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Iditarod web sites
See related pages:
http://www.adn.com/pf/mushing
http://www.iditarod.com/
http://www.adn.com/iditarod/
Two days into the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the games of cat, mouse and rabbit were well underway Monday night, with three-time champion Martin Buser playing a role in all. Sticking to a cat-and-mouse strategy, Buser charged into the Rainy Pass checkpoint just after 5 p.m., dropped two dogs, grabbed his dog food and left. No one expected him to go far, probably just to the edge of the forest of thick but scattered spruce that abuts the high tundra in the heart of the Alaska Range a couple miles out of the checkpoint. The Big Lake musher pulled a similar stunt at Finger Lake, as the race began its climb into the mountains. He pulled in there just before 9 a.m. Monday, and stayed only 10 minutes. It was, however, more than nine hours before he showed up at Rainy Pass - normally a 3- to 4-hour run from Finger. A crowd-shy Buser was resting his dogs away from the disturbance of the busy checkpoints within flying distance of Anchorage. Defending Iditarod champ Jeff King of Denali Park appeared to be following a similar strategy. All of this cat-and-mouse play left Charlie Boulding of Nenana to assume the role of rabbit. He led the race into Rainy Pass at 1:45 p.m., then sat back in the sunshine and near-zero weather to wait for company. As race fans milled around the frozen surface of Puntilla Lake, Boulding told a reporter, "I wish someone else would get here. I don't like all of the attention." He didn't wait long. Mitch Seavey of Seward and Montanan Doug Swingley, another former Iditarod champ, were less than an hour behind. Almost 200 miles into the 1,100-mile run to Nome, they all sat down to compare notes on what might be the worst stretch of trail they'll see this year. "Terrible" is how Boulding described it. "It's full of big holes, 6-foot-deep holes. You dive in and dive back out." Stymied by the rugged trail conditions, the early pace of this Iditarod was slower than last year when DeeDee Jonrowe led the field into Rohn at 7:07 p.m. on the second day of the race. The first musher hadn't arrived in Rohn Monday at press time. Last year's was the third fastest Iditarod ever. Last month, short-track snowmobiles racing in the Gold Rush Iron Dog Classic pounded portions of the trail into moguls, pits and a trench. Iditarod race officials ended up warning the mushers in this year's race to be ready. Their biggest problem is the snowmobile-track-wide trench cut down the middle of a 30-mile stretch out of Finger Lake. Portions of the trench are too narrow for a dog sled to fit inside, but too wide to be straddled. As a result, one sled runner or the other is often falling in the trench, which pitches the sled from side to side. The sled riding was difficult, but manageable, Swingley said. "I expected it to be worse, so it was kind of a pleasant surprise," he said. What kind of toll this trail will take on dogs remains to be seen. Mushers were anticipating a lot of shoulder sprains and strains because of the up-and-down pounding on big moguls. In addition to Buser's two dropped dogs, Jon Little of Kasilof had already jettisoned four and was down to 12. The top teams were expected to pass steadily through Rainy Pass beneath Monday's starry skies, then start the slide down the Dalzell Gorge to the remote Rohn checkpoint in the heart of the range. The weather appeared cooperative, with the often-blustery Rainy Pass winds blowing only about 20 mph and good trail - possibly some of the best ever - ahead in the Dalzell. All the usual suspects - Buser, King, Swingley, Seavey and Boulding - were among the lead pack, but there were a couple surprises there, too. Most notable among the latter was Norwegian rookie Harald Tunheim, a teacher with a relatively small kennel of about 40 dogs. He has won the last three Finnmarkslopets, a major, 600-mile long Scanadanavian sled dog race. The less-surprising members of the lead group included Paul Gebhardt of Kasilof, a steadily improving musher who claimed 13th last year; John Barron of Montana Creek, a 20-year veteran thought to have his best team ever; Linwood Fiedler of Willow, twice a top-10 finisher; and young Ramey Smyth of Big Lake, the sixth place finisher last year and a two-time winner of the Junior Iditarod.
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