Mike Williams Jr. and his dog team appeared like a mirage as the sun peeked over the horizon upriver from Bethel on the morning of Sunday, Feb. 15.
The Akiak musher finished the Bogus Creek 150 just before 10 a.m., scoring his second consecutive victory – his third since winning the race back in 2006.
At the finish line, he gave credit to his team for the trip to Bogus Creek and back.
“The dogs are the ones that ran there,” Williams Jr. said.
This year, the 40-year-old Williams Jr. and his team have hit their stride, coming off a third-place finish in the Kuskokwim 300 (K300) and multiple sprint race victories.
Because just 11 teams completed this year’s Bogus Creek 150 – which pays out to the top 15 mushers – Williams Jr. will walk away with $16,500 of a $100,000 total race purse.
Second-place Michael Larson of Kwethluk gave Williams Jr. a run for his money, keeping the veteran musher in his sights during the 70-mile return trip to Bethel and crossing the finish line just 9 minutes later.
“Four to 5 miles out from Bogus [Creek], my team got faster,” Larson said.
Larson, who won this year’s Akiak Dash, is in just his second year of racing dogs. He said that he credits his good friend Raymond Alexie and Kwethluk’s Alexie Racing Kennel for giving him his start in mushing.
No rookies raced in this year’s Bogus Creek 150.
This year’s third- and fourth-place mushers – Bethel’s Maurice Andrews and reigning K300 champion Pete Kaiser – were neck in neck in the final miles of the race headed into Straight Slough. Andrews’ reaction to his top finish since winning the race back in 2018 was one of surprise.
“He let me win,” Andrews exclaimed at the finish line after pulling in ducked down behind his sled to get a break from the cold wind.
The halfway point
Much of the action in the Bogus Creek 150 takes place after mushers have taken their mandatory four-hour rest at the halfway point and are headed back to Bethel.
Being the first to the Bogus Creek checkpoint, like Williams Jr. did in the 2025 race, can be a winning strategy.
This year, veteran Kwethluk musher Lewis Pavila held onto the first-place position all the way to the checkpoint. But on the return trip to Bethel, Pavila’s team started to lose steam.
“I went out too fast,” Pavila said.
Pavila finished in sixth. But he held onto his title as the winningest musher in the race’s history, with four first-place victories.
At the finish line, a smiling Pavila proclaimed himself “champion of the halfway point.”
No musher has ever won the Bogus Creek 150 more than twice in a row.
A window to race
This was the third consecutive year that the race was pushed to February due to challenging weather and training conditions. This year it was due to a historic cold snap on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
The rescheduled Valentine’s Day start was anything but assured for the 2026 race. Blowing rain the night before pushed the start time two hours later. But in the end the clouds parted, and 11 mushers and their teams found just the window they needed for another great race.
Find full race results here at the K300 website.
ORIGINAL STORY:
Musher Mike Williams Jr. of Akiak and his eight-dog team are the 2025 Bogus Creek 150 champions.
Williams Jr. crossed the finish line at 9:55 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 15 to a small crowd of family, friends, and supporters.
Williams Jr. will take home $16,500 of a $100,000 total race purse.
It’s Williams Jr.’s third time winning the 150-mile race from Bethel to Bogus Creek and back. The first was two decades ago, in 2006.
No musher has ever won the Bogus Creek 150 more than twice in a row.
