Duluth’s Emily Ford and her sled dogs notch Iditarod finish

Add a historic Iditarod across Alaska to Emily Ford’s résumé of extreme winter feats.

Under bright sunshine, the rookie musher from Duluth and her team of 10 Alaskan huskies crossed the finish line of the famous sled dog race early Sunday afternoon in downtown Nome. She finished 18th overall.

Interviewed by race officials in the finisher chute, a smiling Ford sounded like she would race more miles if it meant more time outdoors with her sled team.

“It’s just this lifestyle of, we get to be with our dogs and the land all at once, and it brings you back to center,” she said.

Her mother, Paula, texted the Minnesota Star Tribune after witnessing her daughter’s achievement in person.

“It was so good to see her face!” said Paula Ford. “Although I knew she and the dogs were OK, seeing them was the best.”

Ford already has proven her winter chops in other ways, such as her thru-hike of Wisconsin’s 1,200-mile Ice Age Trail in 2020-21 and a solo skijoring trip across the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness a year later.

Expectations for Ford’s first Iditarod race were confident but low-key. Before the race, she said she just hoped to complete the trek. Yet, Ford finished as the third-fastest rookie. Samantha LaLonde of Farmington Hills, Mich., won rookie-of-the-year honors.

Ford finished in 13 days, one hour, 35 minutes and 44 seconds. She and her team were just minutes behind another Michigan rookie, Keaton Loebrich of Midland.

There were 16 rookies in the field of 33 mushing teams; eight scratched or withdrew during the race.

Ford, 32, will be written into Iditarod history as the second Black woman to complete it. Musher Becca Moore of Willow, Alaska, blazed the trail in 2015 and 2016.

Ford told the Minnesota Star Tribune before the race that she intended to continue to represent Black people in the outdoors — especially in winter.

“I know [the Iditarod] is important,” she added, “and I need to pursue it.”

At 1,128 miles, this year’s route was the longest in the 53-year history of “the last great race.”

Organizers were forced to reroute the race before the start because of a lack of snow. The official start moved nearly 300 miles north, from Willow to Fairbanks after the traditional ceremonial start March 1 in Anchorage. Television personality Jessie Holmes, 43, of Nenana, Alaska, won the race early Friday, finishing in 10 days, 14 hours, 55 minutes and 41 seconds.

Ford ran steady and in the middle of the pack most of the way as she navigated through conditions like blowing snow and a silt storm.

She finished with 10 of her original 16 dogs on the gang line. They are huskies she has trained and raced all winter out of the Shameless Huskies kennel in Willow with her partner, Anna Hennessy, and two other Minnesota mushers, Olivia Frank and Skylar Whitcomb.

While impressive, Ford’s Iditarod performance didn’t surprise those who know her.

Hennessy posted Friday on Instagram after Ford left the Yukon River behind. Ford, she wrote, was “her usual calm but chipper self and our conversation was interspersed with her reassuring and talking sweetly to the dogs as they took off from the checkpoint.”