A lone snowmachine track cuts through the vast emptiness of Alaska’s lost “Inland Empire” to form the Iditarod Trail/Tim Hewitt photo
Mother Nature pummels Iditarod Invitational
With an Irish hiker noted for his physical toughness and psychological fortitude in retreat after challenging what might be the toughest trail left in North America and an Italian woman in the hospital hoping doctors can save her frostbitten toes, the 2026 running of the Iditarod Trail Invitational is turning into an epic affair.
Pulling a sled loaded with 10 days of food, Irishman Gavin Hennigan on Monday began a brave, solo effort to break open the 60 miles of snow-covered Iditarod Trail across the frozen, empty heart of Alaska between the Kuskokwim and Yukon rivers.
He left humanity behind in the tiny town of Takotna, climbed over the 800-foot hill to the west and dropped down Independence Creek toward the deserted mining camp of Ophir and the headwaters of the Innoko River.
He was hoping to push on another 75 miles from Ophir to a nowhere place at a dot on the map called Cripple. He didn’t get close.
Not far beyond American Creek, he veered off the trail and took to the frozen and snow-covered surface of the Innoko River, most likely following a trail left by Iron Dog snowmachine racers that could still be sensed beneath the new snow.
On the river, he hit what a satellite recorded as his maximum speed for the day – 2.6 mph. That didn’t last long. His moving pace was soon regularly under 1 mph, and two-and-a-half hours later, he turned around and started back on the trail toward Ophir before stopping six or seven miles short of the old mining camp.
Tim Hewitt – a Pennsylvania attorney and Iditarod Trail record holder who once made it the 1,000 miles from Knik to Nome in under 20 days, described Hennigan’s stopping location as “a great bivy spot about… in a heavily wooded spot just before crossing the Innoko.
“The north-south (Iditarod) trails split is less than 100 meters from his bivy. I’ve had some good sleeps in the exact same spot.”
At first, it appeared that Hennigan had decided to camp there and hope some racers behind him caught up to help break trail. But after a stop of more than half a day, which apparently including one of those good sleeps, he was on the move again on Wednesday afternoon.
But he wasn’t moving forward. He was instead heading back toward the Takotna outpost.
Iditarod pileup
A “census decaded place” home to 50 hearty souls, Takotna was then starting to collect the tattered remnants of an Invitational so tough it had already sent a lot of tough people home.
A gang of four on Tuesday pulled into the fading town that boomed as a Takotka River port in the Iditarod-area gold rush days of the early 1900s. Forty-two-year-old Takao Kitada from Japan and 41-year-old Herman Watson from Montanawere the first to arrive in the early evening.
A few hours later, two fat-tire cyclists – 47-year-old Ryan Wanless from South Dakota and 51-year-old Erick Basset from France – rolled in behind them. All stopped at Takotna and were still there at nightfall on Wednesday.
Three other fat bikers with plans to complete the 1,000 mile versison of the Invitational remained behind in the bigger and more comfortable community of McGrath where the ITI 350 was won by Norwegian cyclist Justinas Leveika a week ago.
The race had begun with a loaded field of fat-tired cyclists, who’ve long dominated the ITI 1000. But after battling over the Alaska Range in bitter cold for 350 miles from Knik to McGrath on a trail where they had to do as much or more bike pushing than bike riding, most of them decided to call it quits upon learning the trail ahead was buried deep under new snow.
“There isn’t really a trail past Takotna,” Fairbanks’ Jay Cable, a past winner of the ITI 1000 and a four-time finisher in Nome, reported. He figured no one was going much of anywhere past that checkpoint until at least next week, when snowmachines breaking trail for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race were expected to arrive on the scene.
Those machines create the “trail,” the likes of which can be seen in the photograph at the top of this story. On a trail lake that fat bikes can roll. But when cyclists must get off to push and flounder in the snow, the bikes become a liability.
