Bethel teen wins Jr. Iditarod by two seconds

    WILLOW — Just after dawn Sunday morning, 17-year-old Jessica Klejka’s lead dogs appeared to spectators gathered on the ice of Willow Lake. As is customary, someone in the crowd called out a refrain familiar to the ears of anyone who’s witnessed the finish of a sled dog race.

    “Dog team!”

    Moments later, that cry was amended.

    “Dog teams!”

    Klejka, a senior at Bethel Regional High School, held off a pack of teenage boys — and their canine teammates — to win this year’s Junior Iditarod by the length of a dog team.

    “I thought they were going to catch me,” Klejka said at the finish line, her frozen eyelashes glinting in the rising sun.

    Chief among her pursuers was Cain Carter, a 16-year-old from Fairbanks armed with a powerful team trained in the sport’s most dominant kennel. As the two teams roared across the icy lake toward the finish line, each young driver kicked furiously behind the runners, calling out for their dogs to make one last push.

    With a small but suddenly wide-awake crowd cheering them on, Klejka and Carter battled down to the wire in as close a dog race finish as you’ll see. Finally, with a relieved smile creeping onto her face, Klejka watched as her leaders trotted beneath the banner just two second before Carter’s arrived at the line.

    “That was an exciting race,” Carter said.

    That’s an understatement — even by dog mushing’s tight-lipped standards.

Crowded at the front

    When the Carter and Klejka left the halfway checkpoint at Yentna Station late Saturday night, they weren’t alone. Also in on the chase for the $5,000 scholarship given for first place — and the honor of being crowned Alaska’s top juvenile musher — were a group that included Wasilla’s Wade Marrs and Kotzebue’s Quinn Iten.

    Klejka, who made the inbound journey from Willow to Yentna the fastest on Saturday’s opening day, was the first to leave Yentna Station, heading into the darkness with nine dogs at 2:38 a.m. Sunday. Also with nine dogs, Marrs gave chase just four minutes later, while Iten and Carter started for home 10 minutes after that, each with 10 dogs in harness. With 70 miles to go, just 14 minutes separated the top four mushers.

    Klejka would not see another musher until the final minutes of the race, but behind her, the field was jockeying for position. After 26 miles, Marrs was the first challenger to arrive at the Eagle Song Lodge checkpoint, still four minutes behind. Iten remained 10 minutes back, while Carter was two minutes behind him.

    Not wanting to be left out in the cold, two more girls — Indiana’s fawn Wilson and Ava Lindner of Two Rivers — also got into the mix, pulling into the checkpoint within striking distance of the leaders. And like a pair of shy prom dates, two more boys — Nome’s Michael Owens and Trapper Creek’s Jesse DeLoach — followed close behind.

The race heats up

    In all, eight mushers arrived at the lodge within 43 minutes of one another, all still very much in the race.

    But miles were running out, and when any of the second group failed to make a charge over the 14 miles to the Big Susitna, only four mushers — Klejka, Marrs, Iten and Carter — remained in the hunt.

    Carter decided to make a move.

    With dogs raised in step father Lance Mackey’s Comeback Kennels, he had the juice to do it. Mackey’s dogs have been the fastest in he sport this decade, with four straight Yukon Quest wins and last year’s Iditarod title to prove it, and Cain let them do what they do best.

    Soon, he’d caught both Marrs and Iten, and the three spent the next hour or so heading up the chase for Klejka.

    “We swapped around a little bit,” Carter said.

    Marrs started to fade, as Carter and Iten began pouring coals on the fire — in Carter’s case, perhaps too much, too soon.

    Shortly after the race, he wondered if he’d have been able to catch Klejka on the closing sprint had he not stressed his equipment to the limit getting past Marrs.

    “I wish I’d had a ski pole, but I broke it running from Wade,” he said.

    With Marrs in the rearview mirror, Iten and Carter remained as Klejka’s lone rivals. But with Willow fast approaching, they were still out of sight of the leader and in need of a break. They got one.

    One of Klejka’s dogs, a big, white male, decided he’d had enough. Klejka’s dogs are used to running in Bethel, and the relatively warm temperatures in the Mat-Su (the temperature in Willow Sunday morning was a balmy zero degrees Fahrenheit) had taxed them.

    “It was hot weather,” said Klejka, who didn't even bother putting on a pair of gloves for the final sprint. “That was a big difference.”

    The dog’s reluctance to run forced Klejka to stop her sled and load the animal into the basket. In the time it took to mind her team, the boys moved ever closer.

The home stretch

    With his team chugging along at high gear, Carter finally got free of Iten, putting the length of a team, then 100 yards, then a minute between himself and the Kotzebue musher. But with the smell of the finish line starting to reach his dogs’ noses, Carter still didn’t have sight of the girl he’d been looking for all morning.

