2015 Iditarod

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Meet the Valley mushers in the Last Great Race

A supplement to the Friday, February 27, 2015

Page 2 2015 IDITAROD FEBRUARY 27, 2015

FEBRUARY 27, 2015 2015 IDITAROD Page 3

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Checkpoints Distance to next Distance to NomeAnchorage to Campbell Airstrip ..................................... 11 .....................................968 Fairbanks to Nenana ......................................................... 60.......................................908Nenana to Manley .............................................................. 90...................................... 818Manley to Tanana .............................................................. 66...................................... 752Tanana to Ruby ................................................................ 119.......................................633Ruby to Galena ................................................................... 50.......................................583Galena to Huslia ................................................................. 82 .....................................501Huslia to Koyukuk ............................................................. 86.......................................415Koyukuk to Nulato ............................................................ 22.......................................393Nulato to Kaltag ................................................................. 47.......................................345Kaltag to Unalakleet........................................................... 85.......................................261Unalakleet to Shaktoolik ................................................... 40.......................................221Shaktoolik to Koyuk .......................................................... 50.......................................171Koyuk to Elim ..................................................................... 48.......................................123Elim to Golovin .................................................................. 28.........................................95Golovin to White Mountain ............................................. 18.........................................77White Mountain to Safety ................................................ 55.........................................22Safety to Nome ................................................................... 22........................................... 0

2015: A different route to Nome

The annual race to Nome will be historic in 2015.

Unseasonable weather and poor trail conditions for organizers to move the restart to Fairbanks for the second time in the history of the race. The 2015 Iditarod

will also be different than the 2003 race that left Fairbanks. Huslia and Koyukuk will host Iditarod checkpionts for the first time.

The 2013 race will also include five fewer checkpoints than last year, and teams will cover 986 miles from Fairbanks to Nome.

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The reigning champ:Dallas Seavey

Willow’s Dallas Seavey enters the 2015 Iditarod as the reigning champion of The Last Great Race.

Seavey hit the finish line in Nome in just more than eight days and 13 hours last March to break the race record, and earn his sec-

ond Iditarod title. It also marked the third straight year that the race was won by a Seavey. Seavey’s father, Mitch, won the 2013 title.

Dallas Seavey also became the ninth musher in race history to win the Iditarod at least twice.


Ben HarperWasilla

Ben Harper, 18, was born in Texas, raised in Wash-ington, and moved with his family to Alaska in 2011. He has just graduated from high school in Wasilla. Ray Redington Jr helped Harper start his mushing career. He has also completed the Knik 200, the Copper Basin 300, the Denali Doubles, and the Tustumena 100, and also enjoys hunt-ing and fishing

Dallas SeaveyWillow

Dallas Seavey, 27, cur-rent Iditarod champion, was born in Virginia, and his family moved to Seward when he was 5. He is a third-generation musher who grew up helping his dad, Mitch, the 2004 and 2013 Iditarod champion, train his racing teams. He ran the Jr. Iditarod four times and in 2005, Dal-

las became the youngest musher in history to run the Iditarod. He also wrestled for Skyview High School and spent one year training at the U.S. Olympic Training Center. In 2011, he won the Yukon Quest and in 2012, he became the youngest Iditarod champion in race history. He is one of four mushers ever to hold a champion-ship in both the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod. Dallas and his wife, Jen, also an Iditarod vet-eran, are the parents of 4-year-old Annie.

Gwenn BogartWasilla

Gwenn Bogart, 57, was born and raised in Vermont. She has degrees from Colo-rado Technical University. Gwenn has had profes-sional careers in horseman-ship and fly fishing. She co-founded Casting for Recovery, www.castingfor-recovery.org, an international breast cancer support group headquartered in Manchester, Vermont, that uses fly fishing for mental and physical healing. Gwenn’s move to Alaska was prompted by her engagement to Dave Bogart, then a member of the Iditarod Air Force. In 2012, she realized she had a “burning desire” to

mush dogs and worked with Iditarod veteran, Jim Lanier, and others, to learn the sport. She has run the Sheep Mountain 200 and the Cop-per Basin 300. Gwenn’s two grown daughters, Hannah and Molly, make their homes in Ore-gon and Vermont.

Lisbet NorrisWillow

Norris, 27, grew up in Willow and attended UAF. She received her degree in northern studies and his-tory in 2011, and decided to pursue her dream of distance mushing. While at UAF, Norris studied in Norway and Baffin Island and worked as a musher and expedition guide. She returned to North-ern Norway and spent the fall and winter of 2011 and 2012 training and racing dogs in the Alta area. In 2014, she completed her rookie Iditarod with a team of Siberian Huskies from the family kennel: Alaskan Kennels, the oldest Siberian husky kennel in the world. She again will field a team of AKC registered Siberian Huskies in the 2015 Iditarod.

