RAINY PASS -- A pair of aging Minnesotans who've lived in Alaska so long they're almost part of the landscape led the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race through the Alaska Range on Monday night.
Five-time champ Rick Swenson from Two Rivers and Paul Gebhardt from Kasilof, an Iditarod bridesmaid but never a bride, arrived at the Rohn checkpoint -- a one-room log cabin along the Tatina River -- at almost the same time.
They'd taken only a little over four hours to cover the nearly 50 miles of trail from Perrins Rainy Pass Lodge at Puntilla Lake up and through the narrow, 3,160-foot gap in the mountains from which the trail twists down to Rohn.
The duo had been led out onto the trail earlier in the day by the surprise winner of the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race about two weeks ago, 38-year-old Sebastian Schnuelle from Whitehorse, Yukon. He apparently decided to camp in the pass, following what has become a pattern.
A good buddy of 1985 Iditarod champ Libby Riddles, Schnuelle confessed on Sunday at the Willow restart that his come-from-behind Quest win had pumped up his confidence in his dog team. And he has certainly been demonstrating that early in the Iditarod.
He led the race into the Finger Lake checkpoint Monday morning, grabbed straw and food for a campout down near the Happy River, and settled in there to let his team get a good long rest. While they were resting, defending champ Lance Mackey from Fairbanks led a pack of other contenders on by and into the Rainy Pass checkpoint on the south side of the range.
But Schnuelle jumped the Mackey gang there in the late afternoon with Gebhardt and Swenson in tow.
Swenson is an Alaska legend. To date, he's won an Iditarod in every decade of the race's existence. If he could win just one more this year, the mellowing 58-year-old musher once known for his sharp tongue would set a record likely to stand forever:
Six Iditarod victories in four decades spanning more than 30 years.
Swenson won his first Iditarod in 1977. He finished second the next year in the race's only photo finish despite the fact the sled of winner Dick Mackey came across the line second. The judges ruled that in a dog race, the victory is decided by the nose of the first dog across the line and never you mind that the race starts with the nose of the sled on the starting line.
Swenson has never complained about the ruling, and he put the issue behind quickly by winning again in 1979. Two more victories followed in the 1980s before his former Manley neighbor, the late Susan Butcher, rose to power. The two became such bitter rivals that Alaska Magazine once put an issue with dueling covers to give Alaskans a chance to pick which musher they liked most, or least.
With Butcher ascendant, Swenson racked up a bunch of second- and third-place finishes in the late 1980s before coming out of nowhere -- out of a raging blizzard, actually -- to win in 1991 in Nome and cement the Swenson legend forever in Iditarod history.
A win now in his golden years would only add to the aura, but it has become hard for some to imagine another Swenson championship. Not only is he older, but he hasn't been seriously in the hunt for a victory for almost a decade, and he's clearly not the driven musher of long ago. He's quieter, calmer and more thoughtful.
At the race restart in Willow, he had a team that reflected the mellowing personality. The dogs didn't bark; they didn't jump. They waited patiently outside his truck to be hooked up for the run north. They were all veterans, four or five years old, Swenson said. He expressed confidence in them.
Gebhardt has expressed similar feelings about a 2009 team led by Lieutenant, son of the famous Red Dog. Gebhardt thinks the son might turn out to be even better than the father. If that's the case, the rest of the field best look out. Red Dog twice brought Gebhardt close to victory. The musher himself thinks he should have won one of those races in which he finished second. He has another chance this year, but he has to do it soon.
He's already 52, and until four-time champ Jeff King broke through in 2006 at age 50, the Iditarod had never been won by anyone in their 50s. King remains the oldest champion. He was running in the top-10 Monday night. He's determined to join Swenson with win number five at age 53 this year.
Find Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.
By CRAIG MEDRED and KEVIN KLOTT
cmedred@adn.com