Mackey wins fast Iditarod

Lance Mackey won his 4 consecutive Iditarod sled dog race in a time of 8 days 23 hours 59 minutes and 9 seconds. How fast was the field in this year's race? Paul Gebhardt came into Nome in 9 days 20 hours 31 minutes, and 1 second - good enough for 19th place. That time would have won the 2009 race (won of course by none other then Lance Mackey).

New trail on the Norton Ice

The trail breakers lay out a different trail for the Iditarod sled dog race every year, and the 2010 race is no excpetion to that. The trail accross the Norton Bay ice is a prime example of that given the differentiation in the way the ice freezes over the bay, and the prevailing tracks left by local snowmobiles. By following the GPS trackers each team has on it's sled, it has now become apparent that the trail heads in a markedly different northwest direction about halfway across the Norton Bay. The result is that once the trail hits land again, the direction into the checkpoint in the town of Koyuk is mostly in an easterly direction instead of the typical north direction. This is the 21st race for Jeff King, and he is heard telling the Iditarod Insider reporting team that he was most confused coming into Koyuk this year. Another peculiarity of this route is that the inbound trail to Koyuk may in fact actually be the same as the outbound trail. If it weren't for the fact that a musher has to check into each and every checkpoint, it would be possible for a team to make a substantial shortcut. It remains to be seen however if some team doesn't actually take this shortcut by mistake. Lance Mackey has now departed Koyuk and as he makes his way to Elim, he has a firm grasp on first place in this race, however we don't expect Jeff King and Hans Gatt who are in Koyuk resting now to let him get to big of a jump at this juncture in the race if their dogs are up to it.

The following is courtesy of Chris Waigl at this link

Iditarod GPS Confusion

The Ionearth GPS tracking page for the 2010 Iditarod sled dog race has had it's share of problems so far, and now that the race has reached a critical juncture with the leaders in the vicinity of Koyuk, it is on the fritz again. I have been unable to access the page for 10 minutes now, but this is what I observed 30 minutes ago. Lance Mackey and Jeff King were parked in Koyuk taking a break. Hans Gatt had apparently blown through (or aroound?) Koyuk and was on his way to Elim. Back on the Norton bay Ice, Ken Anderson appeared to be headed in the wrong direction going far west of the indicated trail. In fact he was so far west that Ionearth was showing him in first place mistakenly thinking he was on the trail heading west out of Koyuk. It appeared that Hugh Neff was starting to veer in that direction. Back on insider, Jeff King was explaining how he almost got lost on the bay mistakenly headed for the wrong lights, and he struggled to find his way to Koyuk. Given this explanation, it is entirely possible that Gatt missed Koyuk as well. The official current standings show Mackey and King the only teams to check into Koyuk. I sure wish I could get the GPS page to work again so give me some clues as to what the heck is going on.

Another race up the coast

Lance Mackey forgo any rest at the Kaltag Checkpoint and pulled into the Unalakleet checkpoint at 3:32 this morning to stake his claim on the Gold Coast award in the 2010 Iditarod sled dog race. Jeff King rested his team for nearly 4 hours at Kaltag and pulled into Unalakaleet less then 3 hours later. A bit further back on the trail are Hugh Neff, Hans Gatt, Mitch Seavey and John Baker. Gatt and Baker have been moving steadily up in the standings for the last 150 miles by cutting rest. With Mackey and King being in the lead, we are reminded of the epic battle up the Bering Sea coast these 2 waged in 2008. Here is a recap pf that battle as presented by the Crow Village Iditarod Blog.

Deja Vu for Mackey and King

Setting up for a Photo Finish

Mackey looking over his shoulder again

The race is on from Ruby

9 teams are now resting at the Ruby checkpoint on this 6th day of the 2010 Iditarod sled dog race. At this point, the character of the race changes. The next 150 miles of trail mostly follow the Yukon river, and each team will be required to take one 8 hour layover at one of the 4 checkpoints on that stretch. Right now, it appears most will be taking that break at Ruby. That appears to be a good strategy, as most of these teams have taken several long runs over the most remote section of the Iditarod trail to get here. According to Jon Little, there is roughly 15 hours of running time between Ruby and Kaltag where the teams will leave the river and head toward the coast. That sounds like a good estimate to me. we expect most teams will rest again in Kaltag as they retool for the 80 to 90 mile stretch over Kaltag portage into Unalakleet, so how they choose to split the Yukon stretch up should be key to determining the pecking order in Kaltag.

