Fr. Alexander Larson brings snacks to his team at the Bethel midway checkpoint during the Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race on February 13, 2021. Larson placed fourth in the race, and won both the Rookie of the Year Award and the Joe Demantle Jr. and Robert Ivan Award.
Credit Katie Basile / KYUK
Local Kuskokwim mushers dominated this year’s Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race, taking four of the top five positions. The region’s local mushers also swept the race awards.
Best In The West
Kuskokwim 300 winner Richie Diehl of Aniak won the Best in the West Award. The award goes to the highest finishing musher from Western Alaska. In addition to his $25,500 race winnings, Diehl took home two round-trip Alaska Airlines tickets to anywhere the airline flies. Diehl made K300 race history as the first musher from a Kuskokwim community outside of Bethel to win the race, and the first musher to win both the K300 and Bogus Creek 150 in the same year. During the virtual K300 awards ceremony, Diehl shar
“The washeteria is on fire!” he burst out when his sister’s door opened.
Kristy had been cooking a turkey for her daughter s birthday, but a threat to the village s only source of treated drinking water spurred her to action. She threw on her dark purple coat. Nelson dropped the diced moose meat with steamed jasmine rice he had been eating and ran outside.
It was Jan. 16, around 11 a.m. With no running water to the homes in Tuluksak, Alaska, most residents relied on the water piped to the village s laundry building, which also housed the water treatment plant. Now, thick smoke poured through cracks in the building and from under the doors. The only hope to put it out was with a hose – which was in the burning building.
16 dog teams set to leave windy Bethel en masse for the start of the Kusko 300
Print article Volunteers on snowmachines hauled straw and other supplies while doubling as trailbreakers Thursday in preparation for this weekend’s Kuskokwim 300 sled dog race in Bethel. Strong winds buried both the race trail and the road that organizers planned to use to take supplies to a checkpoint being set up about 30 miles outside Tuluksak, race manager Paul Basile said. Thursday brought winds of 24 mph and stronger to the area, and Basile said the forecast calls for continued wind through the weekend. “It’s definitely changed our logistics the last couple of days,” he said. “We’d really been hoping to get a lot of our supplies and some of our volunteers to our Tuluksak checkpoint by truck.
COVID-19 took one of the Y-K Delta mushing community’s most beloved and helpful members, and a family’s loving father. The space left by Joe Demantle Jr.