Dave Looney knows quite a bit about sled dogs and mushers – they’re colleagues, friends, and on a few occasions, he’s rescued them from some of the worst weather on the planet. To be sure, he admires them … but he also loves them so much that he helped co-found the Idaho Sled Dog Challenge.
And he can’t wait for more Idahoans to experience that same kind of love.
“They're having a blast,” said Looney, describing the scene just before and after a race through some of Idaho’s most picturesque yet challenging terrain. “The enthusiasm that you see with both the dogs and the spectators is unrivaled.”
Prior to the Saturday, Jan. 20 Meet the Mushers event and the ceremonial start on Jan. 28, Looney visited with Morning Edition host George Prentice to preview this year’s events.
Additionally, the Idaho Sled Dog Challenge is holding a once-in-a-lifetime raffle for two – day guided Iditarod tours. Find out more here.
Read the full transcript below:
GEORGE PRENTICE: It's Morning Edition. Hi. I'm George Prentice. Time to embrace winter. For those who marvel at the fact that we do have four seasons, one of the more marvelous events of winter is the Idaho Sled Dog Challenge, something we gravitate to each January. So here we go. Let's welcome Dave Looney back to the broadcast pilot extraordinaire. He is an officiant and has helped run logistics and trails for the Idaho Sled Dog Challenge since its inception. Dave. Good morning.
DAVE LOOONEY: Good morning, George
PRENTICE: We were just talking a little bit before we went on air. Talk to me about how this all began for you. Your connection began up in Alaska.
LOONEY: Right? Jerry Wortley, the other co-founder, and I were on the Iditarod Air Force together. So, the Iditarod, of course, the big race and up in Alaska. And, um, I had gotten into that, uh, it was around 2005, 2006 because, um, I had been on a rescue mission, uh, I was flying rescue up in Alaska, and we picked up seven teams and six mushers.
PRENTICE: Can I just pause you there? Because I don't think many of us can even wrap our brains around the fact that there would be a rescue. I mean, that's how inclement the weather was, I'm assuming.
LOONEY: Right. The mushers in general are very independent and self-sufficient, but on occasion the on a big race like that, safety kind of takes hold and you have to, um, for all kinds of reasons, call for some help. And they had. Seven teams were going up over this pass called Eagle Summit on the Yukon Quest, running out of Fairbanks towards Dawson City that year. Of course, the Yukon Quest being the other big race. The winds were, you know, in excess of probably 60 miles an hour. And it was really low visibility. Snow was blown up all over the place, but the snow had gotten blown off the trail crossing the pass. And the that particular area is just these huge rocks that are it's just jumbled together. So once the snow is gone, there's no trail, but you can't even run the sleds across it.
PRENTICE: But how dangerous is that to fly into? By the way, you've got skis on these planes, right?
LOONEY: Well, I was in a helicopter. And yes, the helicopter had skis on it. Got it. Uh, our tanker, our C-130 tanker had come up from Anchorage. I was in Eielson when we got the call. Just, you know, a shorter distance to where it was from to Eagle Summit. And so. The race had called the RCC and said, we've got seven teams stranded in blizzard conditions and they can't move and we need to get we need to get into them. And they could see that the teams were not moving because of the GPS was, which was attached to the sleds, and the sleds had stopped moving. And all of them were on this pass. And they knew because of the Venturi, and they had a checkpoint that was maybe five miles away. They knew how horrible the weather was, and the fogs and clouds had moved in tight. They couldn't see up there. And they asked for help. And so we flew through that weather and as would have it, um, an eye opened over the pass and the C-130 had circled overhead and spotted them through and said, yeah, I mean, we knew where they were to begin with, but we were coming through low level in the helicopter, and we eked our way up into that spot. And when we first landed, there was kind of one spot on this side hill that I could get the helicopter down. There was a team right in front of me, maybe, I don't know, 30, 40 yards. Uh, I couldn't see the musher, but the dogs were just sitting there, not moving, um, staring at me, and, uh. The wind was coming from their back and blowing. You know, I was landing into the wind. I couldn't have landed that with a tailwind. So I pointed the nose and the wind put down on that one spot on that side hill. We had enough visibility to see that there were other teams in that general area. We couldn't see all of the teams immediately, but there were seven teams there. One of the mushers had been thrown in the blizzard and lost his team, and then by some chance, another team had come through in the mist and he had waved him down and got and they were able to get out, and he rode in the sled of that other team out. So we only had six mushers, but we had seven teams of dogs, which, you know, 12 to 16 dogs. And so anyway, when we landed, the winds were blowing so hard that when my medic went out of the helicopter and up to the sled, he opened the zipper on the sled bag and the musher was inside and she didn't know that we were there. We were only 40 yards away in an incredibly loud helicopter. I mean, these things are deafening. And the wind was blowing so hard she didn't even know we were there, so she was surprised. Well, it took us about five trips to get all 89 dogs and six mushers back to the checkpoint. We had to air refuel, I believe, at once. Uh, and then maybe again on the way home. So the tanker, you know, hung around and loitered for us, and we got we got out of there just before the weather and the darkness moved back in. That was a big mission. It was probably one of the funnest missions I ever did in 20 years. But that cemented my love of, uh, sled dogs. The the team that had been that had thrown their musher was at the bottom of the hill. All you could see was the sled. The dogs had curled up and the snow had blown over them, and the medics couldn't find them until they grabbed the gain line, started walking down, and they were literally stepping on dogs, trying to pull them up out of the snow. But the dogs saw us load in the helicopter and they figured out that was the way out. And after the first team went, we didn't have any trouble getting the dogs into the helicopter. They all rode nicely. The last trip out we had 25 dogs in the back.
