(Update: Matthew Failor left the Tanana checkpoint Thursday at 2:21 am AKST, having left one dog behind to be transported home. He continued his journey with 15 dogs on his team.)
MANSFIELD — No one can say Matthew Failor didn’t warn them about the dangers of racing hundreds of miles along a frozen river in Alaska during the 2025 Iditarod.
“The Yukon River will have its challenges. Mother Nature will throw her curveball,” the Mansfield native said during an interview before the race.
“(The river) can be very challenging. In the wind, there is no place to hide. Some of those people hoping for a Fairbanks start might be eating crow. They might be regretting it.
His prophetic words came after the Iditarod Trail Committee announced Feb. 17 it had made a “difficult but necessary” decision to move the official restart of the race to Fairbanks, about 290 miles north of the normal restart in Willow, due to a lack of snow in some southeast Alaska areas.
Failor, making his 14th Iditarod run, was among some mushers who was not convinced the revised trail was necessary
“I would rather run 50 miles on dirt than 600 miles on the Yukon River. So we will see what happens. Be careful what you wish for,” the St. Peter’s High School graduate told Richland Source before the race.
It’s the fourth time in the 53-year history of the Iditarod the start was moved to Fairbanks. It’s third third time Failor has made the trip from there.
That predicted “curveball” was an absolute nightmare for Failor and the other 32 mushers on Tuesday during the 85-mile run between the Manley Hot Springs and Tanana checkpoints during a “sand blizzard” that reduced visibility to zero, flattened trail markers and had mushers and their dogs scrambling over glare ice.
The nightmare scenario unfolded even before the mushers got to the Yukon, racing along the Tanana River, a tributary of the Yukon that feeds into the larger river at Tanana.
Mushing in the darkness, Failor was lost for nearly an hour on his run. He told his wife, Liz, that his team got turned around in the sandstorm.
“We got blown way off to the left after overshooting the trail to the right. Very slippery glare ice with sand blowing everywhere,” he said.
Failor and his Alaskan Husky Adventures 17th-Dog Team finally arrived in Tanana on Wednesday at 2:14 a.m. (AKST), a checkpoint that is 202 miles into the 1,128-mile race to Nome.
After getting his dogs fed and watered and put down beds of straw, Failor assessed his canine companions. In addition to the sandstorm, his dogs — like several of the teams — had struggled on the “sugary and punchy” trail encountered on the trail, conditions they had not encountered much during training runs and shorter races earlier this year.
Failor decided a long rest was needed. All mushers must take a 24-hour mandatory stop during the race at a checkpoint, though normally it would come later in the event.
Failor made the decision there was no time like the present. He informed race officials he would take his 24-hour stop at Tanana, which means he would not be leaving until Thursday around 3 a.m. (AKST).
Liz posted his decision on the Alaskan Husky Adventures Facebook page on Wednesday afternoon.
“He and the dogs are doing well, but a mix of icy and sugary snow conditions on the way into Tanana have lead to sore muscles in some of the team. Matthew is going to give the dogs extra rest here, knowing there are some long runs and a very long race ahead,” she posted on the social media site.
Failor’s dogs were not the only teams grappling with the conditions. At one point, 14 of the 33 teams were resting in Tanana on Wednesday.
Rookie musher Brenda Mackey of Fairbanks left the Tanana checkpoint after dropping two of her 16 dogs and continued several miles down the trail before turning around and coming back.
She ultimately scratched from the race at 4:35 p.m. (AKST) “in the best interest of her team,” according to race officials.
Race veteran Jeff Deeter, who finished fourth in 2024, was also among those whose dogs were battling the conditions.
His wife and fellow sled dog musher, Kattijo Deeter, posted about the situation on their Black Spruce Dog Sledding Facebook page.
She said Deeter, who won the Yukon Quest 550 in February, arrived in Tanana on Tuesday around 11 p.m. and rested his team for five hours.
“On the way there, he noticed some lameness in a few of the dogs. During the rest, he found more orthopedic issues. He worked through those the best he could by applying various combinations of heat, massage, ice, compression and rest during his time in Tanana,” she posted.
She said Deeter left two dogs at Tanana that would be transported back home before he began the 117-mile run to the next checkpoint in Ruby. However, he didn’t travel far before seeing other dogs in his team also not faring well, so he also returned to Tanana.
“Jeff reported that the trail has been alternately patches of glare ice with a few inches of snow on top, followed by areas of deep sugar snow. So the dogs are either running way too fast, and the musher is helpless to slow them, or they are wallowing in bottomless powder,” she posted.
“Either way, our dogs are using muscles in ways they otherwise haven’t been doing this season. This is causing the sore shoulders and hind ends currently plaguing the team. In short: We haven’t trained for this! This is one of the major issues with such a last-minute race route change. In the future, we’ll need to be better at diversifying our training conditions and being prepared for a wider variety of conditions,” she posted.
There were reports Deeter considered scratching from the race. However, she said, her husband had gotten “good support in the checkpoint.”
“Matt Failor and (Mitch) Seavey have both encouraged him to take his 24-hour rest here and see how the dogs look at the end of that. Mushers can take their 24 hour rest anywhere along the trail, but mile 200 is extraordinarily early,” she posted.
The impact of the conditions, the sandstorm and the 24-hour rest decisions have spread the competitors across the map from what had been a fairly tightly bunched field.’
As of Thursday at 6 a.m., Paige Drobney was leading, having gone past the Ruby checkpoint and was resting her team 326 miles into the race on the trail to Galena.
Failor, Deeter and rookie Charmayne Morrison all made the decision to take 24-hour breaks at Tenana and were at the back of the field Thursday morning.
But for Failor, there are still 926 miles to go and his 24-hour stop is behind him.
