Keaton and eleven dogs crossed the Iditarod finish line late yesterday (March 16th) just in time for the finisher’s banquet in Nome.
Eye on the Trail: Loebrich 17th and Ford 18th – Iditarod
Congratulations to Keaton and his team!
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1A11k1NcU7
This is such a fun video made by Keaton’s wife Erika who shares the story of the first two days for #13 (it’s supposed to be his lucky number–at least in this race!) A couple of setbacks including a broken runner on the sled, but they figured it out and with the help of lots of folks Keaton and his dogs are well on their way.
I’ll close for now, but there is lots more to see on Iditarod – Last Great Race on Earth®
I am in New Mexico where we are facing public safety power shutdowns due to a storm with high winds. I got up early and am ready. If it helps keep us safe from wildfires, it’s well worth it.
Safe travels and happy trails to Keaton and his dogs!
Fairbanks, AK Elevation: 446 Feet
Sunrise: 7:51 am Sunset: 6:15 pm
Weather Partly Cloudy 32 degrees at 5:37 pm AKST
I won’t be tracking this one as closely as the Yukon Quest Alaska 2025, but here’s the link to the map.
A different route than usual since the official start was moved to Fairbanks due to the lack of snow on a portion of the trail outside of Anchorage. The race started about 7 hours ago. The racers and their dogs have 1128 miles in front of them.
I’ll be watching Keaton Loebrich, Bib #13, an Iditarod rookie. If you remember, I drew him as my musher in the Yukon Quest (a 550-mile race) when I purchased a dog bootie in Fairbanks last summer. Here is a recent article about him and a few of the other rookies. One thing I love about dog racing is that the women compete alongside the men as you’ll see in the profiles.
Eye on the Trail: Rookie Review – Roddewig, Loebrich, Parker & Baker – Iditarod
Safe travels and happy trails to all of the mushers and their amazing teams!
As of 10:35 pm (AKST) last night Keaton had crossed the finish line in Tok! I stayed up and kept refreshing the tracking feed until I was sure he was there.
To see Keaton and his team’s arrival in Tok, here’s a link to the video posted on Star Gazer Racer’s FB page.
Congratulations to Keaton, his dogs and the team of folks who all made it happen. It was fun to watch!
Tok, Alaska 5:05 am (AKST) Temperature 9 Degrees
Sunrise: 8:46 am Sunset: 4:46 pm (a full 8 hours of daylight today!)
Elevation: 1635 Feet
Population: 1355 (2022)
Best place for a burger, beer, and a slice of pie: Fast Eddy’s MP 1313
By the time I checked the Yukon Quest leaderboard at 5:05 (AKST) this morning, Jeff Deeter had won the race with three other mushers coming in a few hours later (Shelley, Eklund, Bacon). For more details, here’s a story from KUAC’s Robyne & Shelby Herbert.
Deeter wins 2025 Yukon Quest 550 | KUAC.org
Meanwhile Keaton Loebrich (Bib #3) and Joey Sabin (Bib #8) were both in Chicken taking the required six-hour break before hitting the trail again.
At 2:55 pm (AKST) Keaton was at mile 519.5. Less than 40 miles to go!
Wishing Keaton and his dogs a smooth run into Tok. Hope you make it in time for dinner at Fast Eddy’s–they close at nine!
Here’s the link to Keaton’s Star Gazers Racing Facebook page.
Chicken, AK Mile 477.9 Sunrise: 8:49 am Sunset: 4:33 pm
Elevation 1677 Feet Today’s High 8F with a low tonight of 1F
Wow–how did it get to be Thursday? I’m guessing out on the trail the mushers and dogs are feeling every minute and every mile of the last five days. They must be happy to see the end in sight.
Here’s a screenshot I took about 8 am (AKST) today which puts the Yukon Quest in perspective in terms of the vastness of Alaska. It also shows the leaderboard with six mushers at that hour still on the trail, one was already on his way out of Chicken. Three were at the checkpoint making the required 6-hour stay. Two, including Keaton, were still on the trail north of Chicken.
