Mitch Seavey and Hans Gatt, in particular, are formidable competitors, and just a little behind the lead pace. Gatt is especially one to watch, because his team is exhibiting the same speed that delivered him victory in this year's record-shattering Yukon Quest.

After that, there's a huge pack of talent packed closely together -- from Sonny Lindner, who was the fifth musher out of Ruby, to Cim Smyth, who at midday Friday was almost four hours behind Lindner and eight hours off King's pace. Smyth had the fastest run to Ruby, at 9 hours, 15 minutes. Any of the mushers in that group of seven has a real shot at a top-five finish.

In fact, the talent runs deep most of the way down the standings.

A number of rookies are running strong races. Aniak's Mike Williams Jr. led the rookie pack out of Cripple, but he may have a race on his hands with his neighbor from Bethel, Pete Kaiser. Kaiser is running a smart race. If I read the map used for the GPS tracker correctly, Kaiser was parked near a bluff at Poorman, some two hours beyond Cripple, which means he broke the run from Takotna to Ruby into three roughly equal seven-hour chunks. I did the same thing in 2002 and had a lot of luck setting a good pace the rest of the way. It isn't a race-winning game plan, but Kaiser isn't racing to win.

The weather can always be a factor, and while it is cold ("Yukon Quest cold," according to Aliy Zirkle), it's not impeding any teams. In fact, the weather plus a fast, hard trail is favoring teams that can trot along at a fast pace. Temperatures in the zero to minus 10 range Friday were supposed to drop to minus 30 overnight and then moderate slightly Saturday and Sunday in the zero-degree range. That's ideal mushing weather.

Winds, always an issue on the Yukon River and, later, Norton Sound, seem relatively tame, in the 10 mph range with some 20 mph winds forecast for later this weekend. That can be unpleasant, but it's nowhere near the level of nastiness that essentially shut down the entire race last year when bitter cold and winds of 40 mph blasted the northern part of Alaska.

One of the things to watch among the front-runners is who is holding their speed and who is willing to blow through Galena, camp two hours downriver, and make another long run to Kaltag. That's the traditional recipe for pulling away because there is only one rest break on the river, instead of two -- at Galena and Nulato.

But King may try an approach he's been fiddling with since the All-Alaska Sweepstakes a couple of years ago. He might pull into Galena or Nulato, but only stay an hour or two -- making his runs shorter, but also cropping his rests to unheard-of brevity. I'm not saying he'll do that; only that it would not be a surprise. That's how he started the race out of Willow.

Elsewhere along the trail, DeeDee Jonrowe is in trouble. She got to Cripple with 10 dogs and dropped two, setting off to Ruby with an eight-dog team. That's getting very low with some 400 miles of racing to go.

Mushers have gone a long way and finished with such small teams, but it takes fortitude. Cim Smyth had five dogs leaving Nulato one year and made it to Nome. At the time he joked that at that number, it stopped being a dog team and became a sled with five dogs in front of it.

---

Jon Little has been a journalist for 20 years and a musher since 1992, racing five Iditarods from 1999 through 2003. His highest finish is fourth in 2002, and he was in the top 20 three times. He's also a veteran of the Yukon Quest, with a third-place finish in 2009. His Iditarod commentary also appears on the Check Point blog, hosted by Dr. Tim's Pet Food Co. at http://drtims.com/blog