Official Iron Dog thread

[farmereddie]

This sorta reminds me of Days of Thunder " just give me high gear "  ...lol  . Thats my only thought to the situation , it is strange like you say .  

[hunt_ak]

Day 6 Update!  Read and gimme feedback!

 

https://www.thealaskalife.com/blog/2019-iron-dog-day-6-coverage/

[AKIQPilot]

Another great writeup Kyle.  So a few more details if you have room or time.  

Team 6 made great time from Galena to Manley.  They ended up in 2nd place about 35 minutes behind Team 10 and 8 minutes ahead of Team 14.  Their strategy of stopping in Galena didn't necessarily pay off but it wasn't a bad move either.  

Team 14 has some rear suspension issues.  BIG B sent a satphone text to his wife early this morning telling her to get with CC Skidoo and get a torque arm headed to Manley.  I'm not positive what broke but you could see it in their speeds south of Ruby.  Team 10 continued to stretch their lead for the 200 miles leading up to Manley.  I dont have any other details or know whether they were able to get the parts but once they go back on the clock in the morning they will need to do the repairs so it could cost them some precious minutes.  We will see as soon as the transponders start pinging in the morning.  

 

[Anler]

Great reports. Thanks Tom and Kyle.

[AKIQPilot]

So there is a huge back story to Team 20. I cant post it here or anywhere for that matter but lets just say the drama started weeks before the start of the Irondog. Robbie was asked to be the riding partner the day before the race when the original partner pulled out at the last minute. 

After nearly a week on the trail Team 20 scratched in Unalakleet today.  Well the story doesnt end there. No flights out of UK today so about 7pm tonight Robbie said Fuck It im just gonna ride 700 miles to Fairbanks by myself  

Robbie struck out tonight on the trail. His transponder has been turned off. I know he made it to Galena by 8pm and Ruby by 9pm. The express fuel stop at Huntington Bible Camp was told to look for him by about 10pm. He shoukd get to Tanana by 11pm. Followed by Manley by midnight or so. 

Knowing Robbie he will probably hold up in Manley and wait for the release of all the teams by 8am Saturday. I bet he lets the first 3 teams go and then will jump on and haul ass. I bet Robbie is the first rider to the finish line tomorrow and I bet he does it after giving the leaders a 30 minute lead. 

Hahahahaha. This is the most incredible Irondog ever. 

Edited February 23, 2019 by AKIQPilot

[NaturallyAspirated]

4 hours ago, AKIQPilot said:

So there is a huge back story to Team 20. I cant post it here or anywhere for that matter but lets just say the drama started weeks before the start of the Irondog. Robbie was asked to be the riding partner the day before the race when the original partner pulled out at the last minute. 

After nearly a week on the trail Team 20 scratched in Unalakleet today.  Well the story doesnt end there. No flights out of UK today so about 7pm tonight Robbie said Fuck It im just gonna ride 700 miles to Fairbanks by myself  

Robbie struck out tonight on the trail. His transponder has been turned off. I know he made it to Galena by 8pm and Ruby by 9pm. The express fuel stop at Huntington Bible Camp was told to look for him by about 10pm. He shoukd get to Tanana by 11pm. Followed by Manley by midnight or so. 

Knowing Robbie he will probably hold up in Manley and wait for the release of all the teams by 8am Saturday. I bet he lets the first 3 teams go and then will jump on and haul ass. I bet Robbie is the first rider to the finish line tomorrow and I bet he does it after giving the leaders a 30 minute lead. 

Hahahahaha. This is the most incredible Irondog ever. 

What the heck!  

Neal

[Zambroski]

5 hours ago, AKIQPilot said:

So there is a huge back story to Team 20. I cant post it here or anywhere for that matter but lets just say the drama started weeks before the start of the Irondog. Robbie was asked to be the riding partner the day before the race when the original partner pulled out at the last minute. 

After nearly a week on the trail Team 20 scratched in Unalakleet today.  Well the story doesnt end there. No flights out of UK today so about 7pm tonight Robbie said Fuck It im just gonna ride 700 miles to Fairbanks by myself  

Robbie struck out tonight on the trail. His transponder has been turned off. I know he made it to Galena by 8pm and Ruby by 9pm. The express fuel stop at Huntington Bible Camp was told to look for him by about 10pm. He shoukd get to Tanana by 11pm. Followed by Manley by midnight or so. 

Knowing Robbie he will probably hold up in Manley and wait for the release of all the teams by 8am Saturday. I bet he lets the first 3 teams go and then will jump on and haul ass. I bet Robbie is the first rider to the finish line tomorrow and I bet he does it after giving the leaders a 30 minute lead. 

Hahahahaha. This is the most incredible Irondog ever. 

