Wings of the Iditarod

Iditarod Air Force pilot Bruce Moroney and I have just departed this field in his ski-equipped Cessna Skywagon after hauling people and gear up from McGrath. This is one of many flights today that support race-critical missions like transporting dogs, judges, and even doggy drug tests to prevent doping.

We follow the Iditarod trail home to McGrath, taking note of the current weather conditions in a land where METARs and TAFs are few and far between, and pilot reports and weather cameras are king. Suddenly, over the radio, we get a call, asking if the IAF is up. It’s the Iditarod trail breakers—a team of snowmachiners who ride the trail first, taking care to ease the path for the mushers and their teams behind and place the official trail markers. They’re a critical safety component of the race and precede the mushers on the trail by at least a day. Turns out, the snow has been thicker than expected, and they’re low on fuel; they ask to make sure the IAF brings some to Cripple. They wave up in thanks as we wave our wings down to them. This winter-bound region is now only accessible by skiplane, dog team, or snowmobile, and transporting fuel would take anything without wings days. With a Skywagon, it takes a little over an hour. For Moroney and the other IAF pilots, this is all in a day’s work. For the Iditarod, air support like this is the reason the “last great race” can go on at all.

Sic parvis magna

When it comes to general aviation, there is no place like Alaska. And when it comes to sled dog racing, there is nothing like the Iditarod. Combine those two and you have one of the most unique operations in all of aviation: the Iditarod Air Force.

The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is a nearly 1,000-mile-long endeavor that takes the most competitive teams a little more than one week to complete from Anchorage to Nome. Because of the remote nature of the race, it relies almost completely on general aviation air support. The Iditarod Air Force is an all-volunteer group of more than 20 pilots and their airplanes plus support crew who coordinate and fly a variety of supplies, veterinarians, and race officials to and from the 20-plus mandatory checkpoints along the race.

Chief Pilot Wes Erb oversees the whole production, trusting his team to carry out everything safely, and providing guidance when needed. A FedEx pilot by day (and night), he uses up his yearly vacation to fly for the IAF year after year. He’s deeply proud of the operation, which he declares as professional and serious as any he’s ever flown for. A 20-year IAF veteran, he notes that it has “taken a while to get here.”

What started with one pilot in 1973 grew each year, and around the year 2000, the organization had grown to the point that the FAA took notice and decided to work with the IAF. It was a “relationship that could not be refused,” says Erb with a smile. After much back and forth and help over the years from an Alaska Supreme Court Justice, and U.S. senators Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski, the IAF now enjoys a unique waiver to operate that combines both Part 135 and 91 ops. The pilots are held to 135 standards (and the organization is structured as one), and allowed to accept donated fuel, while donating their own time, experience, and airframes.

“I think the pilots are by far one of the biggest sponsors,” he says, but notes that they all get a lot out of the experience, too. “It’s a symbiotic relationship.” Erb estimates the donated value per airplane to be close to $100,000.

Don’t let the word volunteer mislead you. This isn’t a world of weekend warriors—the pilots are all highly experienced aviators with thousands of Alaska hours on skis, most of them airline transport pilots; the rest are commercial pilots, either formerly or concurrently professional pilots. The pilots seem focused and purposeful and they go to great lengths to help people and dogs, and they hold their flying to high standards. Erb guesses that their pilots average around 10,000 logged hours. And in the small world of Alaska aviation, many have been flying together for decades outside the race. This may be the heart of winter in Alaska, but pilot Greg Fischer calls this their summer camp.

Preparation

The start of the race is several days away, and the Iditarod Air Force has been hard at work for weeks. For the earliest checkpoints and before the race, IAF dispatches its fleet out of the Lakefront Hotel in Anchorage (the official hotel of the Iditarod), just a few minutes from Lake Hood. From there, it uses McGrath (MCG) and then Unalakleet (UNK) as hubs.

