Near-disaster during refueling forces veterans out of race 'BIG BALL OF FIRE': Gas splatters hot muffler, ignites.

The brutal 2,000-mile Iron Dog snowmobile race where racers annually endure bone-chilling temperatures faced a new peril Sunday afternoon -- fire.

A little after 2 p.m., the duo of veteran drivers Tyson Johnson of Eagle River and Tyler Aklestad of Palmer pulled into the Puntilla Lake checkpoint at Rainy Pass, about 130 miles into the race.

The team fueled up from one of the 13 fuel drums lined up at the checkpoint high in the Alaska Range. Aklestad was filling his Ski-Doo and turned to take a drink, handing over duties to a volunteer, when the tank filled and overflowed. Gas spewing out was swiftly ignited by a scorching muffler.

"The machine was hot, and it got overfilled," said Steve Perrin, owner of The Perrins Rainy Pass Lodge that serves as the checkpoint. "The guy pulled the hose out and it splattered on a hot engine. It popped and ignited."

For a few seconds, all hell broke loose.

"All of a sudden," Johnson said by phone Monday night, "there was a big ball of fire and people were running."

Race volunteers splattered by the gas suddenly were ablaze.

"They dropped and rolled," Perrin said. "It was really fortunate nobody got hurt. It just happened so fast. For a few minutes there, it did not look good."

Gas on top of one of the fuel drums burned, prompting worries of a major explosion.

That didn't happen, but one of the volunteer checkers, Randy Arndt, received slight burns on his face, Perrin said. All three were rolled in the snow by fellow volunteers to extinguish the flames.

Meanwhile, Perrin's wife Denise came running with a fire extinguisher and volunteers at the scene threw snow at the flames or helped roll the victims in snow.

"It was a good three feet over the top of the snowmachine when it first popped," Perrin said of the fireball. "Everybody was throwing snow all over. But it was over fast."

Perrin had the topical cream Silvadine at the lodge to apply to Arndt's burns, which he described as minor.

"It's really, really unfortunate," said Jim Wilke, vice president of the Iron Dog board of directors. "But it's one of those things we really can't do much about.

"We don't know if anybody's at fault," he said. "The race runs with help of volunteers and occasionally volunteers are going to make mistakes. There just isn't a solution. It's unfortunate.

"We try as an organization to do the right thing. Occasionally, things slip through the cracks."

Johnson said the biggest mistake was the lack of a fire extinguish where the fuel was being pumped.

Even after the fireball, Johnson and Aklestad thought they could rejoin the lead pack. The only damage, Johnson thought, was a burned recoil rope. But just 4 miles down the trail, Aklestad's machine seized up. The fire had melted his oil lines.

The team's Iron Dog was over.

The duo, considered among the fastest teams in this year's race, had two second-place finishes in the previous four Iron Dogs, but their races have frequently been plagued by accidents and lousy luck.

"It's getting to where it's almost like it's not going to happen," Johnson said. "It starts to get pretty discouraging after a while."

Meanwhile, at the front of the pack, a collection of top racers were resting on a layover in the Yukon River town of Galena on Monday night with the top seven teams just 59 minutes apart.

At the front were defending champions Tyler Huntington of Fairbanks and Chris Olds of Eagle River, who pulled into the Yukon River checkpoint of Galena at 3:28 p.m.

Two minutes back was a double shot of Davises -- 51-year-old Scott Davis of Soldotna, who is tied with John Faeo as the winningest racer in Iron Dog history, and his brash 22-year-old son Cory, the two-time Winter X Games medalist.

Seven minutes behind the Davis duo was last year's runnerup, Doug Dixon of Anchorage, and his new partner, Wayne Wold of Wasilla, both riding Arctic Cats.

In order behind them were:

• David Branholm of Big Lake and Matthew Spernak of Anchorage on Polaris machines;

• Wasilla Polaris drivers Ryan Sottosanti -- who was sixth as a rookie last year -- and new partner Andrew Zwink; and

• The Tanana rookie brother tandem of Aaron and Arnold Marks on Polaris machines.

And after a few rough years of racing, Scott Davis -- a name for decades linked with the upper echelon of Iron Dog standings -- was back in a familiar spot among the leaders of the world's longest and toughest snowmobile race.

"In the Iron Dog," the younger Davis told the Daily News before the race, "you're trying to go as fast as you can and have the sled hold on the whole time. I don't know how to do that, but my dad sure does. He'll lead and I'll follow. He's more or less the boss."

The Davis duo rocketed along faster than many morning Seward Highway commuters early Monday morning, averaging nearly 60 mph on the run from McGrath to Ophir.

As usual, the rugged Iron Dog took its toll, with eight teams already having scratched. Most prominent among them was the 2009 champions, Todd Minnick and Nick Olstad, who scratched in Big Lake on Sunday not far from the start.

Minnick was thrown from his sled after hitting some ice, seriously injuring his leg. He was recovering at home on Monday.

Other teams that scratched include:

• Ski-Doo drivers Ryan Bloom of Anchorage and Dennis Falldorf of Ketchikan in McGrath;

• Louis Miller III and his son Louis Miller IV, last year's seventh-place finishers, pulled out McGrath with mechanical issues.

• Idaho racers Derrick Johnson and Steve Piper in Puntilla;

• Wasilla rookies Joe D'Amico and 67-year-old John Glass, the oldest racer in this year's Iron Dog, scratched in Puntilla.

Racers are expected into the halfway point of Nome on Tuesday, where they will take an extended break from the rigors of the trail.