Seeley Lake dog sledder completes 20th Iditarod

Seeley Lake dog sledder Jessie Royer has completed her 20th Iditarod race, a grueling 998-mile route from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska.

Royer, 46,  covered this in ten days, two hours and 35 minutes, securing a 14th place position when she arrived in Nome last Thursday, March 16. In an interview with the Iditarod press team early in the race, Royer - who has had eight top-ten finishes since she began competing in the race - said that her 2023 dog team was "a wild card" with 13 rookies and one Iditarod veteran. Her goal, she said in one interview posted on the race's event page, was to get as many dogs as possible to the finish to build a veteran base for the following year. While Royer started with a team of 14 dogs, this had dropped to a team of ten by the time she reached Nome.

In February, Royer won her seventh Race to the Sky race, a 300-mile journey from Lincoln to Seeley Lake, and told the Pathfinder then that one of the motivations to continue competing was the beauty and solitude of the journey, and the camaraderie with her team:

"When it's just you and your dogs out there on the snow with the lights above ... it's pretty special,"