    “She stayed up front the whole time,” he said.

    With hope of a win fading fast, Carter’s team came upon the final road crossing of the race, less than half a mile from the finish line. And hope returned.

    “Right after we crossed the road, I seen her,” he said.

    His heart leapt.    

    “I was like, ‘I got this.’”

    Hearing dogs barking behind her, Klejka said she could see the race she’d led all morning slipping away.

    “They were going way faster,” she said.

    But not fast enough. Klejka, the oldest of seven children and a National Honor Society member, wasn’t going to give up a $5,000 college scholarship without a fight. With a few words of encouragement, she managed to will her dogs into the finishing chute with Carter’s dogs nipping at her heels.

    She was the Jr. Iditarod champion by the narrowest margin in history, and had won the biggest race of a career that began when she started running dogs in the fifth grade. But while a veteran of nearly a decade’s worth of mushing, she said she hadn’t seriously expected to win even as the finish line drew near.

    “No,” she said when asked if she though she’d win the race.

    But, she added with a grin, she never ruled the possibility out, either.

    “We were hoping to do pretty good.”

    Meanwhile, Klejka’s closest rival was too busy hugging family and re-telling the race story to worry about coming up two seconds short. In fact, Cain Carter called Sunday’s run “the funnest year I’ve had” in three Jr. Iditarod starts, with this year’s second-place showing his best ever.

    “I’m happy with where I finished,” he said. “That’s a good position.”    Carter said that if he had one regret about the race — besides snapping his ski pole while outrunning Marrs — it was that he didn’t wear a warmer pair of boots.

    “My feet got cold.”

    For placing second, Carter claimed a $3,000 scholarship, while Iten — who wound up just three minutes off the lead — got $1,500 for third. Marrs received $1,000 for fourth and Lindner held off Owens by three minutes to take home fifth place and a $500 prize.

    Contact Matt Tunseth at 352-2265 or matt.tunseth@frontiersman.com

Junior Iditarod

Saturday-Sunday

Willow Lake

1. Jessica Klejka, 8:49:02 a.m.; 2. Cain Carter, 8:49:02 a.m.; 3. Quinn Iten, 8:52 a.m.; 4. Wade Marrs, 9:05 a.m.; 5. Ava Lindner, 9:21 a.m.; 6. Michael Owens, 9:24 a.m.; 7. Fawn Wilson, 9:41 a.m.; 8. Jesse DeLoach, 9:46 a.m.; 9. Patrick Mackey, 10:17 a.m.; 10. Amanda K. Olson, 10:24 a.m.; 11. Anita Winkler, 10:24:02 a.m.; 12. Charlie Allison, 11:15 a.m.; 13. Rebekah Ruzicka, 11:22 a.m.; 14. Mereditha Mapes, 11:55 a.m.; 15. Jeff Holt, 11:56 a.m.; 16. MacKenzie Davis, 12:15 p.m.; 17. Garry McKeller, 12:19 p.m.; 18. Shameka Nelson, 12:32 p.m.; 19. Carole Keller, 4:22 p.m.; 20. Yuta Takagi, 4:24 p.m. 21. Kristen Crain, 8:28 p.m.

Past Jr. Iditarod champions

1978 — Joe Good, Palmer

1979 — Clint Mayeur, Glennallen

1980 — Gary Baumgartner, McGrath

1981 — Christine Delia, Skwentna

1982 — Tim Osmar, Clam Gulch

1983 — Tim Osmar, Clam Gulch

1984 — Tim Osmar, Clam Gulch

1985 — Lance Barve, Wasilla

1986 — Lance Barve, Wasilla

1987 — Dusty Van Meter, Kasilof

1988 — Dan Flodin, Chugiak

1989 — Jarad Jones, Knik

1990 — Jarad Jones, Knik

1991 — Brian Hanson, Anchorage

1992 — Ramey Smyth, Big Lake

1993 — Ramey Smyth, Big Lake

1994 — Cim Smyth, Big Lake

1995 — Dusty Whittemore, Cantwell

1996 — Dusty Whittemore, Cantwell

1997 — Tony Willis, Anchorage

1998 — Charlie Jordan, Tanana

1999 — Ryan Redington, Knik

2000 — Ryan Redington, Knik

2001 — Tyrell Seavey, Sterling

2002 — Cali King, Denali Park

2003 — Ellie Claus, Chitina

2004 — Nicole Osmar, Ninilchik

2005 — Melissa Owens, Nome

2006 — Micah Degerlund, Fairbanks

2007 — Rohn Buser, Big Lake

2008 — Jessica Klejka, Bethel