If you’re wondering how this town of less than 20 folks on the Taylor Highway got its name, here’s one story that may or may not be true.
Just now (about 5:30 pm AKST) I checked the current standings and one musher, Jeff Deeter has finished the race. Keaton is at mile 453, with 24 miles remaining before he reaches the Chicken Checkpoint.
This link will take you to the Yukon Quest’s Facebook page where you can see photos from the trail. Make sure you keep scrolling down. There is a video of the winner crossing the finish line.
Wishing Keaton and his dogs safe travels, happy trails, and a good rest in Chicken tonight!
Eagle Checkpoint – Mile 377.7 – Sunrise: 8:55 am Sunset 4:23 pm
Elevation 853 Feet Average February Temperatures 9F high/-11F low
Musher Keaton Loebrich Bib 3 is back on the trail this evening after resting for a few hours in Eagle. Here’s a look at that checkpoint in a cool story with photos from Alaska Public Media.
As of 5:43 pm (AKST) this evening, Keaton had departed from Eagle and was headed to Chicken about 100 miles down the trail. For the most up-to-date information, check out Keaton’s current location.
To learn more about Keaton check out the story linked below. It was published in his hometown (Midland, Michigan) newspaper a few months ago.
Midland native Keaton Loebrich has qualified for the 2025 Iditarod
As Day 4 of the 2025 Yukon Quest comes to an end, I wish Keaton and his team a safe run tonight. Happy Trails!
Eagle Checkpoint – Mile 377.7 Sunrise: 8:57 am Sunset: 4:19 pm
I made myself a map to try and get a better understanding of the 2025 Yukon Quest Alaska route. The start is in Fairbanks and the finish is in Tok. Now if you drive the Alaska Highway 2 as I did with Dave and Dad last summer it’s a pretty easy three-and-a-half-hour drive. About 200 miles.
The route the mushers take is nothing like that. They headed northeast out of Fairbanks and have stops at checkpoints (I only have a few of them marked on the map with pink highlighter) at Pleasant Valley (39.2 mi.), Mile 101 (112.7 mi.) and further on in Central (139.6 mi.) and Circle (216.6 mi.) before turning to the southeast.
The next stop is Slaven’s Roadhouse (275.4 mi.) on the Yukon River at the mouth of Coal Creek. When I checked this morning about 6 am Alaska time it was -9 degrees. My musher Keaton Loebrich (Bib 3) stopped there last night and maybe spent a few hours resting his dogs. From there the route continues to Eagle (377.7 mi.), Chicken (477.9 mi.), and finally to the finish line in Tok (557.8)
Much better than my highlighted road map is the official Yukon Quest Alaska map linked below.It is a live map showing all of the mushers’ positions real time along the trail.
2025 Race Standings – Yukon Quest Alaska
As I write this it’s shortly after seven in Alaska and Keaton is at mile 338 with just under forty miles to go to the Eagle Checkpoint where it’s -2 degrees.
For a fun look at the Eagle Checkpoint and everything that goes into a Yukon Quest checkpoint, take a look at this article published by Alaska Public Media.
Eagle is hosting Yukon Quest mushers for the first time in 4 years
Safe travels and happy trails to Keaton and his dogs!
Back in July while in Fairbanks I visited the Yukon Quest Headquarters and made a small donation to the race. In return I was given a dog bootie and a sharpie.
After I returned home, I forgot about it until last week when I received an email with my musher information. Bib #3 Keaton Loebrich https://yukonquestalaska.com/yqa-550-keaton-loebrich/
The race started on Saturday, February 1st in Fairbanks where the days are getting longer. Sunrise on Saturday was 9:34 am and sunset was at 4:35. Seven hours of daylight!
Checking on Monday night at about 11:30 pm (9:30 pm in Alaska) Keaton was in third place and had covered more than 265 miles. Here’s the map with current standings. 2025 Race Standings – Yukon Quest Alaska
I’ll be checking in again tomorrow morning to see how Keaton and his dogs are doing. Safe travels to everyone out there on the trail!
