EAGLE -- Brent Sass extended his lead to nearly eight hours, survived a charging moose, and was headed toward Fairbanks Thursday night behind a dozen dogs.
After an eventful day, the Eureka musher is ready to call himself the frontrunner.
"It's totally my race to lose at this point," he said after arriving in Eagle on Thursday afternoon, roughly 40 miles ahead of two-time defending champion Allen Moore.
Sass had to earn that lead, however. He told a riveted checkpoint crowd of a close encounter with a moose on the trail near Dawson City.
Sass said he turned off the Yukon River onto part of the trail that had a cliff on one side and a drop-off on the other. In his way was a bull moose with nowhere to go.
"It literally just slowly sauntered right at us," he said. "Its hackles went up and it walked straight at us."
Sass said the moose rose up on its back legs and pounded its feet down toward his four front dogs, letting up puffs of snow around them. When his unhurt team scurried to the side, the moose wandered by just a few feet away.
It's the second consecutive year that Sass has run into a moose. Last year, Sass used a ski pole to swat away a charging moose in roughly the same spot.
"I'm like 'You've got to be kidding me,'" Sass said. "The exact same thing happened to me last year in the exact same place."
The rest of Sass's run was less eventful but only slightly less tense. He said the prospect of Moore catching him has been a constant source of paranoia. Sass joked that he was looking for Moore even before the Two Rivers musher was eligible to leave the Dawson checkpoint.
"Every second I go down the trail I think Allen's going to catch me," he said.
Sass said his team is in outstanding shape at this point in the race, with 12 healthy dogs continuing to pull hard and eat well. His oldest dog, an 8-year-old female named Rosie, was left behind in Eagle after veterinarians detected an irregularity with her heartbeat.
Moore, with 14 dogs in harness, pulled out of Eagle at 4:58 a.m. Friday after a mandatory six-hour rest.
The next checkpoint of Circle City is about 160 miles west, though mushers can stop at Slaven's Roadhouse en route. Once they arrive in Circle, the finish line looms just 235 miles away.
Six mushers have scratched so far, and Rolland Trowbridge was withdrawn after summoning help even though he wasn't hurt or otherwise in distress.