Alaska
Iron Dog 2023: Top teams are into McGrath, where most will take 14 hour layover
MCGRATH, Alaska (KTUU) – Day one and over 300 miles of path are behind Iron Canine rivals as the highest groups reached the McGrath checkpoint Friday night, led by Workforce 10′s Mike Morgan and Chris Olds.
“What a day. We simply saved pushing, saved grinding, it’s tough on the market … actually tough,” Morgan mentioned. “Simply staying centered and preserve grinding, even while you’re hurting, you’re drained and also you’re getting your ass kicked, simply preserve grinding man. I advised Chris, ‘we now have 15 miles till Nikolai after which it’s river to McGrath, let’s go, let’s do that.’ That’s probably the most technical a part of the entire path, so from right here it will get simpler.”
However the two-time champions — taking the title in each 2018 and 2019 — know that there are groups proper on their tail all through the path. As Workforce 14 pulled in simply quarter-hour behind Workforce 10, Morgan complimented his fellow rivals.
“These guys are doing rather well too,” Morgan mentioned of Workforce 14 who pulled in simply quarter-hour behind Workforce 10.
Casey Boylan and Bryan Leslie of Workforce 14 rode into McGrath second, a place they’re a bit too conversant in. The tandem was main the 2021 race down the stretch earlier than a mechanical problem bumped them again to second place, and the duo needed to scratch in Nome final yr after reaching the checkpoint in second place, attributable to accidents suffered by Leslie.
“It’s the primary day — these sleds are all model new, we simply need to take it simple, you don’t need to wreck it within the first 75 miles so that you simply take it simple, generally a bit too simple, however hey, we made it right here in a single piece,” Boylan mentioned after arriving in McGrath. “It was fairly dang tough entering into Nikolai, it was simply nasty, huge bumps, onerous bumps, you possibly can see different guys attempting to overlook the bumps…everybody goes gradual although, attempting to preserve their tools.”
There are nonetheless many miles of Alaska’s backcountry remaining, however the veterans know the way essential this portion of the race is.
“You possibly can’t win the race within the first day, however you possibly can undoubtedly lose it,” mentioned Klinton Vanwingerden, who’s driving with Todd Palin on Workforce 49. “Undoubtedly take your time and preserve your self clear and wholesome.”
Most groups have arrived in McGrath as of publishing, with every arriving workforce required to depart the checkpoint by 11:59 p.m. on Saturday. McGrath is a well-liked checkpoint for groups to take their required 14-hour layover because of the lodging and high quality of meals, which is the one factor that appears to be on racer’s minds as they attain the necessary milestone alongside the two,503 mile journey.
“Eat and drink as a lot water as we are able to, just about that’s it,” Boylan mentioned of his workforce’s plans in McGrath.
McGrath can also be the place the time differentials are made up from the interval begin at Massive Lake, as each workforce leaving will now be on the identical ‘race time’. With a 14-hour layover and the highest groups arriving round 6 p.m., anticipate sleds to be again on the Iron Canine path by 8 a.m. on Saturday morning.
Present Iron Canine standings may be discovered right here whereas there might be continued Iron Canine protection at alaskasnewsource.com.
Copyright 2023 KTUU. All rights reserved.
Alaska
Santa catches a ride with troops to bring Christmas to Alaska village
YAKUTAT, Alaska — Forget the open-air sleigh overloaded with gifts and powered by flying reindeer.
Santa and Mrs. Claus this week took supersized rides to southeast Alaska in a C-17 military cargo plane and a camouflaged Humvee, as they delivered toys to the Tlingit village of Yakutat, northwest of Juneau.
The visit was part of this year’s Operation Santa Claus, an outreach program of the Alaska National Guard to largely Indigenous communities in the nation’s largest state. Each year, the Guard picks a village that has suffered recent hardship — in Yakutat’s case, a massive snowfall that threatened to buckle buildings in 2022.
“This is one of the funnest things we get to do, and this is a proud moment for the National Guard,” Maj. Gen. Torrence Saxe, adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard, said Wednesday.
Saxe wore a Guard uniform and a Santa hat that stretched his unit’s dress regulations.
The Humvee caused a stir when it entered the school parking lot, and a buzz of “It’s Santa! It’s Santa!” pierced the cold air as dozens of elementary school children gathered outside.
In the school, Mrs. Claus read a Christmas story about the reindeer Dasher. The couple in red then sat for photos with nearly all of the 75 or so students and handed out new backpacks filled with gifts, books, snacks and school supplies donated by the Salvation Army. The school provided lunch, and a local restaurant provided the ice cream and toppings for a sundae bar.
