Petit arrives in checkpoint of Iditarod as Zirkle rests and Leifseth Ulsom closes in

UPDATE, 12:20 p.m. Thursday: Girdwood musher Nic Petit has arrived in the checkpoint of Iditarod, taking over the race lead as Aliy Zirkle of Two Rivers took her mandatory 24-hour layover.

Petit, last year’s runner-up, arrived at the Mile 432 checkpoint shortly after noon Thursday with 14 dogs in harness. Following 2 miles behind him was defending champion Joar Leifseth Ulsom of Norway. Farther behind on the trail was Martin Buser, a four-time race winner from Big Lake who still has to take his mandatory 24-hour rest.

UPDATE, 7 a.m. Thursday: Aliy Zirkle drove her team into Iditarod at 1:38 a.m. Thursday, the first musher to reach the halfway point of the race.

On the trail behind her, a dozen mushers worked to close the gap Thursday morning as the race leaders began to come off their mandatory 24-hour layovers.

Zirkle won the GCI Dorothy G. Page Halfway Award, which typically comes with a prize of $3,000 in gold nuggets. This year, the winning musher gets her choice of the gold or a new iPhone XS 64GB that includes one year of service.

It took Zirkle nearly 17.5 hours to make the 80-mile run from Ophir. When she arrived at the checkpoint, 432 miles into the race, her dogs looked lively and all but one stayed on its feet.

Zirkle is the trail leader of the Iditarod, but behind her is a fast-moving Joar Leifseth Ulsom, who was on his way to Iditarod with his mandatory 24-hour layover behind him. Also on the trail with a team of well-rested dogs was Nic Petit, the first musher to arrive in Ophir Wednesday.

[Jake Berkowitz: Who’s really leading the Iditarod? Now is when the race gets interesting.]

Zirkle and Martin Buser -- the only other musher ahead of Leifseth Ulsom -- still have to take their 24s, which they are sure to do in Iditarod.

Leifseth Ulsom left Takotna just before 8 p.m. Wednesday and blew through Ophir.

[Hallucinations and unnerving dreams plague sleep-deprived Iditarod mushers]

By 7 a.m., 20 mushers had completed their 24-hour layovers, including Jessie Royer, who took hers in Takotna and, like Leifseth Ulsom, didn’t stop long in Ophir. She hit the trail for Iditarod at 1:23 a.m. behind a team of 14 dogs.

Nic Petit, who took his mandatory break in Ophir, ended his layover in Ophir at 2:17 a.m. as a string of mushers pushed through the checkpoint in the early morning hours. Last year’s runner-up, Petit left Ophir with all 14 of his dogs in harness.

Peter Kaiser departed Ophir at 2:13 a.m., with Richie Diehl, Ryan Redington, Mitch Seavey, Matthew Failor, Wade Marrs, Paige Drobny and Matt Hall all arriving and leaving by 5:48 a.m. All 12 mushers who were on the trail between Ophir and Iditarod Thursday morning have taken their 24-hour layovers.

This update originally said Zirkle was carrying a dog in her sled basket based on livestream coverage by the Iditarod Insider, but race officials could not be reached for confirmation.

ORIGINAL STORY

Aliy Zirkle spent Wednesday alone at the front of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race, just her and 14 dogs on an 80-mile run from Ophir to Iditarod, the halfway point of the 1,000-mile race to Nome.

Zirkle left Ophir around 8 a.m. The going was slow, and she stopped a couple of times to rest her team. After 12 hours of racing, the Two Rivers musher had covered about 50 miles of the 80-mile run, according to the race’s GPS tracker. At times the tracker had her moving 5 mph.

Nearly 100 miles behind her in the village of Takotna, defending champion Joar Leifseth Ulsom was feeling good about his decision to let Zirkle and others forge ahead while he took his 24-hour layover.

“The smartest move I could do was to stop here, especially with the snow coming down and seeing Aliy going 5 mph,” Leifseth Ulsom said while eating enchilada pie and a salad at the Takotna community hall, an hour or two before his scheduled departure time.

“We might not be going any faster but we’ll have a little fresher team to do it.”

Leifseth Ulsom left Takotna at 7:58 p.m. Wednesday with a team of 13 well-rested dogs. A year ago, he charged all the way to Iditarod before taking his 24-hour stop. He got there around 10 p.m. on the fourth day of the race, and GPS data indicated that Zirkle was behind that pace.

Even so, she was poised to win the halfway prize for being the first musher to reach Iditarod, 432 miles into the race. Traditionally that means $3,000 in gold nuggets, although the prize for this year hasn’t been announced yet.

Zirkle, 49, is a three-time runner-up and a fan favorite whose string of six straight top-10 finishes ended last year when she placed 15th. She is among the athletes featured in the Netflix “Losers” series, in which she recounts being terrorized by a snowmachiner while on an isolated stretch of trail during the 2016 Iditarod.

[Tree vs. musher: Here’s how Richie Diehl got those gnarly cuts around his eye]

She was the second musher to reach Ophir on Wednesday morning. Nic Petit of Girdwood, last year’s runnerup, was the first, arriving at 1:08 a.m., about five hours ahead of Zirkle. It’s likely he is taking his 24 at the checkpoint, which will put him back on the trail Thursday before dawn.

For much of Wednesday, Zirkle had the trail from Ophir to Iditarod to herself. No one else joined her on the trail until 60-year-old Martin Buser, the four-time champion from Big Lake, left Ophir with a team of 12 dogs at 6:23 p.m.

Neither musher had taken their 24-hour layover. That’s expected to happen once they get to Iditarod.

Leifseth Ulsom, a 32-year-old Norwegian, spent his day “eating, sleeping, feeding dogs, doing some stuff to the sled and just whatever you do.” He said he took a long nap of about 5.5 hours and fell asleep a couple of other times too.

[Jake Berkowitz: Who’s really leading the Iditarod? Now is when the race gets interesting.]

Leifseth Ulsom arrived in Takotna with a single dog in lead and left with a single dog in lead. Jeger, a 3-year-old Iditarod rookie, is performing well at the front of the pack, he said — but only if he’s working alone.

“He had a partner up until we left Nikolai and then it seemed like he just wanted to be up there alone,” Leifseth Ulsom said. “He was just pushing whoever I had with him off the trail and stuff and finally I was like, ‘Well, you can run alone then.’ And he’s been doing really good.”

The race began Sunday at Willow Lake, and Leifseth Ulsom is the first musher to complete the required 24-hour layover. All mushers must also take an 8-hour break on the Yukon River and an 8-hour layover in White Mountain, 77 miles from the finish line.

[Hallucinations and unnerving dreams plague sleep-deprived Iditarod mushers]

Traska of Gladwin, Michigan, became the first musher to scratch when she ended her race in Nikolai, 263 miles into the race. She was down to 10 dogs.

“It’s been hard for me. I’m letting down so many people,” a tearful Traska said while sitting in the multipurpose room at the Nikolai school early Wednesday, trying to decide whether to keep going or call it quits.

Traska, 48th last year as a rookie, dropped four dogs with sore muscles — Sanford, Julius, Hershey and Henley. She said she might have to leave a couple of more dogs in Nikolai and didn’t know if she wanted to try to take a small team all the way to Nome.

“It’s a huge mental game, and I think that’s where I struggle the most,” she said.

ADN reporter Tegan Hanlon contributed from Nikolai and Takotna.