Despite trail conditions that some race veterans call the worst they've ever seen, Chisholm musher Nathan Schroeder is representing the Northland very well in his first time competing in Alaska's legendary Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
As of Friday afternoon, Schroeder was the top rookie in the field of 56 teams remaining in the race. He was resting at the Ruby checkpoint, which is past the halfway point of the nearly 1,000-mile race across the Alaskan wilderness.
Schroeder was in 23rd place overall, and had not yet dropped a dog from his starting team of 16; as of Friday afternoon he was one of only seven mushers of the 56 still in the race to have not dropped a dog. He took his mandatory 24-hour rest at the Takotna checkpoint, about 330 miles into the race.
"He has maintained the same average speed throughout the race. Others who started off fast or have taken less rest are starting to move slower," Schroeder's father, Vern, reported on Schroeder's Horses-N-Huskies Kennel Facebook page.
Schroeder and the rest of the field had to contend with a torturous run across what's called the Farewell Burn, a barren stretch of trail across the site of a massive decades-old forest fire. Conditions in Alaska have been unusually warm and the Farewell Burn is largely snowless this winter, meaning teams had to travel across a lot of rock and gravel.
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"It's the roughest I've ever seen," Jeff King, a four-time Iditarod winner, told the Anchorage Daily News.
Jennifer Reiter, the 2014 Iditarod Teacher on the Trail who is blogging during the race, spoke with Schroeder at Takotna, after the Farewell Burn.
"Nathan says he took the worst of it with the tug lines off of all but four of his dogs, so that only four dogs were really pulling the sled, and he still couldn't stop them" on the rock, Reiter reported. "He says his sled tipped and dragged a few times. When he pulled his sleeping bag out of his drag sled it was covered in dirt! ... Not something you expect to see on the Iditarod Trail in the middle of winter ...
"Nathan kind of just kept shaking his head about the trail. He asked other mushers around him if it was always that bad -- most said part of it is always bad, but not that bad."
Schroeder, 36, is a three-time champion of the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon who says he has dreamed of running the Iditarod since he was a kid. Before the Iditarod, he told the News Tribune that his goal was "just to finish."
But he led all race rookies into Ruby, reaching the remote village at 10:32 a.m. Friday -- about an hour ahead of the next rookie. Schroeder was still there as of late afternoon Duluth time.
Four-time Iditarod champion Martin Buser was the first musher overall to leave Ruby, at 11:15 a.m. Friday.
The race started Sunday in Willow, Alaska. Top mushers are expected to reach the finish line in Nome in the middle of next week.
