The last two mushers to finish this year’s Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race crossed under the burled arch on Nome’s Front Street within 5 minutes of each other in the wee hours of Monday morning.
Rookies Dane Baker and Ebbe Pedersen left from Safety Roadhouse, the race’s last checkpoint, at exactly the same time Sunday night. After the 22 final miles of trail, Baker arrived in Nome at 1:35 a.m. Pedersen pulled in at 1:40 a.m. By that time, both mushers had been on the trail for just under two weeks since they left Fairbanks on March 3.
For arriving last, Pedersen wins the Red Lantern Award, meant to recognize the musher’s “perseverance and commitment to completing the job despite unexpected challenges.”
But at the time he and Baker finished, there was one last musher still out on the trail. After running at the back of the pack for several hundred miles, rookie Jenny Roddewig of Fairbanks scratched in White Mountain a few hours after her mandatory 8-hour rest was over. Race officials said she made the decision “in the best interest of her team” and that all her dogs were “in good health.”
By that point, Roddewig and the 10 dogs she had with her had gone 1,057 of the 1,128 miles in this year’s modified, extended race route, according to a statement from the Iditarod Trail Committee.
Not only was this the lengthiest route in the Iditarod’s 53 runnings, this year’s race also saw the longest winning run time in more than three decades. Jessie Holmes, who earned his first Iditarod win when he arrived in Nome early Friday morning, finished in 10 days, 14 hours and 55 minutes. The last time a race extended further into its 10th day was Martin Buser’s first victory in 1992.
[Jessie Holmes wins the Iditarod after five top-10 finishes]
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Though much of the modified route out of Fairbanks and through a loop down to the lower Yukon was flat and run along frozen rivers, many mushers spoke about it being harder than they’d originally anticipated.
“I can definitely say it was a long one. Ya know, it’s not so much as it’s long, I think, as the wide open spaces. It really messed with the heads of a few dogs,” said veteran Jason Mackey, who finished in 16th place. “I think mentally it was tougher than I expected it to be. But it was good. At least we had a race.”
In mid-February, just three weeks before it was set to kick off, Iditarod officials announced they were moving the race restart to Fairbanks because of a lack of snow along an extended stretch of the traditional trail on the north side of the Alaska Range.
“They said it was gonna be boring. They said it was gonna be easy. And they were really wrong, ‘cause it was none of those things,” said veteran Mille Porsild, who finished ninth this year.
It was Porsild’s fourth top-10 finish since she began competing in the Iditarod in 2020.
Porsild was one of three women to finish in the top 10. Paige Drobny was in a three-way competition for much of this year’s race with Holmes and second-place finisher Matt Hall, and ultimately notched the best finish of her Iditarod career, coming in third. Eight hours behind her was the Yukon Territory’s Michelle Phillips, whose fourth-place finish was likewise the best of her Iditarod career.
Drobny received the highly coveted Leonhard Seppala Humanitarian Award, which goes to the musher who race veterinarians believe demonstrated the best dog care.
“I have the best dogs in the world,” Drobny said at the event’s concluding banquet in Nome on Sunday as she wiped tears from her eyes. “As does every other musher here.”
The rookie of the year was Michigander Samantha LaLonde, who pulled onto Front Street early Sunday morning in 15th place.
With just 33 mushers setting out from Fairbanks, this year tied with 2023 as having the smallest starting field on record. Eleven mushers either scratched or were withdrawn by race judges for falling far enough behind that they were deemed non-competitive.
Likewise, this year’s field of finishers is tied for the smallest. The only other time there were 22 mushers to officially finish was in 1973, the very first Iditarod.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Dane Baker’s last name.