Holy moly!  

[hunt_ak]

I got a feeling there was some inter-team beef going on with Team 20.  Not sure if my gut feeling is right but I'm guessing these guys didn't jive well together.  

[BOHICA]

10 hours ago, AKIQPilot said:

So there is a huge back story to Team 20. I cant post it here or anywhere for that matter but lets just say the drama started weeks before the start of the Irondog. Robbie was asked to be the riding partner the day before the race when the original partner pulled out at the last minute. 

After nearly a week on the trail Team 20 scratched in Unalakleet today.  Well the story doesnt end there. No flights out of UK today so about 7pm tonight Robbie said Fuck It im just gonna ride 700 miles to Fairbanks by myself  

Robbie struck out tonight on the trail. His transponder has been turned off. I know he made it to Galena by 8pm and Ruby by 9pm. The express fuel stop at Huntington Bible Camp was told to look for him by about 10pm. He shoukd get to Tanana by 11pm. Followed by Manley by midnight or so. 

Knowing Robbie he will probably hold up in Manley and wait for the release of all the teams by 8am Saturday. I bet he lets the first 3 teams go and then will jump on and haul ass. I bet Robbie is the first rider to the finish line tomorrow and I bet he does it after giving the leaders a 30 minute lead. 

Hahahahaha. This is the most incredible Irondog ever. 

A woman thing????  Somebody sticking it somebody where they prolly shouldn't.

[Jimmy Snacks]

12 minutes ago, hunt_ak said:

I got a feeling there was some inter-team beef going on with Team 20.  Not sure if my gut feeling is right but I'm guessing these guys didn't jive well together.  

Birthday Boy knows but he ain't spilling the beans! 😂

[hunt_ak]

1 minute ago, Jimmy Snacks said:

Birthday Boy knows but he ain't spilling the beans! 😂

He knows everything...truly!  HAHA!

Schachle left UNK at 6pm last night and rode nearly nonstop toward Fairbanks (nearly 700 miles) and arrived at about 5am.  Incredible....

[AKIQPilot]

1 hour ago, Jimmy Snacks said:

Birthday Boy knows but he ain't spilling the beans! 😂

Hahaha. Not a woman thing or anything like that. I wont get into the details but the basic premis is that half of the team wasnt doing their part to prepare to be competative for the race. It cost nearly $50k for a team to be competative in this race. Much of that can be raised by sponsors for some teams.  Some teams foot most of the bill themselves. 

The winners get $100k this year. Thats a lot of money. There is a lot of sacrifice that goes into preparing for and competing in this race. 

Robbie stepped onto the saddle of Team 20 the day before the start of the race. It was a huge surprise to most fans but lots of people saw the it coming. 90 minutes after the green flag dropped Robbie realized what he was in for. 

I would appreciate it if this doesnt get posted anywhere else. I feel fairly safe mentioning it on this obscure website. 

Reality is most people close to the Irondog know way more details than Im revealing here. 

[AKIQPilot]

Oh and Robbie Schachle is a complete bad ass. There are few people on the planet that can ride/drive a motorized vehicle like he can. 

In 2017 he was asked to ride for a low budget Skidoo team in the Soo 500. He had never raced the Soo before and had little oval racing experience outside of some cintage stuff in Alaska. 

So Robbie shows up the day before the race. Never even sat on the sled before race day. Their team qualified like 38th or something.  They were 14mph slower than the fastest teams. When Robbies turn behind the bars comes up they were in about 35th place. In 75 laps Robby gets them up to 17th. The team owner gets back on and they immediately drop to about 30th. Robbie gets back on and is in 9th when they pull him off the sled. Team owner drops back to about 25th during his ride. Robbie gets the last turn on the sled. He makes his way up to about 4th and the bottom of the ski rubs through and takes out the spindle. He ran about 10 laps with no carbide. He was passing teams with basically 1 ski. They came in with about 25 laps to go and changed the ski and spindle and ended up finishing 11th or something like that. 

Robbie is a very rare individual. Riding 700 miles in 10-11 hours is nothing for him. 

[BOHICA]

5 minutes ago, AKIQPilot said:

Oh and Robbie Schachle is a complete bad ass. There are few people on the planet that can ride/drive a motorized vehicle like he can. 

In 2017 he was asked to ride for a low budget Skidoo team in the Soo 500. He had never raced the Soo before and had little oval racing experience outside of some cintage stuff in Alaska. 

