Big Lake musher eyes top-10 finish in the Iditarod

Musher Riley Dyche from Dark Horse Racing Kennel in Big Lake will be racing in the Iditarod for his fifth year in 2025. Despite poor training conditions in the Mat-Su Valley this winter, Dyche believes his well-trained and carefully built dog team has potential to be competitive and is looking for a top 10 finish this year.

“If I can get them well within the top ten this year, then the next two or three years I think we will really be looking at an Iditarod win or top three would be a viable goal,” Dyche said.

Dyche grew up in Iowa before moving west to Colorado and Wyoming. He spent two years in Colorado and started dog mushing in 2010 for a tourism operation. Dyche said he moved to Alaska in 2012 at the age of 21 to pursue mushing more seriously.

Taking a job with Alaska Icefield Expeditions in Southeast Alaska, Dyche met Two Rivers musher Matt Hall. Hall, an experienced musher from Silver Ace Kennel, offered him a job as a handler that winter. Dyche would work with Hall, and eventually receive mentorship from mushers Ryne Olson and Sven Haltman before starting his own kennel in 2015.

Dyche raced in the Two Rivers 200 while handling for Hall, and the Copper Basin 300 while handling for Olson. While handling for Haltman, Dyche said he already had bred two litters of pups and was working on building his own team.

After establishing his kennel and working on building a competitive team, Dyche ran the Yukon Quest 1000 in 2018. This feat helped to establish himself in the racing community and finishing gave him the confidence to move forward with his dogs.

The last time Dyche ran in the Iditarod was 2023, where he placed 18th with a one-year-old dog team. He said he raced his team in the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest 550 that year. He raced in the Kuskokwim 300 in 2024 and opted out of the Iditarod to allow them another year to mature and develop.

“We’ve progressively built up experience, built the dog team up progressively to create a team that can actually compete, not just finish,” Dyche said.

The dogs this year consist of an “experienced team” of three to five year olds. Dyche recently took second place in the Kuskokwim 300 earlier this month with his team, giving him confidence that he can compete for a top ten finish in Iditarod. He said that the “Kusko” is one of the most competitive races in the world of mushing right now.

“The team has a ton of potential and I’m super excited about them and we’re looking forward to this year’s race,” Dyche said.

The restart in Fairbanks will be different for Dyche this year. He said he has an idea of what to expect, running for hundreds of miles along the river in the past during the Yukon Quest and in portions of the Iditarod. Despite the monotony for both dog and musher for running in a vast, featureless landscape for miles and miles, Dyche understands the need for the change and respects the Iditarod Trail Committee’s decision to move the restart.

“I know what it’s like to be on a river for a while so I can imagine that tripling that distance on the river in this year’s race will be a little monotonous at times,” Dyche said. “Obviously I wish it was the traditional route just for the sake of going through things like the Alaska Range and the Burn, which are some of the coolest parts of the trail. But, if it's not doable, it’s not doable.”

He said he has great respect for the Trail Breakers that made the decision to move the race. He said he would have raced whatever the course would have been. Dyche said at this point of the year he is just happy to be racing on a nice trail with snow.

Strategy for this year’s race will be to break the trail into sections, Dyche explained. With so many miles of trail on the river, and with little reference for speed and distance traveled, he plans to just race from one checkpoint to the next.

“You have to look at it run by run I think to really give your dog team the best care because if you worry about the 1000 miles ahead of you from the get go, it’s going to make it a really long trip,” Dyche said. “It’s a lot to mentally take on at once. I’m just looking at it one run by one run and we’ll see how it goes.”

Preparation this year has necessitated a lot of “trucking,” Dyche said. He’s traveled more this year to train with his dogs, making trips along the Denali Highway, to Eureka and around Montana Creek and Talkeetna. He joked his back has never been stronger, having to load and unload dogs and sled more often than he normally does in a year.

Dyche said he hasn’t run his dogs on the trails near his home with the sled since early January. The trails around his kennel in Big Lake are now so clear that he can use his four wheeler to train.

“It’s just been a lot of work, it’s a lot more work,” Dyche said. “As Martin Buser [four-time Iditarod champion] said… ‘Not being able to run out of your kennel just adds an extra layer to the onion that doesn’t make it doable. It’s an extra layer of the onion to peel that makes it too hard,’ and I agree with him. It would be really hard to do this every year. So hopefully next year we have better snow.”

Buser would go on to not only place first in the Iditarod in 2002, but set a speed record that would last for another 11 years. Buser’s preparation in marginal snow conditions for the Iditarod in 2002 was very similar to Dyche’s this year. Dyche said he looked to Buser’s accomplishment for inspiration.

“He's kind of been a little motivator in the back of my head all season when I don’t want to go out, drive four hours to Denali highway and train,” Dyche said. “I just think of how Martin went and won the Iditarod on a year like this.”

Dyche believes this motivation and hard work paid off with his top five placement in the Kusko. His goal for Iditarod is to cross the finish line in Nome with a strong, healthy team of dogs. He really believes his team has a lot of potential to finish high this year.

The history, culture and reputation surrounding the Iditarod is what brings Dyche back to compete. He enjoys the adventure and the competitiveness that the race provides, mushing against and alongside some of the best mushers in the world.

“The prestige of the Iditarod and the challenge of traveling through rural Alaska, that’s really what keeps me coming back,” Dyche said. “The trail’s second to none and it’s just a really cool experience. Every time it’s different, no two Iditarods will ever be the same, and that’s a big part of why I like going back.”

Most importantly to Dyche is educating others on dog mushing. He hosts dog sled tours at Iditarod Headquarters during the summer and uses that opportunity to share his passion with others. Without the Iditarod, Dyche believes mushing wouldn’t be as prevalent today.

“It’s the center point of our sport,” Dyche said. “It’s the most important event I think there is as far as spotlighting the sport of sled dog racing and spotlighting the culture and historical significance of sled dogs in general.”

The Iditarod is what Dyche has built his whole career - and life - around.

“To me, Iditarod is the centerpoint of my whole everything,” Dyche said. “It’s my job, it’s my passion, it's why we do what we do.”