PRENTICE: These are amazing athletes, right? These mushers and their passion for their dogs ….it's difficult to put into words.
LOONEY: You know, the thing that that strikes me is a common thread for all the mushers is are two things. One, the love of their dogs. Yeah, they're absolutely family for most of them. And you will see mushers that don't epitomize the picture of an athlete, right? I mean, they're not you don't look at them and go, oh, that's, you know, um, Mikaela Shiffrin or whatever, some fabulous athlete. But they are all. Mentally tough if they can go those distances. They don't quit and they're not afraid to endure hardship. Their capacity to endure pain and cold and suffering and fatigue is beyond that of, you know, 99% of us. I don't think I would go a thousand miles behind a dog team.
PRENTICE: And these dogs love they love to run. They live to run, right.
LOONEY: Absolutely. I've. I've been in places like right on the coast of the Norton Sea with wind howling and dogs that have already run 800 miles. They get a 2 or 3 hour rest, and as soon as the musher starts acting like, you know, he starts putting the booties on and or she starts putting the booties on and getting him ready to go, they're up. I mean, they're up, their tails are wagging, they're leaning into the harness. They cannot wait to go. And when you pull the dog off a team, which happens often, either the musher recognizes or the vets that are part of the race integral to the race. That when somebody recognizes that a dog needs to stop running, it's a real bummer for the dog because now they're away from their team. They don't recognize the people that are taking care of them, and their buddies are going running without them. And it's really a bummer for them. And when you pull a team or when a musher has to quit. A lot of times the musher is so upset because they're letting the dogs down like the dogs could keep going and they feel horrible. I've had people that I've pulled out in the plane in tears because they felt like. They're letting their dogs down, but, you know, they're 600 miles in the race and it's 40 below and they've got frostbite and they've got to quit. Yeah, and the dogs are fine. It's just amazing. It's just, you know, it's a tough environment for everybody.
PRENTICE: Let's talk about the Idaho sled dog challenge. So. There are three different distances?
LOONEY: Right. So we added a stage race last year the first year for the Warm Lake stage race. And it was really fun. It's a two-day race. It's an out and back both days from the Warm Lake Lodge. So you can go up and watch him go out. And then they come back. It's a 25-mile round trip and they do it two days in a row. Their combined time determines the winner. That's a really neat environment. The Warm Lake Lodge is just a fantastic venue. I think people come to a dog race and they get involved in a dog race because of the dogs. Yeah, but the reason that you stay is because of the people. Yeah. Um, to those like-minded people that are so upbeat and so much fun to be around, to have a common goal and kind of serve something a little bit bigger than yourself. You know, we're not it's not it's not entirely altruistic, of course, but it's, um, it's a really great environment that's on the 24th and 25th of January at Warm Lake. Right. And then on the 29th, we start 100 and the 300, and they'll start out of Cascade.
PRENTICE: That 300 mile race…. you're covering quite a bit of distance. So how long might that?.
LOONEY: The 300 mile is going to take about four days, and that's partially because we require amount of rest for both the people and the dogs. And it's not easy. It's not a camping trip. They will run from Cascade over the hill, you know, down to Third Fork all the way to Smith's Ferry and back, and they're halfway done. Wow. Right after that they go north and they end up in Y and then come back to Cascade to finish. So it's, I mean, flying over it in an airplane. You look down and go, that is a tremendously long stretch to, to encompass, you know, a lot of endurance, a lot of vertical, you know, 30 plus thousand feet of vertical.
PRENTICE: Remind our listeners how unique this is for a 300 mile race in the lower 48. This is special.
LOONEY: We get people from all over that come to this race. We are the only race in the lower 48 that is both a qualifier for the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod, and that has to do with both the distances that we cover. Uh, for the 300 mile and with the level of support you're allowed to give your musher if you're a dog handler.
PRENTICE: It's interesting this year in that the Idaho Sled Dog challenge is on its…, uh, what have been its traditional dates? The McCall Winter Carnival pushed back their dates to later in the winter. So actually, this is an opportunity, right, to, uh, to actually come visit Valley County a couple of times, uh, this winter. But more importantly, maybe to spend a little bit more time, uh, checking out the sled dog challenge. I think it's an opportunity.
