thealaskalife.com

With the top teams leaving the Puntilla Lake checkpoint this morning, just 28 minutes separated Teams 14 and 6 as they made a fairly short (in Iron Dog terms) dash to the finish line. That amount of separation in a race like this, with such little trail remaining, seemed almost like an insurmountable feat for Brad George and Robbie Schachle of Team 6 after seeing Casey Boylan and Bryan Leslie of Team 14 having what could be described as an almost textbook run for over 2,000 miles. The team made quick work of making it trail-worthy with some rope they had on-hand and were back on the course quickly finishing their first Pro-Class Iron Dog race in 13th position out of 21 teams that started this race. This Iron Dog was a race just like it is every year filled with lots of drama, twists and turns, leaderboard shake ups, and lots of camaraderie and respect for each other as teams make this annual race across the frozen north that is Alaska in the longest toughest snowmobile race of its kind.

’ was an apt comment from a race fan last night in regards to Team 6 leaving Galena yesterday evening to complete 748 trail miles for Day 6 of the 2021 Iron Dog race, forcing the hand of the teams to follow. We made mention of Team 8 doing a considerable amount of work on one of their Ski-Doo machines, but despite the mechanical aptitude and talent from most of the guys running this race, sometimes problems encountered on the trail can be insurmountable for even the most savvy of mechanics, and this was apparently the case for Chad Gueco and Cody Moen of Team 8. George/Schachle gave up a good distance of trail to Team 14 last night as they had to change broken rear shock just south of the Poorman checkpoint before making their way through Ophir and then to McGrath for a rest. one of these things is not like the others’ where the two Ski-Doo’s driven by Brad George and Robbie Schachle of Team 6 seemed a bit out of place in a sea of Polaris machines.

The weather across the Seward Peninsula and the western coast of Alaska today remained cold and windy as teams began making their way south toward the Yukon River. Johnson indicated this is generally the feel for how brutal this race is, but often those bad memories don’t stick around and we see many teams back on the trail year after year. In addition to the two instances of rear skid repairs for Team 21 yesterday, they again found themselves towing one of their Ski-Doo machines into Buckland this morning due to another broken rear torque arm. Team 30 Conner/Elder also ran into issues on the trail near Unalakleet where it was reported that Conner had some semblance of a wreck which forced them to beg for or borrow parts from the locals nearby.

Racers were met with clear conditions at roughly 0 degrees this morning as they left Nome, notching more miles on their belts until they had a reprieve at Kotzebue for a mandatory 10-hour layover. 10-1:10.56Just 51 seconds separated the top three teams, with 19 seconds separating the top two teams over the 70 mile distance between Nome and White Mountain, proving these racers are pushing their sleds as hard as they can given the conditions. Racers often use historic GPS track data from prior years (or if a rookie is lucky enough to copy this data from a kind veteran team) and fans had guessed that either they got confused by their old data from last year or got coaxed onto the wrong trail as locals are indicating there are many hunting trails in the area. There really is no clear leader at this point as times are very tight, but continued clean racing and a bit of favor from Lady Luck might allow some distance to be placed between these front running teams and the racers chasing their snow-dust.