Arctic Adventures: Volume 40—Iditarod Volunteering (Year 3 for me, Year 4 for Justin)

Justin & I spent March 7-13 in Unalakleet volunteering as “trail crew” for the Iditarod Sled Dog Race!

This was my 3rd year volunteering, as Justin went solo last year to Kaltag in 2024 since I was out of state taking care of my mom. In  2022, we volunteered in Galena and in 2023 in Shageluk. For 2025, we were assigned to go to the small (approx 80 people) village of Anvik, and I was super stoked because that’s where Margaret & Olaus Murie were married in August 1924 at 3am sunrise, and the chapel on the Yukon River is still there (basically the Muries are superstar pioneer Alaskan conservationists that I continue to learn more about and love even more). However at last minute, the Anvik flight bumped to a day earlier (everything about the Iditarod this year was constantly shifting), and we couldn’t get there in time for it. So they reassigned us to Unalakleet to make a team of 6 trail crew and 2 communications people at the checkpoint. 

I have to be honest: I wasn’t excited about the reassignment to Unalakleet. It’s an Iditarod hub, which means far more people & dogs in & out (to fly back to Anchorage & to smaller villages). Plus, it’s notoriously windy since Unalakleet is on the coast. But I won’t bury the lede any more: I freaking loved it!!! Mainly because we had a rockstar crew with race judge Eric Kelly, the native community was unbelievably hospitable & the weather was unseasonably warm (as it has been in AK). 

First, let me educate you about Unalakleet. It is correctly pronounced You-Na-La-Kleet, though admittedly we all continue to butcher/shorten it to You-Na-Kleet. The Iditarod peeps always abbreviate all the village names for ease, so it’s well known as Unk. 

Anyway, Unalakleet is situated in northwest Alaska, approximately 200 miles from the Iditarod Trail’s end in Nome. The Inupiat (enew-pee-ack) make up the majority of the Alaska Native coastal community, but there are 100 white people out of the ~760 people that live there. Side note: the 229 federally recognized Alaska Native tribes are categorized into five groups, with the Inupiat being one of the five. Most people in Unalakleet follow the traditional ways of Unaligmiut Eskimo subsistence lifestyle, living off the land, hunting for salmon, crab, seal, caribou, muskox, moose, bear, grouse, berry picking and more. 

One of the best parts about our Iditarod experience this year was being among the community of Unalakleet. They were warmly welcoming & fully embrace that the Iditarod comes through annually. We learned SO much about their culture & were able to interact daily with the villagers. The checkpoint building was always hustling & bustling with community members as their goal is to keep volunteers & mushers well fed, so they were pretty much cooking 24-7. The staple meal was sourdough pancakes from their 100+ year old start, with bacon as a side. But they also brought in muskox ribs, berry concoctions, halibut, salmon and more. They also hosted a pie social and we were able to watch the youth practicing for their Native Youth Olympics (the videos I will eventually post to my stories are better than the pix). For TV fans, Unalakleet is also home to “American Ninja Warrior” competitor Nick Hanson (“Eskimo Ninja”), who got his start from the Native Youth Olympics!!! (More to come about him—I hope to interview him for an article). There’s even a (delicious) pizza place (Peace on Earth) where people from around the world can order pizzas for mushers and the owner delivers them no matter the time of night the musher arrives to the checkpoint. 

Because of where it is situated—on the coast of the Norton Sound with the Bering Sea just beyond (which is obviously not fully frozen over this warm winter). The scenery is mind-blowingly beautiful. The “beach” is full of huge sea ice chunks, whale bones & driftwood. I could not stop taking pictures. 

Now onto the details of WHY we were there in the first place: the Iditarod! Like I mentioned, everything about the Iditarod this year was in turmoil. I’ve always referenced the logistical nightmare of getting volunteers/supplies/dogs/mushers/etc around a remote state with unpredictable harsh weather, however this year, it was basically a maelstrom of constant chaos. 

First of all, they had to change the route at the 11th hour due to lack of snow, making the route the longest in history (1,128 miles versus ~1,000 miles) leaving from Fairbanks and ending in Nome (versus Willow to Nome). 

The warm conditions created a bumpy trail with ice and lots of open water over the ice (called overflow in Alaska). We even experienced that at our checkpoint. The Iditarod route follows the Yukon River from Kaltag to Unalakleet’s Kouwegok Slough, an inlet from the Norton Sound. It’s a wide area and frozen over, but when we arrived on Friday, we all noticed a few cracks in the ice and a small “puddle.” By Tuesday when the mushers were arriving, the overflow became a river in which we had to build a bridge over and the village kids were polar plunging into!

The race still went on, although the trail conditions prompted 10 of the 33 teams to drop out. The participants were pretty spread out, taking 10 days at minimum (normally it takes 8 days at best). Our “neighbor” Jessie Holmes (lives on the Denali Highway) came in first at 10 days, 14 hours and 55 minutes, which is actually the longest time it’s taken a winner to finish in 20 years! Our other “neighbor” Paige Drobny (lives in Cantwell/Denali Highway) came in 3rd! 

As such, we felt we did very little during the 7 days at our checkpoint. Setup was easy with 6 people to move all the things around. Then, we ended up working only 3 shifts for the team arrivals (4pm-8pm, 4am-8am and 2am-8am), but only actually saw 5 mushers who basically blew through our checkpoint! 

Frankly, the trip gave off vacation vibes—we were exploring a new-to-us place with friendly locals, all while savoring the luxury of flush toilets (and showers!). We even had Starlink, but it blocked social media sites. (Side note: the 1000-piece puzzle we brought might have been the biggest challenge, and remained unfinished after the village kids spilled water on the remaining puzzle pieces …)

The Unalakleet checkpoint is also set up differently than others. Besides our bacon-fog checkpoint building where mushers came and went, there was a separate building 1/4 mile away where volunteers cooked breakfast & dinner, and we all slept in a huge gymnasium that felt like a fallout shelter. Like I said, Unalakleet is a “hub,” so there are tons of volunteers (and dogs) flying in & out. Our early checkpoint arrival meant we could set up our sleeping area with the lights on. Once things got going, the lights in the gym were turned off 24-7 because of everyone’s different sleeping schedules. At one point, I’m pretty sure there were 80 people crammed shoulder to shoulder in an intense competition of who can snore the loudest or most irregular (earplugs are indispensable for Iditarod volunteering!).

All in all, it was another fulfilling experience being a part of Alaskan history in the making. If you made it this far, here’s a short video clip from when I was interviewed on the news giving the DL about volunteering in 2025.