At age 10 she harnessed her border collie Bear and a goat to pull hay to the horses. Now, for the 19th time, Jessie Royer (44) has harnessed her 16 most competitive dogs to win Iditarod. 

Third Place Finisher Aiming For More 

She made her debut in the Iditarod in 2001 with a 14th place earning her the ‘Rookie of the Year Award’. During the years, Jessie Royer has climbed the lists of results, and for the last two years, she has finished third. In Iditarod 2020 she crossed the line in Nome seven hours behind winner Thomas Wærner of Norway and 90 minutes behind three-time Iditarod champion Mitch Seavey. The arrival in Nome was an anticlimax. 

"It was very strange. It was kind of like a ghost town. Like there wasn't hardly anybody up there," she stated, completely unprepared for the desolate welcome due to the Covid 19.

"Normally we hang out in Nome for like a week and wait for everyone to finish and have an awards banquet. That year, basically we got to Nome and they were like, 'Get on a plane and go home. We don't want you here.'“

Hooked At The Age Of 15

Jessie Royer grew up on a cattle ranch in Montana, and at a en early age she learned to ride and handle horses, with her border collie Bear always close behind. When she was 10 she harnessed up Bear and her favorite goat, and pulled firewood to the house and hay to the horses. At the age of 15 she saw her first real sled dogs at a fun race close to her home. Some of the mushers took her on rides. She was hooked. 

Jessie got her first sled dog named Nelson when she was 16, and a year later she had her own team of 11 dogs. And then she started to race. At age 17 she became the first female and youngest person to ever win Montana’s Race to the Sky 500 mile race. 

In the spring of 1998, she moved to Alaska, and three years later she debuted in Iditarod "to test myself and my team against some of the best teams of the world, and ultimately against whatever weather and conditions Mother Nature would throw at us". 

Sled on Fire!

Last year there she had a quite dramatic incident that reached the headlines – "sled on fire!". On the way to Ruby, the first checkpoint along the Yukon River, her trash bags caught fire, causing the rope that attached her sled to melt. But it was, as she put it, all fixable, and added with a smile: "Never a dull moment". 

The Iditarod is a physical, but even more a mental challenge, and a consequence of the two combined, is sleep deprivation. That is one of Jessies strengths. She does not need much sleep. But her most important asset is the pack of dogs.  

“ Iditarod is not about who is the best musher, it’s all about the dogs" she said after arrival in Nome last year. 

"If you don’t take care of those dogs you are not going to make it to the finish line. You will not make it 1,000 miles. They’re the athletes, not me."

Altogether she has 60 dogs to train and care for.

For The Love Of Dogs

"Every musher I know out there, their dogs are their life. We're not doing this because we make money. Usually most of us are broke and everything we make goes to feed our dogs. We do this because we love the dogs and we love the outdoors."

Royer listens to music and audio books during the long treks through Alaska. Once she finishes, and after the awards banquet, she packs up her gear, and takes a vacation.

"Some people go to the beach, but I'm not a beach person. I take my dogs and go on the north shore and go caribou hunting",  

Will this be the year that Jessie climbs all the way to the top? 

Sources: Anchorage Daily News, Iditarod.com, www.seeleylake.com, Sports News Montana, huskeypower.com, www.alaskasnewssource.com, www.kpax.com, 406mtsports.com, missoulian.com, frontiersman.com, www.montanasports.com, www.alaskapublic.org, www.spokesman.com, Podcasts: Husky Talk, Outlanidsh, A Doggone Champion