Top Iron Dog teams aim for Nome; Palin, Quam first to Bering Sea coast

FAIRBANKS - As often happens in the world’s longest, toughest snowmachine race, the cream is rising to the top

Only 20 minutes separate the top four teams in what is shaping up to be a close race featuring a Who’s Who of past Iron Dog champs.

The veteran team of Todd Palin and Eric Quam are leading the Iron Dog snowmachine race as teams prepare for the final push up the Bering Sea coast to the halfway point in Nome.

Palin and Quam were the first team to hit the coast on Tuesday morning. They arrived in Unalakleet at 4:40 a.m., 10 minutes ahead of the second-place team of Marc McKenna and Dusty Van Meter.

Defending champions Tyler Huntington of Fairbanks and Chris Olds of Eagle River pulled in at 4:58 a.m., followed by the father-son team of Scott and Cory Davis at 5 a.m.

The top teams are taking a 10-hour break in Unalakleet — one of three required en route to the halfway point — before hitting the trail again late Tuesday afternoon for the final 263-mile push to Nome.

Palin and Quam will have a 10-minute advantage over McKenna and Van Meter when they take to the trail at 2:40 p.m. They lead Huntington and Olds by 18 minutes and the Davis duo by 20 minutes.

The first teams are expected to hit Nome between 5 and 5:30 p.m. The first team to reach Nome will win $10,000.

Seven of the eight racers in the top four teams are past Iron Dog winners.The one exception is 22-year-old Cory Davis, who is a rookie to the Iron Dog but a bronze medalist in the X-Games and one of the country’s top sno-cross racers. The fact that his father, seven-time Iron Dog champ Scott, is the winningest Iron Dogger of all time helps make up for any lack of experience in that department, too.

Palin, a four-time Iron Dog champ, and Quam, who won the 2008 race with McKenna, are running the race together for the first time and the combination appears to be a good one.

McKenna has one Iron Dog title under his belt (2008 with Quam) while Van Meter has won three titles, one of which was with Palin.

Huntington and Olds each won the race for the first time last year.

Riding 600cc Arctic Cats, Palin and Quam picked up the pace on the Yukon River after leaving Galena to put a small gap between them and the rest of the lead pack. They averaged almost 88 mph on the 98-mile stretch from Galena to Kaltag, which was 8 mph faster than the next fastest team. They gained 15 minutes on McKenna and Van Meter, a three-time Iron Dog champ, from Ruby to Kaltag.

They also posted the fastest time on the 95-mile trail from Kaltag to Unalakleet, covering the 95-mile trail in 2 hours, 4 minutes for an average speed of 46 mph. McKenna and Van Meter clocked the exact same time.

Huntington and Olds, riding Polaris 600s, were nine minutes slower than Palin and Quam on the run from Galena to Kaltag and their time from Kaltag to Unalakleet was five minutes slower. The Davis duo was running at almost identical speed, taking one minute longer on the run to Kaltag and posting the same time as Huntington and Olds on the way to Unalakleet.

The top four teams averaged just 44-46 mph on the trail from Kaltag to Unalakleet, struggling with 2 to 3 feet of fresh snow that slowed teams after getting off the Yukon River.

Speeds should pick up again on the coast, judging from the times of two middle of the pack teams that opted to continue past Unalakleet to take their 10-hour layovers in Koyuk, which is 98 miles up the trail from Unalakleet.

While they averaged only about 35 mph on the 41-mile trail from Unalakleet to Shaktoolik, the team of Andy George of Wasilla and Jim West of Nome covered the 57-mile trip across Norton Sound from Shaktoolik to Koyuk at an average speed of almost 98 mph, arriving at 8:40 a.m. The team of Robert Hingsbergen and Steve Williamson, who arrived in Koyuk at 10:47 a.m. Tuesday, clocked an average speed of almost 73 mph on that stretch.

Read more: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner - Top Iron Dog teams aim for Nome Palin Quam first to Bering Sea coast