Jeff King is clearly in the drivers seat at this point, and I suggest other teams will be keeping at least one eye on his progress when determining whether to stick with their own strategy. Jeff arrived in Ruby first with the second fastest trip from cripple, and he still has 15 solid dogs on his team. Look for King to try to reach Nulato 100 miles down the river to try to keep his chase pack behind him. Assuming both take their 8 in Ruby, Lance Mackey will depart Ruby an hour and 15 minutes after King. Mackey likes to take long runs at this point in the race, but a 15 hour run into Kaltag is probably even a bit too much for him. He might decide instead to follow King to Nulato, and cut his rest short there to close the gap on him. Hugh Neff was 10 minutes behing Mackey into Ruby, and has spent thousands of mile in long races staying within the vicinity of Mackey. We don't see that tendency changing at this point in the race. Mitch Seavey might be next. Mitch marches to the beat of his own drum, so guessing his strategy at this point carries some risk, but he may try to break the run up into 3 segments to keep good speed on his team. Hans Gatt should be next out of the chute, and he had the fastest team coming into Ruby. Gatt's strategy late in the game when winning this year's Yukon Quest was to run long with short rests, and his team was faster then anyone else who tried to duplicate that strategy. Look for Gatt to move up in position. Others in the mix currently are Sonny Lindner, Sebastian Schnuelle and Ken Anderson.

Cripple Confusion

One news outlet is reporting that John Baker reached the Cripple checkpoint of the 2010 Iditarod sled dog race first. The Iditarod Trail Committee issued a press release stating that Dallas Seavey won the Dorothy Page Halfway award - an award given to the first team to reach the Cripple checkpoint. So what gives here? Here is our explanation.

The Ophir to Cripple leg of the Iditarod is officially listed as 59 miles in length. Several years ago, the location of the Cripple checkpoint was changed so that this length is actually closer to 80 miles. Paul Gebhardt has intimate knowledge of that change. In 2008 he was leading the race after a long run session heading into Cripple, but he couldn't find the checkpoint. He had been on the trail long enough that he thought he had passed the checkpoint and doubled back and that mistake cost him significant momentum that he was not able to recover from. At this point, we don't know if John Baker ran into similar issues, but his GPS data certainly showed that he was slowing at this portion of the race and Dallas Seavey was steadily closing the gap. The GPS map still has the Cripple checkpoint in the wrong location. so for those watching the GPS data closely, it appeared that first Baker, then Seavey went past the checkpoint. Eventually Seavey passed Baker, and pulled into the checkpoint first to collect the $3000 halfway award stash of gold. We should find out the details of what occurred on the trail leading to this reversal of fortunes before long, but for now, it looks like Baker has lost some momentum.

UPDATE: Ionearth has now corrected the location of the Cripple checkpoint. (link)

Iditarod fans, meet your Top 20

After crunching many numbers over the past 12 hours, calculating off 24 times and estimating run times, the only thing that can be said with any certainty is

1) Jeff King is currently in first place.

2) There is a lot of race left and anything can happen.

But here is a current Top 20 list with estimated arrival times coming into Ruby.

Gatt makes his move

Remind me to eat a piece of pie the next time I visit Takotna. 4 time Iditarod winner Jeff King always seems to choose this town of 50 along the banks of the Takotna river for his 24 hour layover, and the chance to eat a piece of one of those famous pies is a big reason for that. King indicated that would be the case again this year when he arrived first at this checkpoint in the 2010 Iditarod sled dog race. At this writing, there are more then a dozen other teams taking extended rest there which for many of them may indeed turn into their one mandatory 24 hour layover. Hans Gatt, the recent winner of the fastest 1000 mile Yukon Quest ever was having none of that however. As he pulled into the checkpoint, his GPS tracking device measured -21 degrees (F), but he was all business and left the checkpoint immediately, possibly even forgetting to sign his log book. This move gave him a 1 hour jump on the next team piloted by Cim Smyth. John Baker stayed 6 hours, and then decided to give chase as well. He may get the chance to pass the two front runners by skipping rest at the next checkpoint if those 2 decide to pull over there. These 3 teams will need to take their 24 at some point, and positions will likely get jostled again, so only time will tell if the decision to forgo the Takotna hospitality was a mistake or smart choice, but this much is certain, the trail from Takotna to Ophir is currently fast with the low temperature, hard snowpack and little wind. This is Alaska however, and that is all subject to change.