When Solomon Olick crossed the Bogus Creek 150 finish line, it wasn’t for the first time. Sliding to a stop on the frozen Kuskokwim River, Olick claimed his sixth Bogus Creek 150 finish. Though completing yet another mid-distance race, the musher was feeling physically less-than-triumphant.
Olick chuckled, saying that he felt “cramping, cold, sleepy.”
Despite feeling the grueling side effects of his 18 hour and 55 minute race — with just 4 hours of rest at the Bogus Creek 150’s single checkpoint — Olick’s finish was met with the crisp first hour of sunlight and a small group of cheery spectators.
Olick isn’t new to the race, but it was his first time finishing last, 2 hours and 50 minutes after winner Mike Williams Jr. He said that not everything went to plan — some of his nine-dog team experienced diarrhea on the trail.
“Kept stopping to take a pee break,” Olick said.
But otherwise, Olick said, the dogs did well, arriving at the Bogus Creek checkpoint in the back cluster of mushers before slowing down due to potty breaks in the second half of the race.
The 31-year-old Olick is from the village of Kwethluk and said that he grew up with the sport.
“The first time I was on a training sled, I was five years old,” Olick said.
Olick learned how to mush from his father and began competing in races starting with just a few dogs on the line.
“My first race was a three-dog race in Akiak,” Olick remembered.
Today, the dogs he races from Olick Kennel have a tie in bloodline to Max Olick’s dogs, a well-known Kwethluk musher and Olick's uncle, who had given dogs to Olick's father over the years.
The mushing lineage extends also to Max Olick’s son-in-law, Lewis Pavila, who is a four-time Bogus Creek 150 champion and took 10th place in the 2025 race. Pavila’s son, Jason, is also a musher from Kwethluk and has raced the Bogus Creek 150 five times.
Olick said that he teamed up with fellow Kwethluk musher Carl Ekamerak, who recently competed in the Akiak Dash, and ran some of Ekamerak’s dogs to fill out his team.
“Back home I have seven dogs, five home, five of them could run, and I only take the ones that could hang in there,” Olick said.
With six Bogus Creek 150 races under his belt, Olick said that he’s seen the race get faster. He said has to do with the younger racers on the roster, some of them as young as 15. They’ve been fresh and competitive, but Olick said that it makes him happy to see them competing.
“Young guns that are coming out, I encourage them to dog mush,” Olick said. “Keeps them busy.”
At the finish, Olick was presented with the Red Lantern Award, an emblem given to the last finisher of a sled dog race. It honors the perseverance and grit that carried the racer through the wind and snow — and in this case, many doggie bathroom breaks — to the finish line. Olick also received a check for his cut of the historic $100,000 purse — a prize of $3,750.00.