LOONEY: I think so, too, and I hope, I hope people get up, uh, and see us. We've got. We can't really run on the weekends because the trails that we run on are the snowmachine trails, snowmobile trails. They stay down here, um, that Valley County and the other counties. Groom. And we're very fortunate that that we get so much support from the Valley County groomers. And most of that money comes from the snowmobile clubs, right? So we pay for some of the diesel fuel that that does all that. But um, come up to Valley County and, and come check it out. The timing works out for us this way because the SBX, the, uh, which is the Oregon race that runs over near Joseph, that runs always ahead of us, we're in the middle. And then after this race is big Sky race to the Sky up in Montana, we've, uh, kind of collaborated with those other two races. So we have what we call a Rocky Mountain Triple Crown. And racers are, if they're competing in all three, uh, there's a certain award that goes to you if you can finish all three in the highest standings and you can, you can win the Triple Crown. We call it so. And as well, both those races are qualifiers in the 300 for the Iditarod you have to cover. I can't remember what the numbers are exactly, but the Iditarod requires you to race at least two long distance races and another short distance race in order to be qualified. And if you run the whole Triple Crown, you can get qualified in one year, and then the next year you can apply to go to the Iditarod, which we have a bunch of our folks doing. I think we've got five people running the Iditarod this year that have completed our race.
PRENTICE: Excellent. So drop some dates on us again. Let's see, uh, we have a meet the musher event, I think, on the 20th. And what are some of the other dates again, for the for the races.
LOONEY: The best way, if you don't want to write it down, is to go to Idahosleddogchallenge.com. Got it. Uh, it's all one word, but the warm lake stage race is, I believe, the 24th and 25th of January. Check the website for that. And then for sure, the start of the 100 and the 300 are on the 29th, and they'll start just a couple hours apart from each other. Three runners go out at like 11, and then 3 or 4 hours later we launch the one hundreds. The three hundreds will go south, first towards Smith Ferry. The one hundreds will start their trek north and they'll end up in in. Why? Believe it or not, the next morning they'll cover 100 miles with three hours of rest each at at Platte and at, uh, little ski Hill.
PRENTICE: But it never does get old, right? Because it's first of all, it's an equal opportunity sport. We see just about everybody out there, um, and young and old, young and old.
LOONEY: And, you know, the winners of our races, uh, have consistently been females. Yeah. Uh, uh, we've got a racer from Montana, uh, Jessie Royer, who is, you know, she's Iditarod famous, right? She's. I think she's going to run her 20th Iditarod this year. She's, you know, when you talk about the epitome of a musher, this woman is tough mentally. Physically. I mean, the stuff that she does in the off season 15 mule pack trains, you know, solo guiding groups of hunters in Alaska for grizzly bears and moose. I mean, she is tough.
PRENTICE: For our listeners…anyone with kids, this is low hanging fruit. Uh, kids will adore this.
LOONEY: It is. And if you look at, like we have school busses pulling up at this event now, right? I mean, people come from all over, the people come from Boise with school busses of kids to come watch the start. And I'm sure the vast majority of the people that are out there cheering for the dogs are kids and they're going, lulu, just like the dogs are. They're having a blast. Nobody comes away from this thing and goes, oh, well, I'm sorry I drove out there. You know, they're like, Holy crap, was that fun? I mean, they the enthusiasm that you see with both the dogs and the and the spectators is unrivaled. It's really fun to be in. You're right next to him. I mean, you're down there. We don't encourage people to reach out and try and touch any dogs while they're going by at 20 miles an hour, but, um, you're just about close enough to. And we have to we have to gate off the, the start so that we can keep a lane for the dogs to run down. But you're right there. You're right next to them and it's deafening. You can't you I mean, we're using hand signals because we just know that we're not going to be able to communicate, uh, once the dogs get excited, as soon as you pull that first harness out and the first dog starts getting looped up, all the teams start barking, right? So imagine you've got eight teams, you know, almost probably a hundred dogs sitting there. And then the next thing you know, it's just this the loudest dog park you've ever seen. And they cannot wait to run. We have to hook snow machines up to them at the beginning so we can keep them from running. We use the snow machine to get them into position, until we can get the ice hooked down and anchor them into the snow. Because otherwise you're not stopping them. There's some great videos on. There's some great videos on the website. If you look at them, you'll see you'll see me getting knocked over at the start. You know, one of the first years we did this, as the team comes up, we try and hold them, and we didn't have snow machines at that particular time bringing them to the front. And that was we had a team like six people and sometimes it wasn't enough.
PRENTICE: And thank you for giving us the first thing to look forward to in 2024. And he is Dave Looney. And he and his colleagues again, are bringing us the Idaho Sled Dog Challenge later this month. Dave, Happy New Year to you and thank you so very much. Great. Good luck with this event and have a blast.
LOONEY: Thanks, George. Thanks for calling.
Find reporter George Prentice @georgepren
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