So Robbie shows up the day before the race. Never even sat on the sled before race day. Their team qualified like 38th or something.  They were 14mph slower than the fastest teams. When Robbies turn behind the bars comes up they were in about 35th place. In 75 laps Robby gets them up to 17th. The team owner gets back on and they immediately drop to about 30th. Robbie gets back on and is in 9th when they pull him off the sled. Team owner drops back to about 25th during his ride. Robbie gets the last turn on the sled. He makes his way up to about 4th and the bottom of the ski rubs through and takes out the spindle. He ran about 10 laps with no carbide. He was passing teams with basically 1 ski. They came in with about 25 laps to go and changed the ski and spindle and ended up finishing 11th or something like that. 

Robbie is a very rare individual. Riding 700 miles in 10-11 hours is nothing for him. 

Maybe the Iron dog could do an individual unlimited racer class in addition to team.   Maybe 1 required layover stop north, 1 layover in Nome and 1 lay over south.   Would make for some awesome racing.

[AKIQPilot]

12 minutes ago, BOHICA said:

Maybe the Iron dog could do an individual unlimited racer class in addition to team.   Maybe 1 required layover stop north, 1 layover in Nome and 1 lay over south.   Would make for some awesome racing.

Hahaha. Yep. They have talked about it for years. That would be interesting for sure. 

[CaddisFly]

I think Team 10 (Morgan and Olds; Polaris) just won for the second year in a row. 

 

 

Edited February 23, 2019 by CaddisFly

[Anler]

4 hours ago, AKIQPilot said:

Oh and Robbie Schachle is a complete bad ass. There are few people on the planet that can ride/drive a motorized vehicle like he can. 

In 2017 he was asked to ride for a low budget Skidoo team in the Soo 500. He had never raced the Soo before and had little oval racing experience outside of some cintage stuff in Alaska. 

So Robbie shows up the day before the race. Never even sat on the sled before race day. Their team qualified like 38th or something.  They were 14mph slower than the fastest teams. When Robbies turn behind the bars comes up they were in about 35th place. In 75 laps Robby gets them up to 17th. The team owner gets back on and they immediately drop to about 30th. Robbie gets back on and is in 9th when they pull him off the sled. Team owner drops back to about 25th during his ride. Robbie gets the last turn on the sled. He makes his way up to about 4th and the bottom of the ski rubs through and takes out the spindle. He ran about 10 laps with no carbide. He was passing teams with basically 1 ski. They came in with about 25 laps to go and changed the ski and spindle and ended up finishing 11th or something like that. 

Robbie is a very rare individual. Riding 700 miles in 10-11 hours is nothing for him. 

Haha bad ass indeed.

[racinfarmer]

It would be interesting to know the list of parts some of these teams replaces along the way, especially the winners.  Carbides, idlers, slides, studs, etc.  

[farmereddie]

Very very long read , but it is another incredible story of the Iron Dog race . Thank to Matt Trask for sharing again ....thought some of you may remember . 

 

