Previous Leg ! Back to Index ! Next Leg

This stretch is nominally 50 miles but is actually a few miles longer, generally running about 55 miles. You'll leave Knik Lake westbound on the old Iditarod Trail, running across low, mostly wooded hills, open swamps, and a number of lakes. The trail crosses the Little Susitna River at the 18-mile point, then works over to Flathorn Lake across an area of level swamps and woods cut by a few sharp ravines (about 30 miles). After a couple more swamps and tree lines you'll drop onto the Susitna River after 35 miles. You'll go north up the broad Susitna for a few miles and then swing up the wide Yentna River, the Susitna's main tributary, for the last 17 miles to Yentna Station.

This entire stretch of trail is very heavily used all winter and is sometimes in very bad shape. There may be ruts, bumps, rough spots, and moguls. You'll meet lots of snowmachines, particularly on the river, some of them moving very fast and perhaps not as alert as they should be because of the numerous parties along the trail. Most of the trail is wide enough to allow easy passing. Watch for moose until you get to the Susitna River. Note: The first 30 miles of the trail was well groomed in 1999 and probably will be in 2000 as well.

As soon as you can after arriving at Knik, head back onto the trail across the lake, past the Knik Museum on the far bank, and then up the hill and into the trees. Now you're on the genuine, original Iditarod Trail; this initial stretch has been in fairly constant use most every winter since 1910. Except for a few short swampy areas, a high-tension powerline corridor, a couple of roads (may or may not be plowed), and a crossing of Fish Creek (three miles out), you'll roll over low wooded hills with gentle grades for the first five miles. Watch for the huge flock of plastic pink flamingos along the trail a couple of miles out. This section of trail can have bumps and moguls; be careful not to break your sled.

After five miles you'll come out of the trees onto (what else?) Five-Mile Swamp. The trail runs generally straight, wide, and level for a couple of miles across the frozen swamp, followed by a few excursions back into the forest to cross some low ridges. There are no real surprises on this stretch, but watch for intersecting trails--the Iditarod will be marked with permanent four-inch metal reflectors (mostly gold, with some of them bleaching toward silver) in addition to some Iditarod-standard four-foot wooden lath stakes and maybe some orange engineer tape tied to trees and bushes.

About seven miles after you leave Knik, you'll come to Seven-Mile Lake. On the west side of the lake, the trail will climb the bank for maybe fifty yards and will then turn sharply right on a narrow cat trail; this is the start of the twisting half-mile climb to the top of Khyber Pass (sometimes known as Nine-Mile Hill, which is really a mile to the north on the old Iditarod). After you've come most of the way down the other side of the hill, don't miss the well-marked left turn toward the Burma Road. The trail will jump on and off the road a couple of times in the next mile or two, crossing a lake in the process. The road may or may not be plowed. Watch closely for the markers.

After you leave the Burma Road for the second time, you'll start west along a series of frozen lakes and cleared overland seismic lines. Watch the markers and be careful for some of the jumps onto and off of the lakes; the banks can be several feet high. There are plenty of places to stop and give your team a quick break or a snack out here. You'll also be running up and down some short, moderately steep hills; you might want to get off and push to help the dogs out because they'll be starting to heat up in the afternoon warmth.

Eighteen miles after leaving Knik, you'll come to the Little Susitna River; the river is only 40 feet wide and should be well frozen, but if there's not much snow the vertical banks can be a few feet high. On the west side of the river, you'll go for another couple of miles straight west through the woods, climbing out of the river bottoms onto a broad, partly wooded swamp area.

A couple of miles past the river you'll enter an open, swampy area and will see the famous "Nome 1,049 miles" sign standing at a fork in the trail; go left (the way the big gold arrow is pointing). Watch carefully for the markers on the next stretch--there are a couple of turns which can be easily missed. The trail will wind southwest through the seemingly endless swamps for the next few miles until you finally swing west again on a main trail at least 30 feet wide through the trees.

Five miles past the Nome sign you'll make a sharp 50-foot drop into the ravine of a tributary of Fish Creek (not the same one you crossed earlier) and then back up the other side a couple hundred yards later--watch for some light overflow and tricky turns down in the creek bed. Less than a mile later you'll come to a very steep 75-foot hill down onto Fish Creek (actually the northeast arm of Flathorn Lake).

Here you may go a couple of ways. The trail may go straight ahead up another steep hill on the other side of the creek, down again, and then up again, or it may bypass the ups and downs by swinging sharply right at the bottom of the hill once you're on the creek (which is several hundred feet wide at this point). If the trail is marked for the jog to the right, you'll go up the creek about a quarter-mile and then cut back to the south up the far bank on a much easier grade. Once you're back on top, you'll be heading west along the straight trail again for another mile. Then you'll come to another steep 75-foot hill down onto the north arm of Flathorn Lake. This time you'll turn left at the bottom and follow the trail south along the arm to the main lake.

In 1999, however, the trail turned left down the Fish Creek arm of the lake instead of going up the hill on the far side. It ran all the way south to the lake and then back northwest along the north shore, rejoining the old route at the mouth of the north arm of the lake. This route was arguably easier than the direct trip, but added a mile or two.

From the mouth of the north arm, follow the trail across the open frozen marsh to the tree line a mile west. Once in the trees, watch the trail markers carefully, since a number of major snowmachine trails converge here. By Iditarod time, this part of the country often looks like some big World War II tank battle was fought in the area, with tracks and trails covering practically every square foot of open space.

After half a mile in the trees you'll come out onto a long, wide-open swamp headed west. The trail will be packed down maybe a hundred feet wide by snowmachiners. This is a customary place to stop and snack the dogs; you've been on the trail for more than 30 miles since Knik and you're about to drop down onto the Susitna and Yentna Rivers for the rest of the trip up to Yentna Station and Skwentna.

