Nenana musher Jessie Holmes wins his first Copper Basin 300

Jessie Holmes’ first exposure to the Copper Basin 300 was as a handler. His first year on the sled, he scratched.

But the Nenana musher has continued to improve his standing at the race considered a major test for mushers with an eye on longer distance races like the Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race.

He’s finished second and third in the race over the last two years. And on Monday evening, Holmes finally got the win, crossing the finish line in a time of 2 days, 5 hours and 24 minutes.

“This race is really setting me up to have my best career performance year,” Holmes said Tuesday. “I feel like it really showed me that we got a winning team for the Iditarod and we’ve just got to keep doing the right things.”

Cody Strathe finished second, coming in at 2:06:13, less than an hour behind Holmes. Fairbanks musher Dave Turner finished third.

The Copper Basin 300 is generally a frigid affair, billing itself as the toughest 300 miles in Alaska. But the 2025 race saw unseasonably high temperatures. The temperatures veered up into the 40s as rain fell on mushers for parts of the first two days of racing.

While the warmer conditions made things easier for the mushers, that wasn’t the case for the dog teams.

“Managing a team of dogs on a notoriously tough course with temperatures in the 40s and not ever getting below freezing, that’s hard,” Holmes said. “That’s not easy for the dogs. You have to be a really diligent musher to keep your team healthy through that. It’s more challenging than the cold.”

Holmes saw the warmer weather in the forecast and prepped his dogs by acclimating them, having dog coats on them and bringing them inside during the lead-up to the race. They even got a blast of hot air on the drive to Glennallen.

“Driving down here, I had like my five best big, furry, hairy lead dogs in the cab of the truck with me with the heater blasting,” Holmes said. “Because, you know, heat acclimation is a real thing and I think it definitely helps.”

During the race, he said, he focused on hydration and making sure his dogs were eating to maintain an ideal weight.

The race route starts in Glennallen and heads west to the Tolsona Lake Lodge. From there, mushers head northwest through a checkpoint at the Lake Louise Lodge and northeast to the Sourdough checkpoint on the Richardson Highway. Racers head north of the Meiers Lake checkpoint before jutting east and heading south back to Glennallen through the Chistochina checkpoint.

“I love the community feel of it,” Holmes said. “The community comes together and put on this incredible race for us. We go to these really nice lodges along the way and you develop friends over the years that you get to see all the time. These people are so good to us and put on such a great event. It’s really well organized.”

Holmes has a stellar record as a mid-distance musher. He has won the Kobuk 440 three times and had finished in the top three at the CB300 each of the past two years, before earning the win on Monday. He also placed third in last year’s Iditarod, his third consecutive top-five finish.

He’ll likely be among the favorites this year at the Iditarod with a pool of 22 dogs that completed the CB300 on various teams, including 10 with fourth-place finisher Kelsey Winters.

“That’s quite the pull for my Iditarod team,” Holmes said.

(A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Jessie Holmes and Joey Sabin in photo captions.)