Almost nine hours into the 2025 Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race (K300), most mushers are taking their first rest in Kalskag, around a third of the way through the race.
Big Lake musher Riley Dyche continued to lead the pack after he was first through the Tuluksak checkpoint, arriving in Kalskag at 9:47 p.m. He was followed four minutes later by Bethel’s Pete Kaiser and Knik musher Hunter Keefe.
Fifteen of the 17 teams pulled into Kalskag within an hour of each other between 9:47 p.m. and 10:47 p.m. It remains to be seen how teams decide to spread out their mandatory six hours of rest between the outbound Kalskag checkpoint, Aniak, and Kalskag on the way back.
After some worries about a lead dog that was checked out by vets, Dyche said that his team was looking good. He told KYUK’s trail reporter that he’s trying to run his own race, but is looking over his shoulder.
“It's always concerning if you are ahead of Pete, because you figure you're doing something wrong. But I figure, you know, I was only like a minute or two ahead of him coming in here, so I figure I'm safe,” Dyche said.
Dyche said that he knows that the first leg doesn’t make the race, but that it’s vital. “You can't win the race in the first round, but you can sure lose it,” Dyche said at the Kalskag checkpoint.
Kaiser was second into the Kalskag, and said that it had been a smooth race so far. That’s especially true of the trail.
“Compared to what we've had all year, it's phenomenal trail,” Kaiser said. “As nice of a trail as I've ever run up here on in 16 [K300's].”
Kaiser said that he was still trying to decide how to split up rest.
“The race kind of starts here,” Kaiser said. “You want to see good things in your team when you leave here. So, yeah, long, long way to go. And there's a lot of good teams.”
Second-time musher Ryan Redington of Knik wasn’t having quite as smooth of a race, though. He said that he dropped a glove and set his snow hook to retrieve it, but “there went the dog team,” with him running behind the sled for around 10 minutes before a race marshal picked him up and brought him to the team. “The dog team was always in sight, but it was about an 11-minute mess-up,” he said. “I wish I would just put my hand in my pocket.”
For Akiak’s Mike Williams Jr., the quick clip of around 11 miles per hour set by the lead pack was a little surprising.
“This is the first stop,” Williams Jr. said. “We still got a long ways to go. We'll see how my dogs recover from the rest here, and how they do going up to Aniak. And it's hard to tell too early. Seems like a lot of people are going kind of fast.”
Williams Jr. is a veteran musher, but it’s his first time on the K300 trail in more than half a decade.
“Kind of feel like a rookie,” Williams Jr. said. “I haven't done this since 2019, so that's about six years now. Yeah, it's good to be back out here.”
Another musher who is the opposite of a rookie, Jeff King, the winningest musher of the K300 and a 27-time competitor, felt like the trail was blazing.
“I think it seemed like the speed was very high,” King said. “And I won't be surprised if not everybody can keep it up, because I didn't want to go any faster than I went. And it was pretty obvious that there's some teams went way faster and let them go faster. So we'll see if they can hold up [...] hold them together.”
When asked if he was employing a tortoise and the hare strategy, King said: “Hardly a tortoise. I mean, I got here as fast as I ever have. These have to be some of the fastest times that ever were recorded. My recollection is that it must be super fast.”
Matthew Failor of Willow holds the speed record for the Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race with a time of 36 hours and 32 minutes.
Nat Herz is in Kalskag as a trail reporter for KYUK and did the interviews in this story.
