All 17 teams competing in this year's Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race are on the trail, after a smooth and sunny start.
The field includes three former K300 champions, including the winningest and second-winningest mushers of all time in the race — Jeff King and Pete Kaiser. It's also stacked with Iditarod, Yukon Quest, and Kobuk 440 competitors. Only one musher is a rookie of the 300-mile distance.
From Bethel, mushers and dogs head upriver to the Gweek, on the overland trail behind Akiachak, and rejoin the Kuskokwim just before the first checkpoint at Tuluksak, about 50 miles into the race. It's typically a run-through checkpoint, where teams don't stop.
From Tuluksak, they'll continue upriver to the next checkpoint, Kalskag, another 45 miles upriver.
The first stage of the race is an important one.
2023 Iditarod champion and second-time K300 musher Ryan Redington says he learned that the hard way last year.
"I went way too fast on the first round, and so hopefully I slow things down and and have a better second half of the race," Redington said at the mushers' meeting on Thursday (Feb. 6).
Musher Bailey Vitello is also back for his second Kuskokwim 300, and came away with a similar lesson.
"This race is about patience in the beginning, not about speed. It's not the fastest team at the first checkpoint always," Vitello said. "There's a case that there's some guys that can do that, and you learn more about your team each year, and now that I have a veteran team, I'm excited to see what they can do."
Cody Strathe is one of two mushers in the field that's new to the Kuskokwim 300, although he's not new to the distance. And Strathe's wife, musher Paige Drobny, is a veteran of the K300.
"Keeping the speed at a consistent lower speed level that we can continue through the race is important," Strathe said. "That's gonna be hard. My dogs like to run fast, and I don't want them to go fast in the first round. So that's gonna be a little bit tricky. And I've got bad knees, and so standing on the drag mat and riding on that for a hundred miles, or whatever it is, it's gonna be difficult, but we'll do the best we can."
Keep up with the race as it progresses by tuning in to KYUK 640AM for trail updates six minutes after the hour, every hour. We'll also be regularly posting updates to our website, Facebook and Instagram pages.
