Jeff King of Denali Park added to his tenuous lead over Aliy Zirkle last night during the run from Koyuk to White Mountain -- and he'll continue working to coax speed out of his huskies on the final miles of an icy, hard and record-fast trail.
King knows that even with a solid lead, every minute counts as trail conditions and his dogs' performance can rapidly change in the final 77-mile push to Nome. Back in Ruby on the Yukon River, King was able to sweet-talk the checker into an earlier official arrival time by one minute. He was unsuccessful in his attempt to do the same thing this morning in White Mountain where official checker just replied "nice try" to King's attempt at persuasion.
Mushers typically surge along the Norton Sound coast as they race to White Mountain. All teams are required to take a mandatory eight-hour layover in White Mountain, so the sooner a team can arrive to "punch the clock," the sooner it can depart. Then there's a mostly ceremonial stop in the Safety checkpoint, 22 miles from the finish, to pick up race bibs and allow mushers one final chance to drop any sick or fatigued dogs.
There was no rest for mushers in Elim last night. The top teams all stopped 90 minutes or less, hoping to hold on to their current positions in the tight lead pack. Ninety minutes is the time it takes most mushers to rest and feed their dogs, and grab a drink and snack for themselves. Drivers rest their teams on straw during the brief pit stop, but most will not take the booties off or disconnect the tug lines -- a signal to the dogs that the stop is only temporary.
Seavey targeting Zirkle
Young Dallas Seavey spent just eight minutes in Elim scrambling through his drop sacks, grabbing just enough provisions such as extra dog booties and trail snacks to get his team to White Mountain. Seavey continues to whittle away at Zirkle's lead, making up more than nine hours since leaving Kaltag checkpoint on the Yukon River about two days ago. Seavey arrived in White Mountain a little less than two hours behind Zirkle and three hours behind King. It would take either a tremendous final run or a falter by King for Seavey to close the gap and claim his second Iditarod championship. More likely, Seavey has his sights on Zirkle and hopes to gain one more position on his impressive rise up the leaderboard.
Zirkle can only hope that King's team falters on the final run to Nome. Her team speed through the three previous coastal checkpoints has been consistently slower by less than 1 mph. Where possible, both mushers are kicking and ski-poling, using every bit of energy they have to help their teams over the snow-devoid mountains and glare ice. Driving into 20-30 mph headwinds on the way to Koyuk yesterday, most mushers found the best way they could help their teams was to stay as low as possible and reduce the wind drag caused by their bodies. Mushers arrived in Koyuk stiff, tired, cold and exhausted after spending much of the run in a crouched position. Zirkle was hurting even more after straining her hamstring muscle in a slip outside of Unalakleet the previous day.
Joar Ulsom is now the leading Norwegian, passing Robert Sorlie in Shaktoolik. Like Mitch and Dallas Seavey, Ulsom is charging up the field and is likely to finish in the top five, an improvement over his remarkable rookie run last year when Ulsom finished seventh. Unlike Sorlie, or a host of the teams in front of him, Ulsom does not pool his dogs with other mushers to get an "all-star" team. Ulsom has made Alaska his temporary home and runs a very small kennel of fewer than 30 dogs. Quality, not quantity, is his mantra, and it seems to be working very well.
Two-time Iditarod champion Robert Sorlie has fallen far off the lead pace in the past 48 hours. Three days ago, he was posting some of the fastest trail times and charging to the front of the field, but his team seems to have lost its focus. There are reports that some of Sorlie's key female leaders are coming into heat. The distraction of a female in heat can be devastating to a team's performance. Normally mild-mannered females may start fighting, males lose their focus and stop pulling, and the female in heat requires constant supervision by the musher in checkpoints lest she become bred with an unlikely suitor. It is worse than a high school prom night.
Sorlie has been shadowed on the trail this year by a foreign media crew, including his primary Norwegian kennel partner Thomas Waerner. Waerner is gaining valuable trail experience that he may be able to put to use in a future Iditarod with the dogs from Team Norway. Before the race began, Sorlie said he came to win, and he's undoubtedly disappointed with how the race played out. With two wins in five tries, Sorlie will still hold the record for best winning percentage among racers who've done it more than a couple of times.
Icy, snowless trail faster
This year's race will be remembered for its lack of snow as much as its record pace. Casual race fans may be surprised to realize that dog teams actually travel faster in these types of trail conditions than when mushers have a traditional snowy trail. Snow is a lubricant for the plastic sled runners, but it is also a source of drag. The deeper the snow, the heavier the drag and the more effort dogs must put into pulling the sled. As anybody who has ever gone for a run in sand can attest, the deeper the sand (snow) the more effort that is required just to take each step forward. Multiply the effort of hundreds of thousands of dog steps plus the drag of the sled and it is easy to see why dogs prefer to run on the hard-packed ice, and even the dirt that this year's racers encountered.
Mushers pay the true price for hard and fast trails. The strength and power of 16 sled dogs is unimaginable to most people. Controlling the dogs is nearly impossible without the braking ability snow pack gives mushers via their sled drags and brakes. More than 10 teams were forced to scratch early in this year's race due to the rough trail and the damage it inflicted on mushers' bodies and sleds.
It's not too early to draw conclusions from mushers' decisions to rest early, middle or late for their 24 hour layovers. Judging by the current top-five, it would appear that all three strategies can be effective as Buser (early), Zirkle and Seavey (middle) and King (late) are all still vying for a top 10 finish. My conclusion is that the choice is irrelevant -- the best dog team prevails. Entering the race with a well-trained and experienced team is far more important than the nuances of 24-hour layovers. It makes for exciting (and sometimes confusing) storytelling during the race when mushers are running divergent strategies, but in the end the best dog teams rise to the top.
Up to eight mushers may go under John Baker's 2011 Iditarod record of 8 days 18 hours and 46 minutes. Any team that finishes before 9:46 a.m. Tuesday can lay stake to that claim in Nome. With so many teams under the old standard, it becomes really hard to attribute the overall improvement to anything else besides extremely fast trail conditions. The dogs did not get any better, the food was not superior, and the technologies and materials the mushers used were no different than last year.
Every year, the Iditarod trail is different -- temperatures, route deviations, snow conditions, and a host of other variables make each race unique. It is the reason veteran mushers return year after year for a new challenge. In NASCAR, auto drivers run around the same 2-mile loop hundreds of times -- talk about the view never changing! In Iditarod, the dog drivers are constantly reacting to changes in their dogs' performance and a myriad of weather and trail factors. Even the shelter and relief of a checkpoint can be a challenge, as mushers learned this year navigating the glare ice of the Koyuk and Elim checkpoints just to park their dog teams.
Things have not changed much in the past few years of Iditarod. The best-prepared and best-trained teams still lead at the end.
And the dogs still continue to amaze us -- in their ability to perform beyond expectations in the most unlikely conditions.
Zack Steer, a five-time Iditarod finisher, owns and operates the Sheep Mountain Lodge with Anjanette and two young boys. Zack will bring a competitive racer's analysis to this year's Iditarod coverage. Follow Zack's race analysis at Alaska Dispatch.
CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, strategic groupings were incorrectly stated in an earlier version of this story. It should read: "...three strategies can be effective as Buser (early), Zirkle and Seavey (middle) and King (late) are all still vying for a top 10 finish."