Iron Dog rookies Ray Wells and Norman Sheldon were late to Finger Lake on the south slope of the Alaska Range Sunday, and they paid the price. While the leaders in the world's longest, toughest snowmachine race were through the mountains and racing for McGrath on the Kuskokwim River in the Interior, Wells and Sheldon were taking a beating from an unfriendly Iditarod Trail as they climbed into the mountains.

In this video by Alaska Dispatch publisher Alice Rogoff, who's on the Iron Dog race trail, Ray Wells and Norman Sheldon, two racers in Alaska's Iron Dog 2012, talk about the first section of the race to McGrath.