Valdez, AK. Elevation 98 feet. Monday July 22, 2024-High 50s/Overcast and rainy. Sunrise: 4:55 am/Sunset: 10:46 pm. 17 hours and 50 minutes of daylight.
The small boat was painted greenish blue with an outline of a seal sketched in black on the starboard side. It was docked in a slip at the Valdez harbor and at 23 feet was a little longer than the Shasta trailer we camped in when I was a kid. We found this unusual lodging on Air BnB and booked it for two nights. It slept three and didn’t have running water.
Before we boarded the boat, we took in the view and checked out the harbor facilities. It was late Sunday afternoon, and the fishing boats were coming in. Most seemed to be personal or charter boats.
Near the harbormaster’s office was a public area with long counters and overhead water hoses with spray attachments for fish cleaning. Heads, guts, and bones were washed onto a slide area that ended in a chute that emptied into a container in the harbor. A row of attentive gulls and crows (some of my only bird sightings while in Alaska) kept a close watch on the activities ready to snatch whatever they could.
A whiteboard hanging nearby kept a daily and overall tally of the summer’s fish derbies which included halibut and silver salmon.
The harbor and adjacent village are situated on the Valdez Arm of Prince WIlliam Sound (PWS) in the northeast portion of the sound. We came in over the Chugach Mountains via the Richardson Highway and in the final thirty miles we crossed the summit of Thompson Pass (at 2805 feet it averages 500 inches of snow per year) and saw waterfalls and glaciers at almost every curve in the road.
My reading during the trip included the memoir The Heart of the Sound: An Alaskan Paradise Found and Nearly Lost by Marybeth Holleman. She describes the location of Prince William Sound:
It is a place of convergence–the geographic center for Alaska and the Pacific, where the Arctic to the north, Aleutians to the west, and Inside Passage to the south all intersect.
Holleman arrived in Alaska a few years prior to the Exxon Valdez oil spill and spent those years and many after the disaster kayaking or boating on the sound and camping on its beaches. The spill spread oil throughout the sound killing thousands of fish and animals. Her story recounts not only the toll on marine life but also on the humans who lived, worked, and recreated in this unique and pristine environment.
The timeline (see below) provided by NOAA was thumbtacked on a bulletin board at the harbormaster’s building. It shows the status of PWS species recovery 25 years after the spill. Another ten years has now passed, and I wonder if anything has changed especially for those on the bottom row.
In the evening, we returned to the boat where we had loaded our backpacks and suitcases. The sunny evening and a big salmon dinner kept us going even though we were all fighting colds that I caught first and had now moved on to Dave and Dad. We found the accommodations challenging but not impossible. A bench, one folding chair and, a big cooler with four cupholders was our living room. An extension cord gave us all a place to charge our phones and one bright light, but we never did figure out how to turn on the string of party lights.
By morning fog and rain had moved in and weren’t budging. Getting out and exploring wasn’t appealing so we went from a coffee shop to the library to the visitor center to a Chinese restaurant for dinner trying to stay warm and dry. I connected my phone to the public Wi-Fi at each place we stopped but was never able to upload the photos for my previous post about fireweed and white spruce. I finally conceded defeat and decided to finish these posts once I returned to my dry dining room table.
Back on the damp boat for our second night we consoled ourselves that it was still better than sleeping in a tent. And I said, “If we survive this, we’ll look back on it as an adventure.” But I’m not sure I convinced anyone. Everyone’s spirits seemed to lift a bit the next morning when we carefully disembarked the boat through its small door for the last time.
I confess I was also beginning to feel melancholy about the trip. Since our first brief trip to Alaska back in 2000 I had looked forward to returning, hoping that we would be able to make the trip with Dad, and now it was almost over.
So, it wasn’t long before I began thinking about a return visit somewhere down the road. I’m still not sold on the Inside Passage cruises that are so popular but maybe a flight to Anchorage and another trip on the Alaska Railroad–south to Seward with a with a stop in Whittier to get a look at the other side of Prince WIlliam Sound. And maybe this time I’ll see some tufted puffins.