Ahead of Schedule and the FBI

Aily Zirkle has  jumped into the lead of the race  by not stopping at Kaltag.  At this moment, she appears to be stopped about 30 miles up the trail  with Martin  Buser closing in from behind.    Buser’s travel times have been slower, and  he will have a hard time  keeping up with Zirkle in the days ahead.  He also faces strong  challenges from behind  with fast moving teams now resting in Kaltag.   The two fastest runs from Nulato to  Kaltag belonged to Nic Petit and Sonny Lindner who announced that this is his last race.  He probably made that decision  after bouncing off  a tree in Rainy Pass.

Earlier it was suggested  that by Sunday night the contenders could be narrowed to three.  Because the race is  significantly  ahead of schedule, that date can be moved up to Saturday night.  Tune in here tonight for the straight  scoop.

These twice daily reports might be  the only Iditarod news for a few readers, but obviously  the amount of Iditarod news available to fans is astounding.  At any  moment, a fan  can access the tracker  and learn the precise location of any team, and the speed they are moving. There are eyewitness accounts of the race posted  throughout the day, and video reports are common.  The contrast between the current coverage and early years in dramatic.  Radio and newspaper reports were notoriously  late reporting race status  well into the 1980’s.  In Bethel we would hear a radio report in the morning that often had locations of mushers reported the previous  afternoon,  and  because teams were not required to sign out of checkpoints,  the reports  often had some musher parked in a checkpoint when actually  he  was  50-75 miles down the trail.  Ham radio was the  official  communication network of the race, and  of course the lone operator  at each checkpoint had to  sleep once in a while.  I remember serving as race judge   in 1980 at Unalakleet, where I was stationed in a  room with the checker and the ham  operator.  The radio man lived on coffee, provided by the race, and peanut butter sandwiches the entire race.  We were a ways from the village store and  one time the radio operator  walked over to replenish  his groceries (bread, peanut butter). While he was gone an urgent request came over the  radio asking for the location  of a particular team which I knew was parked outside.  I knew there were fairly strict  Federal rules about who could operate a ham radio, but this was important info, so after a few unanswered calls I picked up the  microphone and answered the question.  There was dead silence on the  radio for  several moments.  Finally  someone asked me to confirm my call sign.  I responded that I didn’t have one.   More silence.  Finally  the operator returned  from the store and I found a reason to tour the checkpoint.  I can only imagine the chatter while I was gone.

When I returned I was told of the possible penalties for talking on ham radio without a license. It was suggested  that Federal prison was a real possibility.  I didn’t talk on the radio again, but I never went to prison. I guess at -20 with a stiff breeze, the FBI didn’t want to  travel to Unalakleet to arrest me. 

Jockeying for Position

Today’s events on the trail confirm most of what was  conjectured here last night.   Martin Buser held the lead for much of  the day, and was first into Nulato.  Next up was  Sonny Lindner, who was the fastest moving team coming down the Yukon after his long rest in Ruby.  The third team into Nulato was Aily Zirkle, and moving well.     Jeff King was  traveling fourth, and  that is a bit of a surprise coming after his long rest in Ruby.  His speed didn't match Lindner’s, and  he also stopped  for a rest in Galena, which  Lindner did not.  The fifth team, in a bit of surprise, was Nic Petit.  He has moved up mainly on the strength  of great speed, which he has shown  in the past few runs.

Not much can be drawn from this information.  Not all teams have  completed  their  mandatory 8 hour rest, and thus equal comparisons can’t be made.  Recent history tells me that the run to Unalakleet is where the elite teams emerge,  and today’s runs were jockeying for position to make a strong run to the coast.

John  Baker  at this writing sits in 13^th place,  in Galena with a bunch of other teams that are just off the pace of  the leaders.  Baker  has yet to complete his  8 hour rest.   Katherine Keith is  in 27^th place, third among the rookies, at Ruby.

Other teams of interest to many folks in rural Alaska should be mentioned.  Aaron Burmeister with Nome roots  has struggled along with a gimpy knee and has  stayed with the leaders fairly well.  He is in ninth place, in Galena, and has completed  his 8 hour rest.  His speed has slipped a bit, but Aaron is a gritty racer and will  have a good shot for the top ten.

Mike Williams Jr  is in 20^th place with 9 dogs on his way to Ruby.  Pete  Kaiser and Richie Diehl are 22^nd and 23^rd, running in lock step on the way  to Galena as well.   Kaiser,  a  Bethel guy like me,  has a fairly young team and  expected his team  might not be ready to match his best finish of 5^th this year.  Diehl is running his second race, and  has moved up significantly from last year when he finished 36^th.

Morning Update

Overnight movement has not changed  my view of  how this race is shaping up.  Zirkle went further down the Yukon than I expected, to  Galena, but she  will need a long rest there,  and  Buser  left Ruby ahead of all the teams  that are taking their rest in Ruby. Next out was Burmeister, who also passed through Ruby without  resting.  Sorlie  followed him,  done with his mandatory  8 hour rest and moving well.  As mentioned  a couple of days ago here,   he  is emerging as the team to watch.  King and Lindner will complete   their 24 hour rests this morning and be on their  way,   with plenty of rest for dogs  and drivers,  to give chase.  How those teams  respond to their late  24 rest will  determine if they are  candidates for the top spot.

