Anchorage Daily News

Out of the subzero cold and into the warmth of McGrath, Wyoming cyclist Jay Petervary on Thursday claimed victory in the first leg of the Iditarod Invitational -- a human-powered race along the Iditarod Trail that goes 1,100 miles from Knik to Nome.

Most racers call it quits at McGrath, about 350 miles north of Anchorage on the other side of the Alaska Range. But Petervary plans to push across the vast Interior for the Bering Sea, though the condition of the trail ahead remains unclear.

The pair of old sourdoughs who pulled into McGrath behind Petervary -- fifty-something Jacques Boutet and forty-something Dave Hart, both from Anchorage -- reported there was a small problem with the lack of trail into the Rohn checkpoint.

Going through Rainy Pass on the approach to Rohn, Boutet said, the trail was a highway. But once over the pass and headed down Pass Creek to the Dalzell, things changed abruptly.

"It looked like it had been groomed (at the start),'' Boutet said by phone from McGrath on Thursday. Then "we hit a creek that was wide open and after that, no trail.''

Boutet and Hart quickly caught race leaders Petervary and Peter Basinger of Anchorage, the defending Invitational champ who'd left Puntilla with a lead of five or six hours.

Ahead of them, Hart said, trail breakers working for the Iditarod moved at a snail's pace through snow and blown-down trees.

"There was lots of deadfall,'' Boutet said, "(and) waist deep sugar snow. They were just working their (butts) off to get 100 feet in an hour.''

Eventually, nine Invitational racers bunched up behind the trailbreakers. They slogged along at a deadeningly slow pace until some bikers got chilled.

Finally, Boutet said, the bikers vaulted the trail breakers and took turns leading the gang wallowing through snow pushing bikes. It took several hours, but they finally made it to the one-room cabin in Rohn with its welcome wood-burning stove.

The hard going apparently took a toll on Basinger, the race record holder, who was having a cursed race. Earlier, he broke a pedal going up the Yentna River, struggled into Skwentna and then had to wait for a new pedal to be flown in. The race was six hours ahead of him by the time he got his bike fixed, but with some furious pedaling he managed to catch up by Rainy Pass.

But that effort, coupled with the slog to Rohn and the crossing of the Farewell Burn, sapped him. He wasn't feeling well going into Nikolai and took a 12-hour break there before resuming. Meanwhile, the race moved past.

Eight teams ended up beating the defending champ into McGrath.

Petervary led the way in a time of 3 days, 14 hours and 20 minutes. Boutet and Hart tied for second six and a half hours later. Behind them came Carl Hutchings, Rocky Reinfenstuhl of Fairbanks (another past champ), Jeff Oatley, Tim Stern and James Leavesly.

Several planned to keep pushing for Nome.

Before heading up the trail toward the village of Taktona, Petervary said in a telephone interview that he has been enjoying his Alaska adventure. There have been challenges for sure, he said, but "that is why I came here.''

Generally, "riding conditions have been decent,'' he added, "and I've been sleeping every night.''

On those stretches where the trail has been bad, racers have worked together to help each other out, which just adds to the fun.

"We all took turns,'' Petervary said. "I'm very positive about the whole thing.''

He did get chilly on the Kuskokwim River, he admitted. National Public Radio reported he looked like an "ice man'' coming into McGrath, coated in frost from his own breath. But Petervary said it wasn't so bad.

"I'm prepared for negative 40 and it was only negative 20,'' he said.

Find Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.

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