Less than twelve hours in and it's chaos

Dallas Seavey and team leave the starting chute.
Willow, Alaska. March 3, 2024.

The Iditarod left little time before bringing all the drama in the first hours of the race Monday morning. In less than twelve hours the race saw its first reports of an aggressive moose having to be dispatched by one of the race's biggest names. By the time the sun was up fans were frantic trying to find out just what happened, and were saddened to hear that a dog was injured enough to have to be flown to Anchorage for examination and treatment.

Roughly at 1:40am Monday morning a report came into Iditarod officials in Finger Lake that an aggressive moose had been shot by five-time Iditarod Champion Dallas Seavey. This same moose had attacked Jessie's Holmes' team just a little while before tangling with Seavey, and Holmes fought it off of his team by "punching it in the nose." Seavey could not fend off the moose and was forced to dispatch the animal. According to Seavey, the moose was so close when he shot it that it landed on his sled.

Iditarod rules state that anytime a moose has to be put down by a musher on the trail, the musher MUST dress out the animal and report it ASAP to Iditarod officials. For dressing out the musher must skin the animal as well as remove all internal organs so as not to have the meat spoil. Once officials are alerted they will report to Alaska Troopers who will recover the meat and disperse it to local communities. No team behind the musher can advance past the musher and must help field dress the animal. Once the original musher leaves the site then the other mushers may continue.

Dallas did everything right, but where the moose was dispatched it was in a part of the trail that the carcass could not easily be seen by teams. Several teams including Paige Drobny, Wally Robinson, and Gabe Dunham reported running over the moose! Everyone seemed to have a good laugh about it, though.

Seavey did have one dog injured in the moose encounter. The pup, named Faloo, was "returned" from the trail when Dallas came into Finger Lake and is with vets in Anchorage being evaluated and tended to.

This was not the first moose encounter for Dallas Seavey in Iditarod 52. About halfway through the Ceremonial Start the champion team was stalled as a young moose stood in the trail while the musher held his lead dogs and kept things calm. 

This morning's event was definitely not what the birthday boy had planned for his race, much less how he planned to spend his birthday.

In other race news, currently it's Travis Beals out in front with Dallas running right along with him. Beals still has all 16 dogs where several teams have dropped to 14 (all dogs are safe as returned dogs waiting to be transported home). The race cannot be won this early on, but it can be lost if a team gets ahead of itself and is allowed to run beyond its capabilities. However, according to a post by Beals' facebook page he is right on schedule (which his partner says is kind of a first for him.)

Jessie Royer crashed for the "first time ever" in the Happy River Steps area, a notorious bit of trail who has taken out many a musher and sled. While musher and sled seem to have made it in one piece, Royer's jacket is not so lucky. She says she hopes she can wait to mend it (it's a sizable rip that nearly took off her pocket) in Takotna, so it's safe to assume that's the checkpoint she plans to take her 24.

The front runners are on their way to Nikolai and should arrive in the wee morning hours, unless they choose to camp to sling shot past the checkpoint and continue on. This is where we start to see the gaps form between the leaders, chase, and back of the pack. This is the last time fans should feel good about taking naps/get actual sleep until everyone begins their 24s in the next day or two.

June visitors!

Well, I survived May and I'm starting to recoop from the first week of June (which is also my church's VBS week each year). I am pooped. I have done NOTHING today and other than a tball game tonight I will continue to do nothing until I go back to work on Wednesday! Ha!

But I did want to share photos I took on Friday, we had a mother moose and her new twin babies in our yard when I got home from VBS and I found enough energy to take a couple hundred pictures. Don't worry, I didn't edit or share all of them.

Hopefully I get the inspiration to start blogging again, but until then...

Alaskan Visitors

We had a Moose Cow and Calf visit our backyard this morning. I was on my way out the door when I noticed them so I grabbed the camera and the 100-400mm lens and stood on the deck to take their photos. I try very hard not to get too close/bother the moose when they make it into the yard. Safety first! So that means short little baby moose remain pretty hidden from the camera's view, but I managed to get a few.

I also managed to get a couple of pics of a Robin. All in the rain. It was worth it.

Real Big Wild Life

While a sight like this would have Anchorage Alaska media and "newer Alaskans" (and I use Alaskan soooooooooooooooooooooooo sarcastically here) would freak out and scream for these animals to be moved to "the woods" so they can't "hurt us", here in Kenai we welcome and embrace the wildlife. Such a bizarre notion, I know.

I took 100 pictures today, went to upload them and realized that photos I downloaded to the computer earlier today were corrupted. So I'm in a very gloomy mood. Not sure I'll be sleeping tonight or not. UGH!

Iditarod leaders already into Rainy Pass



Hugh Neff leaves Willow Lake Sunday
Neff currently sits in second place.

Even with the heavy snow levels, the trail has not seemed to slow the leaders of the Last Great Race. Last minute changes to the trail - oh, yeah, the Steps were put back in - and the snow fall from Saturday did not seem to detour or change musher strategy. The top thirty are in Rainy Pass, with a dozen more on the horizon.

Saturday the decision was announced that the dreaded Happy River Steps were being reinstated. Earlier this year they had decided to take a trail that went around the steps to get onto Happy River, but it was determined that with all of the new snow that the trail saw in the last part of February, that the new trail was no longer considered safe for the dogs. some mushers were happy, others were just determined to get through safely.

All those worries seem to be for naught. Most of the veteran mushers are saying the Steps were the easiest/best they've ever seen. It seems the plus side of having the amount of snow that the trail has gotten was good for something, it created a buffer. So far there are no reports of major damage or injury. One crisis seemingly averted this year.

Moose were another worry in the weeks leading up to the race. Reports of mushers training their dogs last month were almost daily about a moose running into the team. Jr. Iditarod first and second place finishers, Conway Seavey and Ben Lyons, tangled with a moose just fifteen miles from the finish line (which is the start of the Iditarod). Zoya Denure's team was attacked and injured the night before the ceremonial start, with one dog - Demon - injured enough that he almost didn't make race day. Demon is sore, but fine, and is running with Denure's team.

Moose were also in several parts of the Ceremonial trail in Anchorage on Saturday. Tudor Crossing had a bull moose come into the trail and laydown. No amount of coaxing by the trail guards could get him to move and it took the Anchorage Police Department's Iditarod Patrol (snowmachines) to convince him to head back into the woods.

There's still plenty of trail, and danger lurks when we all least expect it, but it seems, for now, our worry up to race day was for naught.