Musher John Snyder of Akiachak has dropped out of the 2024 Kuskokwim 300 sled dog race.
“I’m done,” Snyder told KYUK’s trail reporter Emily Schwing on the river above Kalskag. “These guys have got bad frostbite,” he said of his dogs. “I don’t want to hurt them more.”
He's the first competitor to drop out of this year's race.
Snyder also said that he had been struggling with his lead dog, which he was borrowing from his son.
“It’s been going back and forth, back and forth,” Snyder said. “Now I know how to work that lead dog. Just gotta go: ‘Hoyt, hoyt!’”
Snyder said that he was using his son’s lead dog because his late lead dog was killed in a head-on collision with a snowmachiner a month ago.
This was Snyder’s third time running the K300. He was the K300’s Red Lantern Award winner in 2022.