2015 Iron Dog was an EPIC year for the race, here is a good memory that came up on my FB feed. Enjoy...

I am amazed on how many people were following us along the way, and there is probably a lot of questions.  This is Chris and I'll express my side of things....  First of all at Big Lake it felt like we were really rushed with last minute packing and logistics.  Didn't get to say goodbye to the family like I would have liked to, Trinity and my dad were running around like crazy, picking up last min things and our pilots needing picked up and dropped off.  Thanks guys for understanding and being patient with us.  As soon as we started we were pumped, haven't never ran the new trail leaving the lake we were a lil confused but made it through quickly. Knowing the legend Scott Davis was starting right behind us I kept looking back expecting him to pass us, he caught us right before big swamp and I was impressed he was sitting down through a really bumpy part.  Once we hit big swamp we were right behind them and followed them on a trail we had never taken, knowing Scott had all the short cuts this was an awesome idea, until the snow dust and visibility was so bad I slowed down for a second and when it cleared them and Ray were out of sight, I didn't know which way they went, I found a trail that I knew and took it, separated from Ray I didn't know where he was, after 20 min of looking we met back up and headed up river, frustrated to say the least but we knew we had a lot of race a head of us, like all of it, haha.  As we were running up towards skwetna Ray left me, it was raining and visibility sucked, I hadn't ran the river at all and was unsure its conditions, some teams passed me and then I passed them, about 70 miles into it team 16 passed me and hit a whole and took out the right side of there front suspension.  Ray was waiting for me right before skwetna and was frustrated with me, he asked me what was up and I said I can't see and got turned around, he settled down and we kept going sticking together for a long time.  By the time we made it to puntilla we were whooped.  Fatigued and whore out, we had our first bottle of water and felt way better, we followed team 11 through the pass up till happy valley/hells gate, they pulled away at that point and team 6 caught us as we dropped on the river, we ran with them all the way to Rohn, skipping lots of water and running really fast on an icy wet river, we knew at Rohn things were gonna slow down cause of conditions, ZERO SNOW.  We would ride till we overheated and stop and wait, trying to find chunks of ice to put on our coolers and anytime there was water we would drive through it to try and cool things down.  At one point there was a semi frozen lake and there was 4 teams going around in circles trying to get cooled, 1x1 teams would start heading up the trail, we would leap frog each other as we overheated.  Every time we stop we would laugh at how rediculous it was.  After we got through the burn we were in miles and miles of the harshest frozen tussocks, so rough at 15 miles an hour the handle bars would get ripped out of our hands.  We had our side panels off to try and keep things cool, we came around a corner and there was a stretch of open water, Ray made it through but his wake caused me to get my belt wet, there I was in knee deep water, I put my clutch side side panel back on and laid my machine on its side giving it full throttle to dry my belt off and at the same time lowering it back into the water, it pulled out like a wave runner and I made it through, all taking about 3 min, I thought Ray had kept going so I raced down the trail for 10-15 miles trying to catch up.  I realized there is know way he would have left me for that long so I stopped, another team pulled up and said he was stuck in the water and I though oh no I don't want to ride back down that trail, they explained that he was ok and on his way, so I sat and waited and he showed up about 15 min later, he had turned around to help me out of the water and he too had sunk but I didn't see or hear him.  We laughed it off and kept going.  Finally making it to McGrath, knowing there was at least 30 stops to let things cool down and 3 hours on the trail just sitting waiting for the same thing.  We got rested up, sore as ever we took off the next day and had a clean fast run to Ophir, same as last year, feeling loosened up we started towards poorman, another horrible trail, but there was little snow and ice so at least we weren't over heating.  This was it for us we both wanted to quit, we were so brutally sore and tired, I was ready to lay over and die, a number of times I thought I cant go on I'm done, and then I'd think about the wife and kids and know that I had to keep going to at least the next check point, we made it to Poorman and the checkers had powerade which was amazing, and we headed towards Ruby the Galena, our pilots were waiting in Galena and they could see we were done, they pushed us into the house and put us to bed, the next morning they woke us with breakfast and told us we had to keep going, giving us motivation.  Knowing we had a lot of river to run it would be smooth and fast so we headed out.  We kinda had a plan to push through Unalakleet and run the coast in the daylight, but by the time we got there I was so hungry and knowing the hospitality there I told ray let's hold up there and get some food and rest.  So we did, little did we know that with a south west wind that it would blow the tide in on the bay's.  When we got up we got report of a team that had sunk by Shaktoolik.  We headed that way knowing some of the challenges from last year.  Once we got to Shaktoolik we ran into the team that sunk and they asked if they could ride with us across the sound.  We said absolutely, I told them to lead they way cause they knew where the water was.  Shortly after we left we ran into the Lake/river they sank in.  They hesitated for a second and Ray and I jetted across, the followed right behind us.  And then there the 4 of us were heading across the sound at 90-100 mph, flat and smooth.  We were coming up to koyuk and you could see the light of the village, I was in from and all of a sudden we were on open water on the ocean, it was choppy and loaded with ice chunks, my belt was getting wet from the rough travels from water then ice then water and ice, I started sweeping to the left in the water trying to circle back, as I was turning around I looked and the three of them were doing the same trying to turn around on open water in the middle of the ocean, we all managed to get back to the ice without sinking, it was sketchy and nerv racking.  We were trying to figure a way across when a local came out and showed us the way.  We got fuel and headed on our way, we went over land for a while and then dropped on to Golivan bay, this area is smooth and flat for miles, we were all 4 still together and holding it to the bar for at least 7-8 minutes, I looked down and was doing 103 on my speedo, ray just behind me to the left and team 33 right behind them.  We were flying, I've never held it to the bar for that long without letting off, and remember it's pitch black with only our headlights.  Then all of a sudden at 100+ mph the ice went away, we were now on open water, there was nothing we could do but lean back and keep it to the bar, it seemed like forever we were on the water, not knowing where the other side was, not being able to see land and dark black water underneath you, I looked back and there was still 3 head lights so I knew I was the only one not knowing if we were headed for Russia or not.  I looked at my GPS that's mounted to our bars and it said we were on the trail so just kept it as straight as possible and finally we hit ice on the other side, not knowing how deep it was and how far we had gone, when we hit the ice it was one of those moments you wanted to stop and kiss the ice, but we didn't, we just kept it to the bar not knowing if we were gonna hit more water or not, finally we made it to Golivan and were on land, we finished our way to Nome with team 33 and it felt great to get there.  

Ok I'll post more this evening of our nome experience and the second half.  Sorry but fingers are still sore and gotta take a break from typing.

Chris
Team #5 Carroll/Chvastasz