By JEANNETTE J. LEE, Associated Press Writer
NIKOLAI -- After resting for several hours, dog teams leading the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Wednesday were heading west past open swamps on a mostly flat and well-traveled trail to the town of McGrath in the 1,100-mile race from Anchorage to Nome.
Four-time winner Doug Swingley, of Lincoln, Mont., held his lead as the first musher to leave from the checkpoint in the riverside village of Nikolai. He left Tuesday night, as a steady snowfall coated about 30 other dog teams sleeping on beds of straw next to the Kuskokwim River.
Three-time winner Jeff King, of Denali, and Aliy Zirkle, of Two Rivers, followed Swingley out of the checkpoint a short time later to tackle the 50-mile leg to McGrath and another 18 miles to Takotna.
Swingley was the first musher to arrive at Takotna, which is 418 miles from Anchorage. He was followed by King and Zirkle.
Paul Gebhardt was leading the race Tuesday, until he hit a tree at the edge of Farewell Lake and his dog team ran off without him. He eventually caught them 10 miles up the trail and arrived 16th in Nikolai, almost 300 miles into the race.
Nikolai is an Athabascan town of about 100 people on the banks of the Kuskokwim River. Most mushers believe an arrival in Nikolai means they’ve come through the toughest parts of the world’s longest sled dog race, barring harsh weather on the remaining trail.
Teams have left the challenging Alaska Range behind them. After leaving the mountains, mushers encountered fresh snow, which helped pad some of the bare rock and ice on the 75-mile trail between the cabin checkpoint of Rohn and the village of Nikolai.
"It's actually probably the best I've ever seen it," said Swingley, who has finished 12 Iditarods. "The roughest part of the trail is past. It should be getting a lot easier, on the mushers anyway."
Competitors in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race are passing through 24 checkpoints in wilderness cabins and in some of Alaska’s tiniest villages en route to the old gold mining town of Nome on the state’s western coast.
Top finishers usually arrive in Nome in nine to 10 days. The fastest time was set in 2002 by four-time winner Martin Buser of Big Lake, who pulled into Nome in eight days, 22 hours and 46 minutes.
Several multiple winners are running the race this year, including Buser and the Iditarod’s only five-time champ, Rick Swenson of Two Rivers.
The winner will receive $69,000 and a new Dodge truck. Altogether, the top 30 finishers will split $795,000. Other finishers will split $40,000.
The race commemorates a dogsled relay in 1925 that carried serum 674 miles from Nenana to Nome to stop a diphtheria outbreak. The race officially started Sunday in Willow, 60 miles north of Anchorage.