Ellen HalversonWasilla

Ellen Halverson, 54, was born and raised in North Dakota. She received her degree in biology and music education at Concordia Col-lege in Minnesota and then went to medical school in North Dakota. She has been a psychiatrist since 1991. She moved to Alaska in 1998 for a job at the Alaska Guidance Clinic, which is now Provi-dence Behavioral Medicine. Ellen began mush-ing when she moved to Alaska and finished the Iditarod in 2007. Ellen has a son, Peter, 11. She lists her hobbies as horses, nutrition, and CrossFit.

Rick CasilloWillow

Rick Casillo, 41, grew up in a small country town of Alder, outside of Buffalo, New York. He worked in Alder as a sub-contractor before moving to Alaska in 1999 to become a fly fishing

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Meet the mushers: Valley boasts 22 in 2015 field

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guide. He began mushing in 2002. He first ran in 2004 and came back in 2014, after establish-ing Battle Dawgs Racing, and his racing kennel teamed up with ‘Alaska’s Healing Hearts,’ an organization serving the battle wounded and battle weary. “

Matthew FailorWillow

Matthew Failor, 32, was born and raised in Ohio. Failor moved to Alaska in 2006 for a summer col-lege job as a dog handler at Gold Rush Sled Dog Tours. He graduated with a degree in photography in 2007. He moved to Alaska permanently in 2008 to work with Matt Hayas-hida and train with him and his dogs. He has worked for various mushers and in 2010, start-ed handling for Martin Buser and ran his first Iditarod as Buser’s handler. He recently moved to Willow to run dogs under his own name, 17th Dog. Team Matthew Failor, is excited and eager to get back out onto dog mushing’s greatest stage, the Iditarod.

Justin SavidisWillow

In 2004, Justin (AJ), 40, and his wife, Rebecca,

packed their worldly belongings into a truck and a trailer (complete with a rocking chair strapped to the top) and moved to Willow to follow a job offer, and more importantly, to chase down a dream of running dogs. Today, they own and operate Snowhook Kennel com-prised of more than 40 dogs. His racing career includes the Rich Allen ‘For Love of Dogs’ award for exceptional dog care and a fifth-place finish in the 2013 Northern Lights 300, a first-place finish in the 2012 Don Bowers Memorial Sled Dog Race, and a first-place finish and receiving the Humanitarian Award in the 2011 Don Bowers Memorial Sled Dog Race.

Alan EischensWasilla

Al Eischens, 55, was born in Minnesota and raised in Adak, Alaska. He moved to St. Lawrence Island, living here for more than 10 years, and then to Wasilla in 1991. He began mushing in 2011. He is dedicating all his miles to pediatric strokes and pediatric brain cancer. He and his wife, Tangela, have six children and 13 grand-children, ages 4 months to 13 years old.

Failor

Savidis

Eischens

Continued on next page


Becca MooreWillow

Becca Moore, 43, was born in Heidelberg, Ger-many, and raised in Berlin. She went to Colorado State University where she earned a degree in natural resource management in 1997. After graduation, she worked for the Army Corps of Engi-neers in Washington. She started coming to Alaska in 1999 and worked for the Sitka Ranger District. She has been self-employed for the last eight years. She began mushing in 2000, and while working as a handler in 2003, she started

thinking about running Iditarod. She finished the Yukon Quest in 2009. She is married to Iditarod veteran Rayme Smyth, and has to chil-dren, Ava, 7 and Banyan, 3.

Kelly MaixnerBig Lake

Kelly Maixner, 39, was born and raised in North Dakota. After graduating from Montana State Uni-versity he went to dental school at Nova Southeastern in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where he received his den-tal degree. Kelly moved to

Alaska in 2007 for a pediatric dental residency. He started Mad Stork Kennel, LLC with two pregnant females and it has grown to around 60 dogs. Maxiner and wife, Margaret, have two children, Rosemary, 3, and Vendelin, 1. He is a member of the American Dental Association and the America Academy of Pediatric Den-tistry.

Rohn BuserBig Lake

Rohn Buser, 25, was born in Alaska. He has mushed all his life. He was the Jr. Iditarod champion in 2007 and ran his first Iditarod the following year. He was also the winner of the Kuskok-wim 300 in 2012 and 2014. Rohn comes by mushing naturally. He is the son of four-time champion, Martin Buser. He currently resides at Happy Trails Kennel where he trains dogs and is a tour guide.

