The essence of Ruby, as captured by Iditarod Hall-of-Fame artist Jon Van Zyle in 2016

Iditarod races hit Ruby

The winter, crossroad community of Ruby, Alaska – where the Iditarod Trail meets the frozen Yukon River was a busy place today with Norway’s dynamic, dog-driving duo having blown through overnight, the a ‘competitors’ in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race having arrived in the early morning, and the Stubborn Six of the human-powered, weather-beaten, Iditarod Trail Invitational 100 stumbling in at last

Where does one begin?

Probably with the Ruby arrival of the Dynamic Duo of billionaire Kjell Røkke and trusted sidekick-cum-guide  Thomas Wærner, the winner of the 2020 Iditarod, now identified by the Iditarod as one of its newly minted “expedition mushers” along with struggling Canadian Steve Curtis.

Curtis and his aging guide Jeff King, a four-time Iditarod champ, are so far behind the race they’re in need of air support to catch up. Røkke and Wærner, on the other hand, are way ahead.

They raced into Ruby – the home of the late Emmitt Peters, the ‘Yukon Fox’ and an Iditaord legend – before midnight and were gone 10 hours before TV reality star Jesse Holmes, the defending Iditaord champ, showed up.

Given that behaviors sometimes speak much louder than words, the alleged non-racers were clearly racing. In fact, their strategy appeared to be an old, old Iditarod strategy.

Grab the Iditarod lead on the banks of the Yukon, where you can pretty much count on finding good trail nearly all the way to Nome thanks to a winter of village snowmachine traffic pounding the snows into a white highway, and then just stay one checkpoint ahead of the chasing teams.

Thus Røkke and Wærner left Galena today at 12:30 – about 25 minutes before Holmes, the ‘real’ Iditarod leader, left Ruby. 

The plan?

Before this race started, Røkke told Nome Nugget reporter Ariana Crockett O’Harra that he “wanted to do the race in a way that I think suited my qualifications.”

He would appear to believe that his “qualifications” are that he is one of the best, damn dog drivers on the planet, and he is, by God, going to demonstrate it. And never you mind the Iditarod leadership freeing him from silly Iditarod rules that slow mushers down.

Or maybe Røkke – one of those ‘get ‘er done’ Norwegians – is trying to show the world just what a doggy version of Formula 1 the Iditarod could be if it got rid of the rules that limit the number of dogs a musher can use, require one mandatory rest of 24 hours somewhere along the trail, and other mandatory, eight-hour rests.

There is no doubt the Iditarod could speed up the run to Nome if mushers were allowed to swap out dogs the way Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull and others change tires. Dog changes might even add an exciting new element to Irod’s streaming video coverage.

Imagine pit stops with a team of handlers swarming to swap out dogs as fast as possible, or replace the booties on the feet of dogs staying in the team for the next leg of the race.

Feel free to also imagine anything else that could be done to speed up Iditarod, because it’s in a whole new world now. How long the Iditarod powers that be will allow this Røkke show to go on is anyone’s guess.

Some veteran mushers thought the Dynamic Duo would surely be stopped at Ruby, given the near guarantee of good trail from there to Nome, but that didn’t happen. So now the question is this:

Will Iditarod powers-that-be hold the Dynamic Duo at the coast and let the actual race proceed from there?

Or will they stop Røkke and Wærner at Safety, the last checkpoint, so the actual ‘winner’ of the race can be first to Nome?

Or will they go all in and let the non-competing, “expedition mushers” beat the ‘racers’ to Nome because it really doesn’t matter who finishes first unless they’re an official racer, right?

Remember, Alaska is one of the top two, dope-smokingest states in the nation, according to Yahoo Finance, so if things don’t make sense here, it’s cool, dude. If the Iditarod says the second-place team – well, actually the third-place team – is the winner, then that’s the winner.

Why not?

Crazy history

We’ve already had an Alaska Superior Court Judge decide that Iditarod doesn’t have to abide by the rules it writes down and hands to mushers; it’s free to make up any rules it wants as the race goes along.

So if the third-place finisher turns out to be the ‘race’ winner, it’s OK.  That said, it is actually written into the rules this time that 66-year-old Røkke cannot win, even if he finishes first, because he’s an “expedition musher” even if he looks, walks, quacks and acts like a competitive musher.

Now, back to the people who are panting and puffing their way up the trail rather than yelling “on ahead,” “mush you huskies,” “giddyup you mangy curs,” “please guys, let’s move along down the trail,” or whatever is necessary to keep the dogs in front of them pulling.

These are the Stubborn Six who hung on after the ITI 1000 ran out of trail near the ever-shrinking community of Takotna. Actually, the race didn’t so much run out of trail as it ran out of usable trail.

There was a trail north of Takotna. The trouble was finding it buried beneath a huge accumulation of snow.

Irish hiker Gavin Hennigan did manage to proceed north by feeling for the trail with his feet beneath unbroken fields of snow hemmed in, in places, by spindly spruce or willows. But the 44-year-old Iditarod Trail veteran didn’t go far before he realized that trying to plow his way across 100 miles of absolutely unpeopled wilderness wasn’t going to work and might prove deadly.

So he turned around, hiked back to the old, deserted mining camp of Ophir and camped. He was eventually caught there by fat-tire-bike-pushing South Dakotan t Ryan Wanlass, 44, who promptly gave up and joined the campout.

Nobody moved until Iditaord trailbreakers on snowmachines showed up earlier this week to pack a “trail” for the dogs.  The trailbreakers were followed north by four other Invitational fat-bikers who’d been waiting in the comfort of McGrath with its “safe, friendly, small-town feeling and the added benefits of a café, coffee shop, bar, public library, public radio station, hotels/lodges/bunkhouse, churches, grocery store, museum, health clinic and essential basic utilities – running water, steady electricity, internet, and (GCI only) cell phone service.”

McGrath, population 301, is tiny by American standards, but the amenities it offers beat camping out for days at 30 degrees below zero for most people.

Strategically, staying in McGrath was probably also a wise move because it prevented wasting a lot of energy grunting one’s way up the trail to Takotna and the clawing up the non-trail trail to the top of an 800-foot high hill before dropping down to Ophir.

Probably as a result of this harboring of energy, the time gap between Hennigan and Wanless greatly narrowed as the hiker/snowshoer and the first fat-tired cyclists closed on Ruby.  Just before 10 am. today, Wanless led the bunch into the once bustling gold-mining community and steamshipt port now down to 139 residents just before 10 a.m. today.  Hennigan followed about four hours back.

Fifty-three-year-old Australian Troy Szczurkowski arrived about an hour and 20 minutes later with 36-year-old Kendall Parks from St. Louis, a couple of hours behind him. The global positioning satellite (GPS) tracker carried by Brazilian Mayella Krause, 36, showed her about 10 miles out of Ruby as this was written late Friday afternoon.

The whereabouts of Frenchman Erick Basset was unclear. He’d lost his GPS tracker, but was reported to be traveling with one of the women in the race. Whether he was with Krause or Parks was unclear when this was written.

Whatever the case, all the muscle-powered travelers were expected to take a good rest in Ruby before heading up the trail for Galena. They were like to be joined by a few mushers electing to take the dog race’s mandatory, eight-hour, Yukon River rest in one of the four checkpoints along the river, starting with Ruby.