Student Thomas Henry, 10, said while the contents of the backpack were “pretty good,” his favorite item was a plastic dinosaur.
Another, 9-year-old Mackenzie Ross, held her new plush seal toy as she walked around the school gym.
“I think it’s special that I have this opportunity to be here today because I’ve never experienced this before,” she said.
Yakutat, a Tlingit village of about 600 residents, is in the lowlands of the Gulf of Alaska, at the top of Alaska’s panhandle. Nearby is the Hubbard Glacier, a frequent stop for cruise ships.
Some of the National Guard members who visited Yakutat on Wednesday were also there in January 2022, when storms dumped about 6 feet of snow in a matter of days, damaging buildings.
Operation Santa started in 1956 when flooding severely curtailed subsistence hunting for residents of St. Mary’s, in western Alaska. Having to spend their money on food, they had little left for Christmas presents, so the military stepped in.
This year, visits were planned to two other communities hit by flooding. Santa’s visit to Circle, in northeastern Alaska, went off without a hitch. Severe weather prevented a visit to Crooked Creek, in the southwestern part of the state, but Christmas was saved when the gifts were delivered there Nov. 16.
“We tend to visit rural communities where it is very isolated,” said Jenni Ragland, service extension director with the Salvation Army Alaska Division. “A lot of kids haven’t traveled to big cities where we typically have Santa and big stores with Christmas gifts and Christmas trees, so we kind of bring the Christmas program on the road.”
After the C-17 Globemaster III landed in Yakutat, it quickly returned to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, an hour away, because there was nowhere to park it at the village’s tiny airport. Later, it returned to pick up the Christmas crew.
Santa and Mrs. Claus, along with their tuckered elves, were seen nodding off on the flight back.
Alaska
Trump Wants Denali Renamed
Opposition to President-elect Trump’s renewed suggestion to change the name of Alaska’s 20,310-foot mountain back to McKinley includes many Alaskans, including Indigenous people, and the state’s two Republican senators. Sen. Lisa Murkowski advocated for years to remove the name of the nation’s 25th president, who never visited the mountain or had any connection to it, the Anchorage Daily News reports. “There is only one name worthy of North America’s tallest mountain: Denali—the Great One,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski wrote on X.
Trump brought up the idea in a speech Sunday at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, where he praised William McKinley as a fellow supporter of protective tariffs. “We’re going to bring back the name of Mount McKinley because I think he deserves it,” Trump said. In 2016, Trump had said he might change the name back, a notion he dropped when Alaska’s senators objected, per the AP. Denali is the Koyukon Athabascan name that was used by Indigenous people for centuries. It translates to “the high one” or “the great one.”
The federal government named it Mount McKinley in 1896, which stood until Barack Obama’s administration in 2015. That switch came after years of effort by state officials and Native groups. Sen. Dan Sullivan once told an Alaska Federation of Natives conference that Trump made the same suggestion when he and Murkowski met with him at the White House in 2017. The senators objected vehemently, he said. An aide texted the Daily News that “Sen. Sullivan like many Alaskans prefers the name that the very tough, very strong, very patriotic Athabaskan people gave the mountain thousands of years ago—Denali.” (More President-elect Trump stories.)
Alaska
Alaskan-named snowplows revealed by state
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Coming soon to Juneau-area roads; a trio of festively-named snowplows!
After hundreds of suggested names were entered in its annual naming contest, the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities announced Monday that it had narrowed its search down to three winning names for three of its snowplows.
The winning names were Berminator, Salt-O-Saurus Rex, and Ka-PLOW.
The names were chosen by DOT staff who felt they were most appropriate and represented Alaska the best, according to Eli Kesten-Brackett, a project assistant with the department.
“Since they move in formation, [DOT] thought it’d be cool to have them all named as a unit,” Kesten-Brackett said.
The Name-A-Snowplow contest that ended on Nov. 28 saw over 400 individual entries from residents around the state.
Kesten-Brackett said after noticing the popularity of similar contests in other snow-laden states in the Lower 48, the state thought a way to get people’s creative juices flowing was what Alaska needed.
“We thought this would be an awesome way to foster community engagement,” Kesten-Brackett said.
The winning name in the inaugural contest last year was Darth Blader, according to Kesten-Brackett.
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Copyright 2024 KTUU. All rights reserved.
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