Monte Mabry, director of operations for the IAF, is a geologist and pilot and enjoys coordinating the efforts of the IAF year after year; plus, as many of the pilots agree, it is an excuse to spend a few weeks with lifelong friends flying in one of the most beautiful and complex environments in the world. One of his missions today is to fly a couple veterinarians out to one of the very first stops, Skwentna, to make sure vets are there before the race starts. He and pilot Dennis Williams have open seats and offer them to AOPA Senior Photographer Chris Rose, Videographer Jamal Warner, and me. Williams is flying his Piper Cherokee Six—one of the few non-Skywagons, one of only a few airframes in the fleet on wheels, and along with a 206, one of the only nosewheels.

Departing Lake Hood’s gravel strip, we cross the frosty Knik Arm, lily pads of ice blooming across the water, the engine of Mabry’s Cessna Skywagon reassuringly steady. With almost the entire world covered in white, Mabry points out frozen rivers, lakes, good places to land, bad places to land, mountain ranges, and then the Skwentna checkpoint a short distance from the airport. The runway in Skwentna is snow-covered (this will be a continuing theme), but Mabry, whose Skywagon has hydraulic skis, deems it wheel-worthy. We unload our veterinarian passengers and chit chat with the folks calling Skwentna home for the next few days. We pick up some backhaul bound for Anchorage, Mabry noting that every leg always has a task.

On your mark

The race begins the next morning with the ceremonial start in downtown Anchorage. Locals and visitors line the streets, and it is electric but biting cold, with a windchill in the negative teens. Operations out of Anchorage will remain critical throughout the coming weeks, but with the race underway, the new key hub is McGrath.

McGrath, about 200 nautical miles to the northwest of Anchorage on a bend in the Kuskokwim River, is a desaturated world muffled by gently falling snow. It’s as foreign as any other country could ever be, but we see a friendly face, Greg Fischer, waiting for us in a high-vis vest when we arrive via chartered Pilatus PC–12—the weather was too low for the IAF’s VFR operations. He introduces us to his daughter Mackenzie, who works as a load coordinator and is also a pilot (although not yet for the IAF).

They take us on a tour of the town, which in the 2020 census had a population of 301. We start with the airport, where the IAF fleet sleeps, all wrapped up and each plugged in to an extension cord running the length of the flight line. They’ve cleverly plugged in lights as well, to be alerted early if the power goes out or if someone accidentally unplugs or forgets to plug in their airplane to power. The heavily favored aircraft in the fleet is the Skywagon—a capable tailwheel hauler accustomed to hard work and heavy loads. The Wagons are all on skis, most of them hydraulic, although pilot Ed Kornfield, a longtime veteran of the IAF (and Master Pilot, Master Mechanic, and one of the Ford Tri-Motor pilots at EAA AirVenture), flies his Skywagon on straight skis. We walk from the ramp across the street to McGrath’s beating heart—the Roadhouse.

All volunteers congregate in the Roadhouse, where all meals are communal and on a schedule, planned and made by a chef flown in for the race. Within the Roadhouse, the IAF has its own packed room that serves as both pilot lounge and operations headquarters for McGrath assistant chief pilot Diana Moroney. Moroney and her husband, Bruce, who flies their Skywagon for the IAF, are key to McGrath operations. Both former mushers, Diana ran the race 10 times and Bruce ran it twice, they have a bond with the race distinct from that of the other volunteers. Diana leads all the morning and evening briefings, and with the rest of the crew in the pilot room, keeps track of people, airplanes, dogs, and priorities, and is the primary authority in MCG.

The forecast for tomorrow looks promising, so everyone calls it an early night, but not before an acoustic guitar-led singalong in the pilot lounge and a screening of (what else?) Top Gun.

The next morning, lightly falling fairytale snow and low ceilings mean the weather is IFR. The FAA sends a weather briefer up to McGrath to help support IAF operations, and the packed pilot room quiets down as Greg Fischer calls for the morning report.