All of which helps to explain why an Invitational that started with more than 100 cyclists, runner-hiker-snowshoers, and a handful of skiers – with 25 of that group planning to ga all the way to Nome – is now down to a dozen.
Most of the ITI 1000 competitors were fat-tired cyclists at the beginning. Now, the majority are on foot. There were five hikers/snowshoers sitting with the three bikers in McGrath on Wednesday, contemplating what to do next.
Word there was that trailbreakers for the Iditarod dog race might arrive as early as Monday and head north to Takotna, Ophir and Cripple the next day. At least one of the cyclists said he planned to wait for them to go through and take advantage of the trail they put down.
A trail makes all the difference in the world, right up until the time it doesn’t.
Frozen feet
The ITI 350 race of Laura Trentani, a 51-year-old physician from northern Italy, turned into a nasty lesson in how trails can steer people astray.
She was twice lured off the Iditarod by snowmachine tracks that took her nowhere. This happened first near the Finger Lake checkpoint about 125 miles into the event when she followed an old Iron Dog track and wandered around in 20- or 30-degree-below zero cold for a few hours before managing to find her way back to the checkpoint.
Worse was ahead.
At the bottom of the “Happy River steps,” with their notorious, staircase-like descent to the confluence of the Happy and Skwenta rivers, she missed a jog to the right that heads to a steep bank atop which the Iditarod Trail starts climbing up long gut toward a wooded bench above Shirley Lake.
Instead, she followed an apparenlty fresher snowmachine track down the Skwentna River, a water body prone to dangerous open water and thin ice in winter. She spent five hours wandering west away from the Iditarod before realizing she was lost, and then more than 12 hours working her way back to the Iditarod Trail at Shirley Lake.
How many extra calories she burned in these off-trial excursions in 30- to 40-degree-below-zero temperatures is an unkown, but by the time she reached the remote Rohn checkpoint a little past halfway on the 350-mile trail to McGrath, the blood flow to her feet had obviously suffered because her toes were frozen.
She was evacuated to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, where at least her sense of humor remained intact.
“Nature in competitions like ITI can show itself in all its brutality, which demands the usual respect,” she added. “I went through windstorms in silence, pay(ing) attention to outside signals and my body. I did it calmly, with determination but always with that fear that keeps me alert.
(But I) arrived at Rohn’s checkpoint…only to realize my feet couldn’t handle the extreme cold. As a doctor, I knew right away that hospitalization and immediate treatment for frosbites were inevitable, and as a doctor, I understand what I have and I know that the road to recovery will not be short.”
Trentani was diagnosed with toes suffering from stage-three frostbite. Historically, that presents with about a two-in-three chance that an amputation or amputations will eventually be required, but in a Facebook message, Trentani expressed some optimism her digits could be saved by injections of Aurlumyn (generically iloprost), a drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only two years ago.
One case there involved a 46-year-old man who severely froze his fingers while competing in extreme cold in the 350-mile-long version of the Yukon Arctic Ultra, a human-powered race run along the route of the now-gone Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race north of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.
He had grade three frostbite on the fourth and fifth fingers of his right hand along with frostbite “to his left first and second toe, his right foot and his nose,” the journal reported. After traditional warming treatment for frostbite to his hands and feet, the man was treated intravenously with iloprost.
“On follow-up six months later,” the journal said, “the patient’s hands and feet showed complete healing. Amputation had not been required, but he reported hypersensitivity to touch and temperature.”
The other case involved a 43-year-old orthopedic surgeon who froze both of his big toes running the 100-mile version of the Yukon Ultra. He was treated with iloprost in Whitehorse and was to continue a five-day course of the drug but missed one treatment because the “drug was not available at any other North American center during his transit home,” according to the Journal.
Despite this, the report said, a six-month checkup showed that “his feet had continued to heal, and he had successfully climbed Mount Olympus in trail shoes. He was unable to kick a ball or undertake ice climbing because of sensitivity at the tips of his toes, but he reported no problems with day-to-day function.”
