UNALAKLEET -- With his pursuers still back in the subzero cold brutalizing the Yukon River basin, Lance Mackey and his 15 dogs came over the Kaltag Portage Sunday to be greeted by the zero-degree warmth of the midafternoon sun and the always welcoming residents of the village where the Iditarod Trail meets the Bering Sea coast.
Though Mackey has won the last two runnings of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, he observed that "I've never been here first. I've always been coming in here 45 minutes behind Jeff (King).''
Not this year. Ever since the 38-year-old defending Iditarod champ sped through Ophir and on to Iditarod to claim halfway honors in this race, four-time champ King and a pack of others have been struggling to catch up. King, 2004 Iditarod champ Mitch Seavey from Sterling; 2009 Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race champ Sebastian Schnuelle from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada; Quest runner-up Hugh Neff from Skagway and surprising Aaron Burmeister from Nenana managed to get within sight of Mackey on the Yukon, but that was the best they could do.
By the time the race left the village of Kaltag, where the trail turns away from the river for the coast, Mackey had a lead over Schnuelle of a couple hours, while the gap to King had grown to 5 hours and Burmeister was seven hours back after stopping along the trail to help fellow musher John Baker from Kotzebue.
Baker reported falling asleep on his sled, tumbling off and losing the team in minus-30 cold. It was the second time this race the team has gotten away. The first time, Baker hit a tree outside of the Rohn checkpoint in the Alaska Range and the gangline snapped, leaving him with only two dogs.
The rest ran down the trail, but were quickly corralled by brothers Cim and Ramey Smyth from the Susitna Valley. This time, it was Burmeister coming to the rescue after finding Baker on foot on the trail.
"I was half asleep,'' Burmeister said. "I saw this big thing in the middle of the trail. I put my headlamp to a brighter setting, and I saw it was John.
"He was bent over, catching his breath 'cause he'd been running. He was standing on the edge of the trail and I ran by him. He just jumped on the sled.''
Baker had been trying to chase his team down on foot when he heard Burmeister coming.
"I woke up immediately after I hit the ground,'' Baker said. "Terrible, terrible thoughts (ran through my head). They got way ahead.''
As always in these situations, mushers worry the team can get tangled and a dog can get hurt with no one there to straighten things out. Burmeister knows the fear, so he didn't hesitate to give a competitor a lift.
"I whistled the dogs up and we started the chase,'' he said. "It was more just a steady chase with an extra couple hundred pounds on the sled. We just doodled along down the trail until we caught up to the dogs.
"We didn't talk. At that point, my dogs were like, 'What the heck just happened?' Every time we talked, they stopped and looked back. So we just sat there and quietly enjoyed the evening.''
When finally the mushers found the loose team, the dogs were fine.
"They were sitting there waiting,'' Baker said. "Velvet and Racket were in lead. They did fine. It wasn't their fault they ended up running loose.''
Baker was still thinking his team had a shot at contention. Others were sounding more like they just wanted the race to be over.
RUNNING TO STAY WARM
Burmeister said he had to run for much of the night coming up the river to stay warm, given temperatures down to minus 40. He wasn't looking forward to mushing into minus-20 temperatures and a brutal north wind along the coast.
Paul Gebhardt from Kasilof said he was getting tired of what has been a schizophrenic winter in the 49th state with the thermometer seeming to jump between 40 above and 40 below every couple of weeks.
"That retirement house in Arizona is starting to sound nice,'' he said.
The Iditarod is a demanding race for everyone, but here -- as in most other sports -- its tougher for the losers than the winners. Winning has a way of making bad things go away. Far out ahead of everyone on the trail, Mackey was in high spirits.
But then, he'd pocketed $3,000 in gold for being the first musher to the halfway point at Iditarod, enjoyed an eight-course gourmet lunch and a $3,500 check for being first to the Yukon River at Anvik, and collected another $2,500 in gold from Wells Fargo for being first to the coast.
"I love gold,'' Mackey said as he held the latest bag of nuggets.
IT'S STILL NOT OVER
He was also muttering the platitudes about how the race isn't over until its over.
"We've still got a long ways to go,'' he said. "It ain't over yet. I'm going to pretend like they're five minutes behind me.''
But he let on that he'd "been thinking a lot about what's going on.''
"What is it you're thinking?'' a reporter asked.
"What color truck I want,'' Mackey said.
A new Dodge Ram pickup and $69,000 await the winner of the Iditarod in Nome. It's not impossible that Mackey could be caught by the chase teams of Schnuelle, King and Seavey, but it is improbable.
Despite tough trail conditions early in the race, Mackey's team has shown no hint of tiring. The dogs were faster Sunday coming over the portage in wind and minus-30 temperatures than they were Saturday marching up the Yukon.
"They're in perfect shape,'' Mackey said. "The vet (in Kaltag) said the only thing wrong was a few broken toenails. I had to laugh hysterically at that.''
Mackey knows his dog team a little more intimately.
"They have some swollen feet,'' he said. "I have three females in heat. My two 3-year-old leaders don't want to stay lined out in front. They keep running into the swing dogs.''
Running at the front of an Iditarod team is a demanding job. It takes a special kind of canine athlete to perform there, especially when the going gets tough. Mackey, fortunately, has the luxury of having one such dog he can swap out with those young leaders if need be: Larry, a former golden harness winner.
"Larry's strong,'' said Mackey, who had expressed some doubts about the dog's fitness going into this Iditarod. "Even if he wasn't, he still wouldn't let me down. I'm so proud of that dog.''
He should be. Larry has led Mackey to the top of the mushing world.
Larry was at the front when Mackey in 2007 did what was thought to be impossible in winning the 1,000-mile Quest and the 1,000-mile Iditarod all in the space of a month. Larry was there when Mackey demonstrated last year that the Quest-Iditarod double was no fluke. And Larry is there now, along with 14 of the dogs with which Mackey started the race north from Anchorage on March 7.
That is an usually large number for a front-running team to have still in harness this far into the race. Mushers begin with 16 but usually some dogs are dropped at checkpoints to be sent home because they've tired enough to be slowing the entire team ever so slightly.
ONE DOG DROPPED
Mackey dropped a two-year-old named Chucko along the Yukon River for that reason, but he's hoping to get most of the rest of the team to Nome.
Tending to the swollen feet of a bunch of dogs is harder than tending to a few, and females in heat always cause problems for a musher.
"I don't need 15,'' he said. "But if they're up for it, I'm taking all 15 to Nome. They deserve it. How cool is that? I'm stoked.''
The 38-year-old race leader was expected to rest here until shortly before the arrival of the first of the teams behind him. He seemed to be enjoying what has been, for him, a unique Iditarod.
"By the looks of it, Jeff won't even be here when I leave,'' he said "I'm not even going to let him see me.''
Mackey did, however, plan to stay long enough to sit down and sample the local cuisine.
"I'm ready for a burger in town,'' he said. "Oh, I'm sore. My feet are sore. (I haven't been) holding anything back.''
Live standings: Musher leaderboard
By KEVIN KLOTT and CRAIG MEDRED