Ray Redington Jr.Wasilla

Ray Redington, Jr., 39, was born and raised in Alas-ka. The grandson of Iditarod co-founder, Joe Redington, Sr. and son of Iditarod vet-eran, Raymie Redington. After running the Jr. Iditar-

od several times, he took a break from mushing. He began racing again in 2000. He is married to Julie Flodin, daughter of Iditarod veteran, Steve Flodin. They lived in Two Rivers for nine years and then moved back to Knik to be closer to family. They have two children, Ellen, 8, and Isaac, 5.

Lev ShvartsWillow

Lev Shvarts, 35, was born in Kiev, Ukraine, and moved with his family to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1989. He received an engineering degree from Carnegie Mel-lon University in 2001, and went back to Massachusetts where he was employed as an engineer before moving to Alaska two years ago to “play with dogs.” He is married to wife, Melissa, and became an American citizen in 1997.

Gerald SousaTalkeetna

Gerald Sousa, 54, was born in California where he lived until he was 12. He moved to Alaska with his family in 1971 and has been here ever since. He gradu-ated from Susitna Valley

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High School in Talkeetna, and he attended UAA. He began mushing in 1978, and said he became interested in the Iditarod in 2001. He is a member of the Iditarod Trail Committee, Inc. and the IOFC and he owns Talkeetna Adven-ture Company, LLC. He and Kathleen are the parents of Nicolas, 12, and Jerry has two adult children, Denali and Fritha.

Martin BuserBig Lake

Born in Winterthur, Switzerland, in 1958, Mar-tin became fascinated with sled dogs while still a teen. He came to Alaska in 1979 to enhance his knowledge of care and training of sled dogs. He began working and training with long-time Alaskan mushers Earl and Natalie Norris and ran his first Iditarod in 1980. Martin and wife Kathy Chapoton, reside in Big Lake where the family owns and man-ages Happy Trails Kennel. Their sons, Nikolai and Rohn, both named after Iditarod check-points, have been involved with dogs at various times in their lives.

For nine years, Martin’s 2002 team held the record for the Fastest Iditarod by completing the race in 8 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes and 2 seconds.

As tribute to his treatment of his racers, Mar-tin was awarded the coveted Leonhard Seppala Award in 1988, 1993, 1995, 1997, and again

in 2014, for the most humanitarian care of his dogs.

Martin is currently the musher with the most consecutive Iditarod finishes, 29 races com-pleted in row, 30 total finishes.

DeeDee JonroweWillow

DeeDee Jonrowe, 61, was born in Frankfort, Ger-many, while her father was in the military. The family moved to Alaska in 1971 where her dad was stationed at Ft. Richardson. DeeDee has a degree in biological sciences and renewable resources and now lists her occupation as ken-nel owner and dog racer. She began mushing in 1979 when she was living in Bethel and her mother was excited about volunteering in the early Iditarod races. DeeDee is a member of the Big Lake Baptist Church, the Willow Running Club and Sunrise Rotary. She enjoys playing softball and motivational speaking in her spare time.

Alan StevensBig Lake

Alan Stevens, 25, was born and raised in Sugar-land, Texas. He moved to

Colorado in 2008, where he attended college and worked as a bike mechanic. He received a degree in engineering in 2012, and worked at the Colorado School of Mines doing research in waste water bioremediation. He moved to Juneau in 2013, where he was first introduced to sled dogs.

Jason MackeyWasilla

Jason Mackey, 43, was born in Alaska and raised in the Mat-Su Valley and at Coldfoot. His mush-ing career began when he started running junior races in 1983. After four Jr. Idi-tarod’s and four Jr. World Championships, he went into distance mushing, ultimately running the Iditarod in 2004 and 2008. Jason is married to Lisa and they are the parents of Patrick, 23 and Jason, 21. Jason has been a heavy-equipment operator for the last nine years.

Wade MarrsWasilla

Wade Marrs, 24, was born and raised in the Knik area outside of Wasilla. He started running dogs in 1996 and first ran the Jr. Iditarod

in 2007, and his first Iditarod in 2009. He’s been a tour guide for the last six years.

Scott SmithWillow

Scott Smith, 45, was born in Maine. He attended Unity College and the University of Maine studying fisher-ies and biology. He began mushing in 1984 and moved to Wyoming where he lived for 11 years and owned and operated a sled do outfitting business. He moved to Alaska in 2005. Smith has not raced in the Iditarod since 2008, but has remained active in other events.

** Information courtesy of iditarod.com. Photos by Jeff Schultz

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2015 Iditarod