They’re off! 100 years since the Serum Run marked with expedition recreation

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - The town of Nenana said “safe travels” to Jonathan Hayes and his team on Monday as they took off to recreate the Serum Run 100 years later.

Months of preparation went into the planned expedition, even giving Hayes and his team a replica of the vial box that is a part of the legendary event, with a modern twist.

“What we wanted to do was symbolically represent the nine major pandemics or epidemics that have occurred in the last 100 years from the Serum Run to present,” Nenana Mayor Josh Verhagen said.

Those aren’t the only objects in the crate, there are also notes from children in Nenana to the children of Nome.

Before the team hit the snowy trail, they spent the weekend celebrating, even going live on Facebook for those who couldn’t attend due to the weather.

“We had a celebration over the weekend, Friday and Saturday night, which was really awesome … I would say the night of the reenactment it was 50 to 70 people or more,” he said.

There were around 15 people who saw Hayes and team off, but despite the crowd size, the mayor says there was a lot of excitement.

“The dogs were having the hardest time staying still. You could tell they were ready to go,” Verhagen said.

The expedition hasn’t been without challenges the team has experienced some setbacks already.

“When they were doing some dry runs, even with just their snow machines, they were running into a lot of standing water and melted snow and ice that was getting stuck in their snow machine,” he said.

While the original Serum Run was done with 20 mushing teams throughout five and a half days, this team will do the trek solo and will ideally complete the adventure in around 20 days.

If you want to keep up to date with Jonathan and his team they are posting updates to their website.

While the trek is ongoing, the hope is this will draw more attention to the sport and local history.

“The spirit of mushing can be kept alive. In many areas, [mushing] is kind of a dying sport, but it’s something that our community has been working at trying to revive and I think it’s a really great way to connect with our land and with our heritage,” Verhagen concluded.

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