When you leave the big swamp, you'll go briefly through the trees again and then across a much smaller swamp, then into the big cottonwoods in the Susitna River bottoms. The last half-mile of trail up to the river is very twisty and crosses several small creek channels. In past years, the drop down to the river has been a potential disaster area, with a sharp bend to the left to get to the top of the bank, followed by a murderous switchback down to the right for the 15-foot drop to the river. It was a little better in 1999, but was nothing to trifle with. There is sometimes no easy way to get down the bank--more than a few mushers spill their sleds here. The trail may take other ways down onto the river, so listen carefully to the trail briefing in the mushers' meeting and follow the markers.

Once down onto the river, follow the four-foot Iditarod trail stake markers. The trail is never in the same place from year to year because the river never freezes up the same way. There will be hundreds of snowmachiners out here to cheer you on; it should be getting dark about this time and you can see their bonfires scattered for miles on up the river. You'll run up the three-quarter-mile-wide Susitna for several miles, passing the buildings of Susitna Station (an old steamboat landing and trading post) on a rock outcropping on the east bank.

Somewhere along here you'll work over to the west bank under another rock outcropping with a cabin on top of it and then gradually turn up the half- mile-wide Yentna River, the main tributary of the Susitna. It's 17 miles from the mouth of the Yentna to Yentna Station. The river trail can run just about anywhere on the river, depending on snow and ice conditions. In low-snow years, it will tend to stay on sandbars on one side or the other rather than run in the middle of the channel.

On the Yentna, you will be following the main snowmachine highway all the way to Yentna Station and on to Skwentna; it is used by hundreds and even thousands of snowmachines every week and may branch and fork and run back into side sloughs. The ONLY markings you should follow are the orange- topped Iditarod trail stakes (also called lath markers). They have a strip of reflective gold tape on them which you should be able to see for half a mile ahead with your headlamp.

Watch for bare and partly sandy stretches if snow has been sparse or the wind has been blowing hard. Also look out for "sand traps" where fast- moving snowmachines have broken through the packed snow crust on the trail, leaving a short stretch of soft, punchy snow for the dogs to flounder through--dogs can hurt shoulders if you hit these at high speed. You might keep an eye out for overflow from a couple of side creeks flowing in from the north in the first five miles of the Yentna; there should be plenty of warning if this is happening, though.

If you have any doubts about where you are, stay in the main channel of the Yentna (actually the only channel at this point). It is almost impossible to miss once you are a couple of miles up from the junction with the Susitna, since the river banks will be up to 100 feet high on one or both sides. You won't see the Yentna Station checkpoint until you are almost there because the river makes a huge sweeping oxbow bend to the north just downstream from it.

There will be plenty of lights and activity at the checkpoint, so you won't miss it. Stay on the river trail and don't pull your team up on the bank as you approach the checkpoint; the lodge owner doesn't have room for all the Iditarod teams in his front yard. The checkers will meet you on the river, along with the veterinarians to give your dogs a quick once-over. Don't forget to give your yellow Dog Team Notebook to the vet so he (or she) can make the required entry; you'll have to do this at every checkpoint until you get to Nome. If you want to leave in a hurry, you may be able to talk the vet into just signing your dogs off without seriously examining them, but don't expect to get away with this at two checkpoints in a row.

If you've rested your team back on the trail for a few hours to avoid the heat of the day, you may just want to push on immediately for Skwentna, 35 miles upriver. Otherwise you might want to stop for an hour or two and snack or even feed your dogs. (You couldn't ship anything to Yentna Station, so you'll have to feed whatever you carried with you from Wasilla.) Dan Gabryczak and his wife and kids have been running the lodge for a number of years. There is usually cold water available at the door to the lodge kitchen; all you have to do is take your bucket up and ask nicely. If you have the time, there is a free plate of spaghetti and all the Tang you can drink waiting for you inside.

The current trail doesn't follow the original Iditarod Trail after Seven-Mile Lake. Instead, it follows a series of cat tracks, lakes, and seismic survey lines to the Susitna River. The trail is a lousy dog trail, with lots of sharp ups and downs and sidehills and sometimes more snowmachine moguls than you've ever seen in your life. The original Iditarod followed a much more level route, but has been disused for decades. Two volunteer trail groups now have grants to rehabilitate the original Iditarod from Seven-Mile Lake to the Susitna River. They've already done so from Burma Road out to the Nome Sign--maybe we'll be running the real Iditarod out to Susitna Station before too long.

Similarly, the original trail didn't go up the Yentna River after Susitna Station. Instead, it climbed the west bank and continued along high ground to the south of the Yentna River, sometimes called Trail Ridge, and worked over toward Alexander Creek and Alexander Lake, where there was a roadhouse. From Alexander Lake the original trail went more or less direct to Old Skwentna Roadhouse, on the Skwentna River about ten miles south of the current Skwentna checkpoint.

The race had a checkpoint at Susitna Station until the early 1980s, when it was dropped as being unnecessary. The race trail used some of the original trail west of Susitna Station out to the area of Alexander Lake, but then veered northwest to Skwentna on a seismic survey line, passing the checkpoint of Rabbit Lake roughly abeam Yentna Station. The race abandoned the overland trail from Susitna Station to Skwentna in the early 1990s in favor of the Skwentna River because it was easier to put in and maintain the trail on the river. (Also, it was easier for spectators to view the race on the Yentna from snowmachines and from the many new lodges that had been built on the river.) The current Yentna Station checkpoint was instituted in place of the old Rabbit Lake checkpoint.

Previous Leg ! Back to Index ! Next Leg