KOYUK — The race for rookie of the year is officially on, between the youngest rookie in this year’s race, Nome’s own Melissa Owens, and the race’s most grizzled rookie, Canada’s savvy William Kleedehn. They were sitting in 24th and 29th place on Tuesday.
Owens, 18, is the youngest woman ever to run the Iditarod. Kleedehn, 49, is highly respected for his skills and is highly competitive despite having a prosthetic leg below one knee (from a motorcycle accident at age 18). Apart from age, sex and appearance, there’s something common between those two that emerged as they parked side by side in Unalakleet after showing up within minutes of each other. It’s the joy of racing sled dogs. They were happy, and they were having fun. Both had big smiles on their mildly weathered faces as they settled in to feed their dogs.
Owens had just come off an incredible run of more than 100 miles. She’d taken off from Nulato with the dogs moving slowly on Sunday afternoon, but they picked up speed by the time she reached Kaltag about 35 miles away, “so I decided to keep going, and we went,” she said. Right past the Tripod Flats cabin at 26 miles and on by the Old Woman Cabin another 25 miles from that, and right on down to Unalakleet.
Owens, who started the race unable to keep any food down because of anxiety, was now ravenous. “I’ve been eating everything in sight,” she said, adding she couldn’t wait to get something to eat.
Mushers this far into a day-and-night journey with their sled dogs begin to get some intuitive connection with their team, and Owens described a feeling she got about one of her dogs. Once the team crested a hill within view of the lights of Unalakleet, one of her main leaders, a red dog, speeded up. “The lights looked like Nome and I think he knew were getting closer,” she said. I don’t doubt it for a minute. The country in this region has a look all its own, and if a human can recognize it, a dog that’s innately tuned in to the trail and terrain is going to figure it out, too.
Was she racing? “Yeah, I’m trying to get the top rookie spot and I imagine he is, too,” Owens said, nodding over at Kleedehn.
Kleedehn, never one to reveal too much of his race plan to anyone, was more circumspect. He didn’t answer the question directly, except to say that his intention from the beginning has not been to race, but to investigate the Iditarod for its potential, to see if he might compete next year.
“It’s not a race trail. It’s a journey. I really like it,” Kleedehn said with enthusiasm, adding that he wondered why he waited so long to try the Iditarod. He’s run 11 Yukon Quests. “Now I have to come back and do it again. I’d do it by snowmachine if I didn’t have dogs.” The way the landscape changes — from southcentral coastal Alaska, over the Alaska Range and into the cooler Interior, down on to the Yukon River and the transition over to Bering Sea Coast –fascinates Kleedehn. “The changes of geography and all this is totally awesome,” he said.
Owens blew through Shaktoolik to make the run over to Koyuk, which theoretically could put her too far ahead of Kleedehn for him to catch up. If her move pans out, its an understatement to mention that her home town of Nome will be cheering.