Boise-area dog sled musher is headed to her biggest challenge yet: a 100-mile Idaho race
In the last half-mile of a two-mile training loop, the engine on Liz Nevills’ ATV cut out. She wasn’t fazed, and neither were the nine dogs towing the four-wheeler over patches of snow and bare ground.
“You’ll have to work a little harder!” Nevills called to the dog sled team as they loped along the trail. The dogs, mostly mixes of Siberian or Alaskan huskies, never broke their stride. And within moments, they were whisking Nevills down a ridge toward her truck, ready for a quick water break and another lap around the frozen landscape.
Nevills is used to challenges like this in mushing, another name for the sport she and her dogs compete in. Soon, the Middleton musher will head to the biggest challenge of her career — Idaho’s longest sled dog race.
This weekend, Nevills and a team of 10 dogs will head to McCall to participate in the Idaho Sled Dog Challenge 100-mile race, the longest Nevills has ever competed in.
“For any musher, we’re competing against each other, to a point,” Nevills said. “But for the most part ... I compete against myself. If I can do better than the last time I went out, it’s a win.”
Competition is stiff in the qualifying race for Iditarod hopefuls. Nevills will compete against 15 other mushers in the 100-mile race, including former Iditarod finisher Scott White. But she said she would even be happy to win the Red Lantern Award, given to the musher who crosses the finish line last.
“She makes me laugh because she knows she’s not the fastest one out there,” said Tammie Anderson, a friend of Nevills. “She’ll say, ‘Maybe I’ll win last place!’”
Nevills names her crew: Miracle Sled Dog Team
The Idaho Sled Dog Challenge will bring Nevills’ passion for sled dog racing full circle. As a teenager, she visited the McCall Winter Carnival and went on a dog sled ride. She was hooked and followed the sport for years, watching from the sidelines of the Iditarod — dog sled racing’s best-known and most grueling race — while attending college in Alaska.
Finally in 2015, she started participating in the sport with three huskies. She set a 10-year goal: Make it to the Iditarod, a 938-mile race across Alaska.
In early February of 2017, she was headed to the Priest Lake Sled Dog Race in North Idaho when her truck was totaled in a wreck. Nevills, her husband and all their dogs escaped without injury, but the experience served as inspiration for her team name: Miracle Sled Dog Team.
Since then, Nevills has competed in numerous other races and each year spends months training her team. The team consists of six of Nevills’ own dogs and a hodgepodge of pups borrowed from friends.
“She had two dogs when I first met her,” Anderson said. The women co-lead their local Girl Scout troop. “She now has six and it’s craziness. I’ve watched her turn up the intensity.”
Nevills said the sport has taught her how to open her heart to a full team of dogs, each with their own quirks and personalities. The sport has also helped keep her fit and active and given her a pastime to share with her kids, she said. It’s not cheap, but her sponsor — Teriyaki Madness, where she works — helps with entry fees and lodging costs at races.
Nevills begins training around October, when temperatures dip low enough for her huskies to run comfortably. But without snow in the Treasure Valley, she frequently does “dry land” training runs on Bureau of Land Management property near Middleton, leaving her ATV in neutral while the dogs trot along dirt trails or thin layers of snow.
When weather permits, she takes her team to McCall or Idaho City to run on snow, loading the dogs into a purple and teal kennel emblazoned “Miracle Sled Dog Team” that fills the bed of her truck. By January, the team can typically run 30 or 40 miles in a single day.
This year, Nevills had to postpone much of her training while she recovered from bronchitis. She put her plans to run the Rocky Mountain Triple Crown — the Idaho Sled Dog Challenge, Oregon’s Eagle Cap Extreme and Montana’s Race to the Sky — on hold. But with just days until the Idaho Sled Dog Challenge’s Feb. 1 start, Nevills thinks her miracle team is up to the challenge.
Idaho sled dog race will push musher’s limits
The Idaho Sled Dog Challenge is the state’s most difficult sled dog race. It offers 300-mile and 100-mile courses, which gain 36,000 and nearly 12,000 feet in elevation, respectively. That’s more elevation gain than the Iditarod, and it’s almost unmatched in other sled dog races.
“This race is particularly challenging because there’s a lot of climbing,” said Rick Katucki, one of the Idaho Sled Dog Challenge co-directors and this year’s race marshal. “It’s a lot of work for the dogs and the musher.”
Typically, Katucki said, when they’re headed uphill mushers will run alongside their sled or ride with one foot on the sled and the other pushing, like a scooter. Nevills said the uphill portions will prove trying.
“One of the biggest challenges is just going to be my own physical fitness,” she said. “I don’t like climbing mountains, but I love going up in the mountains. I’ll have to run up by pushing my sled and managing it and making sure it’s upright.”
Katucki said mushing is as much about skill as it is about strategy. Mushers must manage their team’s pace, plan for breaks and ensure the dogs get plenty of rest during their overnight stops.
Nevills said even completing a 100-mile race would be an achievement. Many teams ultimately drop out of challenging courses like this one.
After seven years in the sport, Nevills still has lofty goals, though she has extended her timeline for making it to the Iditarod. Maybe in another 10 or 15 years, she said. For now, her goal is reaching the finish line.
“Anything can happen that can stop you from finishing,” Nevills said. “So even just crossing the finish line is a win because you did something that not everybody can go do.”
This story was originally published January 25, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