“Somewhat low overcast seems to be the story for the morning,” says the briefer over the radio, reading out forecasts, reports, and his impression of the weather cameras. Weather to the north seems to be improving the quickest, and widespread conditions should improve by lunch. Moroney and the crew know there’s a full day of flying that needs to get done, but if the weather won’t cooperate, their hands are tied. The waiting game begins anew.

Service is only available to those with sat phones and at the Roadhouse and lodge thanks to Starlink. The lack of constant connection is freeing, but internet is necessary for daily race logistics. Bruce’s next mission is a mixture of the critical and mundane: He’ll be flying a Starlink specialist to Cripple and leaving him there for the day along with the race’s halfway signage. With more than 36,000 hours Bruce is practiced at respecting Alaskan weather, and despite the poorer than forecast weather, he is tentatively hopeful about this trip now that the conditions are at VFR minimums.

There is nearly nothing at Cripple—just a few structures and an orange tent, plus a cleared deep snow surface-made runway defined with weighted black trash bags. Talk about the middle of nowhere.

Landing on skis is an odd sensation. Some of it mimics the sensation of landing on water in that you can tell that you definitely aren’t on a hard surface, but it is slippery, and you need to be on top of the rudder even more than a normal tailwheel or water landing. The bright light and few shadows on the untouched snow reminds me of glassy water. After touchdown, Bruce expertly maneuvers us to the checkpoint and the ice-skating/drifting sensation morphs into a more familiar taxi, although Bruce is careful to keep us moving so we don’t sink in before we want to stop. He shuts the engine down, takes the door off the ’Wagon, and we unload and then, as usual, load it back up with gear that needs to go back to McGrath before getting a tour, the population of Cripple now upped to three. Bruce decides we’ll fly the trail home and check out the weather for nearby checkpoints. This is when we get the call over the IAF’s frequency from the trailbreakers, putting their needs top of mind.

By the time we’re back in McGrath, the weather at all the key stops is good enough to launch the whole fleet. Bruce prioritizes the fuel and is on his way back to Cripple in no time. In the pilot room, the race trackers, a tab per pilot to GPS track their location via PLB, and weather are casting from a laptop onto the TV. By the end of the day, even with the delay in the morning, the team has transported more than 20 dogs and are right on track for where they want to be.

The race arrives

Iditarod race director Mark Nordman and a few other race VIPs and judges are now in McGrath—the first musher should arrive by evening. While most of the pilots have no strong opinions on who they want to win—they’re happy as long as the race goes on so they can fly—the consensus seems to be that they would like, a) new blood and b) an Alaskan to win. Jessie Holmes checks both those boxes, and from the tracker, it looks like he’ll be the first in. The Roadhouse empties and seemingly every person in the town heads to the checkpoint.

Kids act as the lookout from the top of a snow berm and yell that they can see him. The cheering starts, and Holmes and his team crest the hill from the frozen river up to the frozen bank. The vets check out the eager team as Holmes’ gear is verified to make sure he still has all required safety equipment. Then he’s free to continue, picking up his drop bags (previously hauled in by the IAF). He takes care of his dogs before himself, and with his bright eyes and genuine smile, it is easy to see why he’s a crowd favorite.

More mushers arrive through the night, some just passing through, others choosing to rest. Each arrival is exciting, making the mission of the Iditarod Air Force more present and real than ever. The darkness makes it even more compelling, where you can first see the light of a headlamp coming down the frozen river out of a darkness almost too deep to imagine.

The arrival of mushers into McGrath also shifts priorities, beginning the transition of primary hub from McGrath to Unalakleet, just as it moved from Anchorage to McGrath before. The missions for the next day will focus on cleanup—everything and everyone flown in also must be flown out.

We end the next day with a singalong in the pilot room—and we’re honored to be invited back next year before we take the mail airplane back to Anchorage. It’s funny how just in a week strangers can turn into some of your favorite people on Earth.

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