Ed Stielstra of Michigan finished in the money this year for the first time, coming in 29th, and he’s already pumped about improving on that next year, saying he has the dogs capable of passing other teams.

He did it this year by camping his way to Nome, avoiding all but five checkpoints all the way to the Bering Sea Coast. “My ideal race, I wouldn’t stay at any checkpoints,” he said. “The reason I run the Iditarod is I love traveling with the dogs. The people you meet and the villages you see are fascinating, but if I wanted to see people or villages, I would do it by airplane. I love running dogs, and camping with dogs. If I’m away from checkpoints, there’s no distractions, I’m focused on them and, more importantly, they’re focused on me.”

It worked out well for Stielstra this year, with temperatures rarely dipping below 10 degrees Fahrenheit and mostly staying around 30. His biggest risk was getting wet, not cold. “Camping” is a word mushers use that can easily be misunderstood. It’s generally a prolonged pit stop. They just pull off the trail so other teams can get by, put down straw and fire up their cookers with alcohol fuel to melt snow into water. They take the booties off their dogs, and give them dog food, water and meat. Then they allow the team to sleep for a couple of hours. The mushers typically lay right on top of their sled bags and snooze; they’re exhausted and can sleep on any surface. Then it’s time to bootie the dogs and go again. The campout can take as little as three hours, but is usually four to six hours long.

“I bet they sleep twice as much when they’re away from checkpoints,” Stielstra said. “I think I have a pretty well-trained dog team, and even so, watching them sleep at checkpoints, a good number will wake up when a team comes in and parks next to you, if they hear a cooler or a cooker, or when a team leaves.”

He added that his long camping trip ended on the coast, where he went checkpoint to checkpoint. By that point, it was a good idea to allow veterinarians plenty of time to look over the dogs.

Stielstra is excited by his finish in the top 30 and looking to improve. “I’m not just running it to run it. I’m running it to learn it, to win it. Winning it is many years away.” He is amazed at the schedules run by Lance Mackey and Jeff King. “To keep that big of a dog team running on that schedule was phenomenal.”