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Veteran King grabs Iditarod lead

By KEVIN KLOTT and CRAIG MEDRED

Published: March 9th, 2008 04:10 PM
Last Modified: March 9th, 2008 11:06 PM

Iditarod musher Jeff King drives his team down the Unalakleet River and into the Unalakleet checkpoint Sunday afternoon March 9, 2008. King arrived into the Bering Sea village in first place.

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Photo by BOB HALLINEN / Anchorage Daily News

Iditarod musher Jeff King drives his team down the Unalakleet River and into the Unalakleet checkpoint Sunday afternoon March 9, 2008. King arrived into the Bering Sea village in first place.

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UNALAKLEET -- The morning fog lifted just hours before four-time Iditarod champion Jeff King rolled into this Bering Sea village to claim the lead for the first time in The Last Great Race. The time was 2:02 p.m. The 16 dogs with which King started the race Sunday in Willow still appeared to be pulling strong.

Behind the Denali Park musher on the trail in from Kaltag was defending champ Lance Mackey from Fairbanks, who'd led the chase from the halfway mark of Cripple to the Yukon River.

As the race moved down the river toward Kaltag, though, King's team slowly but methodically began to real in that of Mackey, and by the time they crossed the Kaltag Portage Saturday night, the chase was over.

King passed and Mackey fell in behind, where his dogs seemed to be making better time than they had at the front -- it being always easier to follow than to lead.

King, however, appeared satisfied to be at the front of the race as it hit the Bering Sea Coast and turned for Nome.

After snacking his team and seeing to it that the dogs were comfortably bedded, he went to accept the Wells Fargo Bank presented trophy and $2,500 in gold nuggets for becoming the first Iditarod musher to the coast. A bank representative informed King that his fifth Gold Coast trophy tied Martin Buser of Big Lake for the most in Iditarod history.

"There's another five-time winner I'm trying to tie," said the Denali Park musher. "But that's another story. Just don't make me carry the trophy to Nome."

The other five-timer, and so far the only one, was back with Buser in a chase pack of a half-dozen teams that has been trying for two days to reel in King and Mackey but making little progress. There were signs Sunday, however, as the unsually warm temperatures that followed the race north from Willow began to cool, that they might be able to pick up the pace.

As trails harden, teams that had been plodding along at 5 or 6 mph were suddenly picking the speed up to 8 mph or more.

Whether Mackey tire of leading the procession or simply decided to let his dogs enjoy the luxury of following another team for a while was not immediately clear. The Fairbanks musher led the race out Kaltag late Saturday night, but camped along the trail near Tripod.

King passed Mackey while he was camped.

The 90-mile run from Kaltag to this point, the first of the villages of along the Bering Sea, was long and slow, King said, as his dogs broke trail on fresh snow that fell days ago. Some times, he said, he dozed off and missed large parts of it.

He claimed not to even have gotten a good look at Mackey's team when he passed.

"To tell you the truth, I was sound asleep," King said. "I just barely saw one of (Mackey's) dogs."