainy Pass, Zirkle said, she might wake up 50 minutes before she wants to leave, “because I know that Nomex needs a coat, Spark needs leggings, Amber needs a T-shirt, Commando needs a jacket, and they all need booties.”

“I know how long it takes me to put dog booties on,” Zirkle said. “And, yes, I do practice that.”

To save time, she often tends to four dogs in a row before she stands up straight.

“When you see me out there and I’m really being quick, I never stand up. I always walk around hunched over,” she said.

Best-case scenario, if her 14-dog team needs only booties, Zirkle said, she can be ready for blastoff in 15 minutes. This year, that team will likely include nine dogs from the team her husband, Allen Moore, ran in the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race in February.

“Fourteen could’ve gone,” she said. “But I want to do things a little differently this year, and so I want to bring some youth and some sass.”

Deanne Marie asks: “Has a woman ever won a race? In what year?”

Two women have won it. Libby Riddles’ Iditarod victory is the stuff of Alaska legend. In 1985, Riddles braved a storm on Norton Sound trail between Shaktoolik and Koyuk, a bold move that earned her a place in history as the Iditarod’s first female champ. The following year, Susan Butcher won the first of her four Iditarod victories. She’s one of just seven mushers to have won four or more times.

Other women have come close. DeeDee Jonrowe placed in the top ten 16 times and was runner-up twice. Aliy Zirkle has taken second place three times. But the last time a woman won the Iditarod was 1990.

Those Butcher and Riddles victories had a lasting impact for future generations.

This week, Anna and Kristy Berington, twins and Knik kennel partners, said they appreciate that men and women compete together in mushing.

“One thing I do love about this sport is that it is judged on the same playing field,” Anna Berington said.

“We’re all competing for the same thing, with male and female dogs, all hoping to do the best we can,” Kristy Berington added. “May the best musher win.”

While the race doesn’t differentiate between sexes, Kristy said she also recognizes that women competing today might have an opportunity to inspire young girls.

“I have a friend that has a young daughter, and he’s like, ‘Do you know how hard it is to find a storybook with a female hero in it that’s not a princess?’” she said.

When Kristy was growing up in northern Wisconsin, she admired Jamie Nelson, a four-time winner of the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon near Duluth, Minnesota.

“I can’t say that all my heroes are women, but she is definitely one of them,” Kristy said. “And I think Libby and Susan definitely fall into that category, as does Aliy (Zirkle) and DeeDee (Jonrowe).”

This year, 17 of the Iditarod’s 52 entrants are women. There’s never been a higher percentage of women. Anna said she respects the women who excelled back when the field was more lopsided. In 1985, just four of 40 race finishers were women.

“Now it seems so much more common for ladies to be in the Iditarod, (but) we’re just ready for another woman to win,” Anna said.

Sally MacGregor-Martin asks: “Do mushers see wild animals on the race?”

For any traveler in Alaska’s wild, an animal encounter can range from inconsequential to special to disastrous. Long-distance mushers are accustomed to spotting wildlife during training runs and races.

“The thing that people get the most worried about, of course, is moose,” said 12-time Iditarod finisher Cindy Gallea (pronounced “galley”) of Wykoff, Minnesota. “I’ve seen moose and waited on the trail and they’ve gone off the trail.”

“I’ve had caribou herds run across the trail in front of me. That was pretty exciting. One of the dogs in the team just wanted to chase them so bad.”

“One year, going through Rainy Pass, I saw a wolf. It was a black wolf and it was maybe a couple hundred yards off to the side and just kind of ran parallel to the team for a while. The dogs were not distracted, and the wolf just kind of kept watching us. It was beautiful.”

Martin Apayauq Reitan is an Iditarod rookie, but he might already be qualified to teach a master class in mushing wildlife encounters. Reitan lives and trains near his home in Kaktovik on the coast of the Beaufort Sea. Before the sea ice freezes in fall, Reitan said, he sees polar bears on one out of every two or three training runs.

“Usually they’ll look at the dog team and wonder what’s going on. … And usually the dogs just run by them,” Reitan said.

“I was on the tundra on the island once and there was a polar bear in the middle of the tundra lying down, and the dogs seemed to (want) to go play with him or something," he said. "Maybe they wanted to beat him up. I stopped the dog team and they started barking and wanted to go, but I was able to pull them back. The bear was freaked out and ran away.”

Reitan, who leads polar bear viewing tours with his father and brother, said he carries a shotgun in his training ATV just in case, but hasn’t had to take it out yet.

Over the years, several teams have crossed paths with bison on the Farewell Burn between the checkpoints of Rohn and Nikolai. Last year, a bison complicated passage for Iditarod musher Marcelle Fressineau and her team.

Nicolas Petit, last year’s runner-up, said wildlife on the trail could be a concern this year. He said deep snow tends to make the trail a relatively attractive place for animals to walk. That’s why some mushers choose to “pack heat,” he said.

“I’m not really into that. I’m not really into carrying an extra-cold piece of iron, but that’s the chance we take,” Petit said.

“I’ve never had a real problem, and hopefully, knock on wood, it stays that way.”

Jeff King said that he hadn’t planned on carrying a firearm this year either, but he changed his mind after deep snow conditions were discussed at the musher meeting Thursday.

Do you have questions? Let us know in the form below and we’ll try to answer them.