Alaska News

Hugh Neff first to the Yukon River

Hugh Neff from Tok and his team bounced off a monster run to the Iditarod checkpoint to appear this morning at Anvik on the Yukon leading the Iditarod. John Baker and his team, trained above the Arctic Circle at Kotzebue, must also be starting to feel the cold winds on the Yukon and coming alive. He was second to Anvik, still driving thirteen dogs.

Baker is one of the most consistent of modern mushers never to have won the Iditarod. His training conditions in Kotzebue this winter were difficult, with wind and deep snow. Before the race, he said his team was slow and had not been on a good trail all winter. He was concerned fast trails and warm weather for the first third of the race would put him at a disadvantage because his dogs were mentally prepared for difficult going.

At this moment in the race, that training may have become an advantage. But it's still a long way to Nome.

Defending champ Lance Mackey from Fairbanks, now putting all his skill and emotional energy into the support of his reduced team of nine dogs, is still solidly in the mix, resting in third place.

Early pace-setter Martin Buser from Big Lake and team are in fourth. Buser's team scorched the trail into the 24-hour mandatory break as the end of the first half of the race started to wrap up, but some of my contacts wonder if Thursday's monster run to Iditarod took a little magic from the outfit.

Sled dogs have this wonderfully adaptable little gear in their mind that adjusts for conditions. Given lots of rest, they go fast. Presented with long runs and more difficult trail, they adjust the speed a notch slower to adapt to the work load. On the 25-mile jump for Shageluk to Anvik this morning, Buser's team lacked what has been its characteristic top speed.

It will be interesting to see if they bounce back with rest. The four mushers in Anvik are undoubtedly declaring the 8-hour mandatory rest which must be taken somewhere on the Yukon.

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Ahead of them awaits a long run north on the Ykon River. The Yukon stretch on this year's southern route is characterized by a consistent downriver wind. The mushers will be traveling upriver. I lived on the Yukon and common knowledge was that the wind blew upriver in the summer and it all went back to the ocean in one big breath in the winter.

Wind, and the blowing snow that comes with it, will be directly in the face of the mushers on this stretch of trail. Additionally, the granular wind blown snow, constantly shifting with the winds, almost guarantees that the runners of the sleds will move grudgingly. It takes a powerful team to move up the Yukon. Lastly, the Yukon seems endless with a vista of featureless bends that take hours to round. The stimulus of trees, birds, moose scent in the air, and twists in the trails is gone. The Yukon is the preparation for the brutal weather, and some say beauty, of the Bering Sea coast.

Another reality of the Yukon is that because of its three to four width, there is really no place to hide if a musher decides to rest. Basically, the mushers and teams can rest comfortably in the villages of Anvik and Grayling, or tugged in behind Eagle Island where there is a mid-river stop before Kaltag, where the trail makes a 90-mile portage overline to the Bering Sea.

Yukon strategy is based on dealing with these realities. Ideally, mushers want to travel the Yukon in two big runs -- one from Anvik to Eagle Island, the other from Eagle Island to Kaltag. These runs could be ten hours or longer, depending on conditions. The long runs mean the musher only needs to stop, camp, feed and boot the dogs twice. If you try to stop three times, you just lose momentum and have to do all the maintenance chores another time, which makes it difficult to stay with the pace.

As a result, this section of the river tends to favor marathon-style mushers like Neff, Baker, Canadians Sebastian Schnuelle and Hans Gatt, and Dallas Seavey from Wasilla. The master of this strategy, Mackey, is now limited by the strength of his nine-dog team, the smallest in the lead pack. We can only wait to see what new miracles Mackey will try to conjure.

Ray Redington Jr. and Ramey Smyth, both from Wasllla, Mike Williams from Akiak and Sonny Lindner from Two Rivers have now all joined the front pack with old veterans DeeDee Jonrowe from Willow and five-time winner Rick Swenson from Two Rivers trying to bridge over it. Are any of these teams adaptable enough to stay with the pack up the Yukon?

We'll see.

Buser had been lighting up the trail with fast runs. Does his team now have the magic to do the heavy work on the Yukon and stay to the front? In some ways, Buser's competitors have forced him to abandon the checkpoint to checkpoint style of speed racing. In order to stay with the pace, he had to take his speedsters on a long run to Iditarod. Having done that, he may now have to accept a marathon strategy to stay in the hunt. The big question centers on whether his dogs switch from one style of racing to another.

Next stop -- Eagle Island.

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