Seavey family time in Ruby

With dawn approaching the Yukon river in a few hours, Mitch Seavey and Dallas Seavey are the first Iditarod teams to approach the Ruby checkpoint as they lay down the challenge for the other contenders to keep them within reach. Further back on the trail, the team of Aliy Zirkle is resting out in the wilderness as she has chosen to break the 170 mile run from Takotna to Ruby into 3 segments instead of using the Seavey 2 segment strategy. While the Seavey teams will likely choose an overdue rest at Ruby (maybe even taking the mandatory Yukon 8 hour break), Aliy may in fact blast through that checkpoint and regain the lead. She is about 25 to 30 miles out, so continuing to run to an early afternoon rest down the Yukon river fits her strategy well. All three of these mushers still show a level of confidence in their race so far, even though Mitch admits to checking behind him on occasion. As the trail changes from the hills to the flat cold and sometimes windy stretch along the river, the character of the race will change, so we will see.

Not far back, 2011 winner John Baker is making his move - if you can call it that. The large dogs on Baker's team average about 70 pounds compared to the 40 pounds on Zirkle's team and they have only one speed. That speed is forward. The fact that he is closing the gap with the leaders doesn't mean he is speeding up, it means they are slowing down. That is good news for some of the other contenders further back like the surprising Aaron Burmeister, the unretired Jeff King, and the florescent pink outfitted team of Dee Dee Jonrowe. Dee Dee who has had her share of troubles for many years seems to have all of the pieces falling in place this time around, and we are happy to see her up there.