Iditarod mushers are leapfrogging, with a chase pack close behind
Mar. 9—Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race mushers have made it through the Alaska Range — seemingly, with decent conditions and without getting too banged up — and on Tuesday night were approaching the community checkpoints of McGrath and Nikolai.
That said: Two past winners did report crashing in the stretch between Rohn and Nikolai, which includes the Buffalo Tunnels and Farewell Burn. According to Iditarod Insider analyst Bruce Lee, Mitch Seavey of Seward flipped his sled, and Denali Park musher Jeff King, driving Nic Petit's super-charged team, took a tumble, breaking his glasses.
Lee said that in Rohn the night before, many mushers said the snowy trail through Rainy Pass was the best they'd ever seen it. But conditions descending the range and following the south fork of the Kuskokwim to Nikolai looked abysmal, wind-scoured and marbled with glare ice and frozen dirt.
Nome/Nenana musher Aaron Burmeister, who was the 2021 Iditarod runner-up, was the first to reach McGrath. Entering the checkpoint at 5:41 p.m. with 13 dogs in harness, Burmeister won the Alaska Air Transit Spirit of Iditarod Award and was presented with mitts made by artist Loretta Maillelle featuring beaver fur and beaded moose hide, along with a beaver fur hat sewn by Athabascan local Lucy Miller.
As he rested in McGrath, a chase pack consisting of top contenders had joined him at the checkpoint within the span of about an hour and a half: Ryan Redington of Knik, Richie Diehl of Aniak, defending champion Dallas Seavey of Talkeetna and Brent Sass of Eureka.
They're followed by a group of fast, competitive racers who arrived in Nikolai over the course of Tuesday morning and opted to rest there for a few hours. Any of those mushers could catapult past those early leaders as racers take their mandatory 24-hour rests and set themselves up for the second half of the race. Look for mushers to start declaring their 24s in McGrath while others are likely to push onward to Ophir or even Cripple in the hopes of creating an insurmountable lead over those who opt for an earlier rest.
One curveball this year is that the town of Takotna is not serving as a checkpoint. Situated between McGrath and Ophir, it has long been an extremely popular place for mushers to take their 24-hour layover. Takotna's known as a hospitable town with good (human) food for resting competitors, and more quiet and remote than McGrath.
Without that option this year, mushers will have to decide whether to take the earlier, more conservative McGrath option for their long rest, or gamble on pushing their dogs another 41 miles to Ophir. Or, bolder still, try to make it another 73 miles to the Cripple checkpoint. That's what Sass and several others did in 2020, the last time the race followed the northern route.
At the back of the pack, all mushers had left Rohn by about 5:15 p.m. Tuesday. Typically by this point in the race, competitors have started to withdraw, often because of injuries or problems incurred in the difficult, technical terrain getting up and down the Alaska Range. As of Tuesday evening, no one had scratched or withdrawn and the full field of 49 mushers was still in play.
It's warm along the upper Kuskokwim. Temperatures in Nikolai and McGrath were right around freezing Tuesday, with similar temperatures overnight and forecast for the next day or so. That's not ideal for sled dogs.
Speaking to Iditarod Insider in Rainy Pass on Monday, rookie Amanda Otto of Denali Park said the relative heat ascending the Alaska Range meant modifying her runs slightly.
"(It's a) little warm, so we're taking lots of water breaks," Otto said in a short interview.
[From soccer player to musher: Rookie Amanda Otto tackles Iditarod with dogs raised by a champion]
Fellow rookie Sean Williams of Chugiak caught a bit of sleep while resting on Puntilla Lake. He and his wife, who have a 3-year-old child, also had a baby just two weeks ago, and Williams said he already has a deep reservoir of sleep deprivation built up.
"I don't know that that's good training, though," Williams said in an interview with Iditarod Insider's Liz Failor.
"This is pretty relaxing, to be honest with you," he said, sitting nonchalantly on the back of his sled.
