In which Will explains mushing, his journey to Iditarod, and why the audio of the first recording on the trail is so bad. Also in which you learn which dogs will join the team on their first ever Iditarod. On the way, Will and the team embark on the final training run before the race, and Will digs in more into his own journey as a trans guy and how he got into mushing at all. Rogue is naughty.

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Check out the emails that Buddies received before the race began!

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The race begins! Will talks to us about the oddity of finally being on the Iditarod. The team is passed... A few times! The phone is put into a precarious position.

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Check out the emails that Buddies received as the race was beginning!

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Onward and Other Directions

Episode 2: Trail!

Hi, I'm Will. I live with 28 dogs and together we travel across the winter landscape of Alaska. They run and I hang on to a rickety sled behind them. Our team is called ATAO Kennel. This is Onward and Other Directions, a podcast where I take you along our first Iditarod through recordings I made throughout the race in March of 2021. The Iditarod is one of the longest sled dog races in the world. And I've been working towards running it since I started mushing in the year 2000.

This episode is the first recording on the race. The team and I have left the starting line and are on our way. We're traveling along wide braided rivers towards Skwentna, the first resupply checkpoint in the race. We will actually end up stopping to camp about 10 miles before Skwentna at mile 50 of the race as part of our race plan. This recording is a few hours into the run and a few hours before we camp. [Musical transition]

All right.

Will shares some stories of the journey from his first run to Finger Lake, and then records audio in the checkpoint itself. Runaway dogs, exciting trail snacks, and inexplicable gatorade-flavored meals.

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Check out the emails that Buddies received as Will was headed into Finger Lake!

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Onward and Other Directions

Episode 3: Finger Lake

Hi, it's Will again. Last time we were here, I had just taken off on the very first leg of my very first Iditarod, one of the longest sled dog races in the world. Me and my team of 14 dogs, AKA my best friends recorded some audio about halfway into that very first run. I rambled about a lot of things. My poor spouse, Shawn, who is very logical, is at wit's end trying to keep track of all these conversations, and I got passed by several teams.

For that first run, I stuck to my game plan pretty tightly. Shortly after the recording I made, my team and I pass through Yentna station, the first sort of checkpoint of the race. It's a "sort-of" checkpoint because there are no drop bags there. Drop bags are the bags that are flown ahead of teams down the trail. There is no way a sled could carry the amount of food that sled dogs eat during a race like this.

We packed and mailed about 1200 pounds for this race, and we were very much on the light side of what folks normally pack. Most of that weight is kibble and meat. The dogs eat around 10,000 calories a day while they race. Other supplies that are sent in drop bags or things like blankets to make the dogs cozy at the checkpoints while they rest, human meals and snacks, batteries, gloves, vet supplies, and much more.

While Yentna Station did not have bags, it did provide straw and heet -- HEET -- better known as antifreeze. We burn that in specially made cookers to melt snow and boil water for the dog's food. It's an essential component of long-distance mushing. The Iditarod provides heat along the whole trail, including Yentna. As my race plan dictated, I grabbed both straw and heet in Yentna.

I was a little surprised to see how close to the start Yentna it was. It registered on my GPS is only 40 miles or so from the start line. According to what the race had told us, it ought to have been about 50 miles. I wondered if Skwentna, the first official actual checkpoint, would really be 72 miles as it was predicted to be.

Regardless, my race plan called for me to camp around or just after 50 miles. I debated continuing all the way to Skwentna.

I talked in the first recording about how warm the first day was. But by the time I hit Yentna, the sun was starting to set, and the temperature was dropping. The dogs were much happier to have some cooler weather and were starting to move well. Its 72-mile run wouldn't be entirely out of their wheelhouse. But the whole reason for my plan to camp before Skwentna was to avoid the notorious hullabaloo that happens with the whole field of mushers camped at the first checkpoint.

Will and the team are fresh off their rest at Finger Lake, and are ready to tackle the Happy River Steps, one of the major obstacles of the race.

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Onward and Other Directions

Episode 4: The Steps

Hi, everybody. Will here. Thanks for tuning in again for Onward and Other Directions, a podcast where my team of Alaskan huskies and I bring you along for our very first Iditarod in recordings I made along the trail. This is episode four. The team and I have started the race. We traveled over rivers for 80 miles, camping once along the way for four hours. We started our climb into the Alaska range, which is the mountain range that Denali, the tallest peak in North America, is part of and rested at Finger Lake, one of the checkpoints along the route. While the dogs rested, I did chores and vet care and chatted to some fellow mushers.

This recording takes place on the run right after we leave Finger Lake. It's one of my favorite pieces of audio from the entire race. We're heading towards the checkpoint of Rainy Pass on a beautiful sunny afternoon. This run contains the infamous Happy River Steps, a series of three sharp drops, which have gained acclaim over the years for many crashes and wipeouts. The Steps were one of the two biggest obstacles on the trail that I've been thinking about for years, hoping I would be able to drive through them successfully. As I left the finger Lake checkpoint, I knew my moment of truth with this pretty iconic part of Iditarod lore was approaching fast. This recording starts shortly after the beginning of the run.

All right. Am I recording? It's hard to see. Oh, yep, looks like I am. So we're on the run to Rainy Pass, which has the infamous Happy River Steps on it somewhere. I keep thinking the next thing is going to be it and then it's not, or I don't think it is anyway. I'm pretty sure not. Anyway, every single time I'm like maybe this is it, which is how I'm feeling right now. Ope, there's a little whoop-dee-doo. See if we can hang on there.

This could be it. I just carved a new path. It's a pretty snowy year. So I -- in theory, I don't think it'll be that bad, except there's probably going to be a big old trench carved out of it. But um, yeah, I don't really know. I know the steps are these three big drops. That's all I really know about it. Uh. And it does look like we're heading towards downhill. We kind of climbed for a while. We're in this really beautiful trail that crosses the Alaska range. It's so cool. It feels like we're out like in Colorado or something like these really big old cottonwoods. And not pine trees, but spruce trees that are like pretty old and tall, not, not the little scraggly friends. Um. And, yeah, the mountains are really just like right in your face and phenomenal, beautiful. So this is really cool to see.

This is the first part of the trail so far that I have not been on, which is really refreshing. That's something I've discovered this year a lot is that I get really uplifted when I'm getting to go on a new trail. I've mushed on a lot of different trails in Alaska. And including the first like 120 miles of the Iditarod trail because of a race that used to go up there to the last checkpoint I was just at, Finger Lake. And so all of that trail I'd been on before and you know, for whatever reason, that's not as... just doesn't... it's not as exciting. And it's also kind of like...

Wow, the mountains are just so cool. I mean it, the mountains look like the Rockies, too. Like Alaska and mountains are definitely different than the Rockies, which I think feel kind of... I'm not sure if this is geologically correct, but I think it seems like they're older and more like rocky as you might suspect. And this part of the Alaska range that we're in looks like that,

Will and the team encounter two new notorious Iditarod obstacles: the Dalzell Gorge and the Farewell Burn.

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Sometimes part of the journey is napping along the way.

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Transcript coming soon

Confidence goeth before the fall

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Will and the team forge on after their 24 hr layover in McGrath, heading for Ophir and then the halfway point of Iditarod, and into the cold

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