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Iron Dog thriller: Top teams roar into Nome just minutes apartOnly about two days after roaring out of Southcentral Alaska in a flying cloud of snow, the top racers in the world’s longest and toughest snowmachine race streamed into the isolated, Bering Sea coast city of Nome Tuesday afternoon. Former champions Marc McKenna, an Anchorage contractor, and Dusty VanMeter, a sometimes commercial fishermen from the Kenai Peninsula, were the first to reach the historic Gold Rush town where the racers get a long and sometimes-needed break. They will point their sleds south again Thursday morning, bound for a finish line in Fairbanks, and the end of a 2,000-mile adventure. The leaders arrived at 3:15 p.m. after covering the last stretch from White Mountain at 72 mph. McKenna, for one, was happy to negotiate that last section of trail unscathed. Four years ago, he was trying to pass six-time champion Scott Davis of Soldotna along the coast when one of the skis on McKenna's Arctic Cat hit a frozen tussock at an odd angle. The machine went cartwheeling, and McKenna went flying. He eventually smacked down on the frozen tundra hard enough to leave him dazed and confused, even though he was wearing a top-of-the-line helmet. He went to the local clinic, wondering if he had cracked ribs. He was judged well enough to continue, but not before some repairs. The crash bent the front suspension on his Arctic Cat snowmachine. His run to Nome was less eventful this year, but still a race all the way. McKenna and VanMeter reached Nome only two minutes in front of Mike Morgan, a 26-year-old welder from Nome, and Chris Olds, a 40-year-old construction project manager from Eagle River, a suburb of Anchorage. Behind them all was some of the wildest, most desolate and unoccupied country in North America. They literally flew through their tour of it -- zipping across frozen rivers at speeds topping 90 mph and making a tough climb up, into and over the Alaska Range at speeds fast enough to force total focus on the trail. Though the scenery is spectacular, there was no chance for sightseeing, at least for the leaders. Behind them, the drivers for other teams, traveling north at a slower pace, might have time to look around and admire the wilderness. Somewhat surprisingly, in a race famous for trail hazards and broken machines, only three of the 30 teams that left the start line in Big Lake has scratched as of Tuesday night. Granted, some teams barely poked along. The rookie team of Raymond Wells of Fairbanks and Norman Sheldon of Selawik covered the 52 miles from McGrath to Ophir at a less than 17 mph average on a trail where the top teams posted speeds up over 50 mph. At the front of the race was a pack used to riding fast and hard. McKenna and VanMeter have five championships between them. Olds is racing his 12th-consecutive Iron Dog, and he's won the last two -- albeit with a different partner. He paired with young Tyler Huntington of Fairbanks, an expert at negotiating the sometimes-treacherous rivers of Interior Alaska, in those earlier races. New partner Morgan has never finished an Iron Dog higher than fifth, but that could be about to change. Much of Nome was cheering him on. He got a hearty hometown welcome when he motored back to his home turf Tuesday chased by yet two more Iron Dog veterans. In third place, only eight minutes back, was the team of Todd Minnick and Nick Olstad, who last won in 2009 – before Olds and Huntington began their championship run. Iron Dog racers travel in teams for safety. If someone gets injured in the vast wilderness along the trail, it's vital to have a partner to perform first aid and organize a rescue. Behind Minnick and Olstad, Huntington and new partner Tre West checked in 54 minutes later. “We’ve really been having a real good trail this year, better than most years, real fast,” Huntington told Jeremy Scott of KIYU radio. “There's been times when there’s absolutely no snow in the berm, no trail at all.” But not every racer loved the trail. “It’s been really, really bumpy,” rookie Archie Agnes of Tanana told KIYU. “There’s some pretty big drifts – real bumpy.” By 6 p.m., the top eight team had reached Nome. Racers will rest until early Thursday morning, when they head to Fairbanks.
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