John Baker is near Ruby at this time,  and Katherine Keith left Cripple,  running a few  hours behind the  leading rookie,  after taking a long rest.

One item of interest  this morning is the reported extra half hour Robert Sorlie took at Ruby.  Taking more than the mandatory  eight hours is rare for the front runners,  and the reason for that delay  will emerge during the day I’m sure.  He might have slept late.

Two teams  who  had fast runs into Ruby are Petit and Redington.    Petit has been hanging around near the front of the pack much of the race, and one big run could put him in solid contention to win it all.  Redington  is a bit back of the front, but he also can’t be overlooked.

Bets Are In on the Top 5

Tonight I  pick the top five contenders to win the  2014 Iditarod.  This is based on current position, speed, history and a bit  of intuition.  There are some who will question these choices, and please feel free to post on the Baker website your choices.  They are probably better than mine.

Robert Sorlie is one of my contenders.  This is based primarily on today’s run, but also on his average moving speed  which  is  the highest in the race.  He has won twice before, he has  had a few years off to get ready for  this year, and all indications are he is on a roll.

Another contender Aily Zirkle is a bit harder to  figure. Today’s run included a stop not too far from Ruby,  suggesting she will  run straight through the village and   stop later. That puts her on a different schedule and also makes it harder to evaluate her chances.  But last year’s second place finish  figures into the decision to make her one of the five.

Jeff King also makes the cut, but this is a little longer reach because he will be a long ways behind leaving Ruby.  What remains to be seen is how much speed he will gain because of  the 24 hour rest he took in Ruby.  It might enable him to  make a big push down the Yukon, where the trail is very good, downhill, and with a tail wind.  His four previous titles figure  in my thinking as well.

Sonny Lindner makes the cut for many of the same reasons as King. He actually will have  about an  hour lead  on King leaving Ruby, and has  been very impressive in a couple of recent runs.   He is the oldest guy left in the race, and   those of us who live in the bush know that  older people have elder wisdom that shouldn’t  be overlooked.  By the way, I am older than Lindner.

The final member of the top five is Martin Buser.  He is likely to be the first team out of Ruby, and  also will likely have his mandatory 8 hour rest completed when  he leaves.  Zirkle might leave  earlier, but if she does she will  likely be stopping soon putting  Buser back in the lead.   His speed is still quite good on recent runs, and the Yukon trail will favor his usually speedy dogs.  His past wins also figure in my thinking, but  that is tempered somewhat by last year’s race when his early sprint ended up slowing him down a lot at the end.

John Baker does not  make the top five cut despite his history of catching up late.  He likely will move up in the next few days, but there are too many good teams ahead of him now to put  him among the contenders to win.   Katherine Keith won’t win, but she sure is  having a good run and is a serious candidate for rookie of the year.

Looking at Speed

Tonight I will pick my list of contenders, but a preview of that is possible  this morning.   King is putting on a  serious move, pulling away from Lindner on the run from Cripple to  Ruby. His speeds have been good.   Buser will have quite a lead leaving Ruby, thanks to his mad dash out of Willow.  It could  be several hours, maybe as many as 6  if he has a good run  today.  But there is speed  behind him.  The two fastest team in sight are Sorlie and Zirkle.  Sorlie  is 23 ahead of  Zirkle according to the tracker and is slowly emerging as the team to beat,

John Baker took his  24 break at Cripple and will leave there tonight.  Katherine  Keith will see  him leave, now done with  her 24 hour rest and  running in 19^th place.  That positioning now  starts to mean something, as she  stands  first among the rookies.  Abbie  West is  close in second, and moving  faster than  Keith.

Baker’s average moving speed of 6.9  mph is significantly lower than other contenders.  Sorlie, for example  is 8.2.  I have asked the  tracker folks to create a new category of chart,  average moving speed for the  most recent  24 hours or 100 miles.  That would tell the fans a lot more than speed over the entire race.  If a team’s speed is trending up,  teams  ahead will have a problem.  If its trending down, it will be a long  run to Nome as teams rarely speed up once they start  losing speed.  Baker’s history suggests he moves better  later in the race.  He is not far off the pace, and if he picks up speed on the Yukon he could still be a factor.

Aaron Burmeister claims the Gold

As predicted there has not been much movement today with most teams on their  24 hour rest.   Five teams moved between Ophir and  Cripple  with Aaron Burmeister arriving first and winning the $3000 in gold.  John Baker was among the  five, making a big move through Takotna last night.  How that  tactic pans out won’t be known  until tomorrow when  all the teams are moving again.

Martin Buser left  Nikolai after completing his rest, and is moving well.  Last year   he  lost speed  by blasting out of the starting line to Rohn.  This year he seems to have preserved his speed.  At this point  he seems to be a solid contender for  the top spot.

Other teams who seem to have been moving well before resting were Zirkle,  Sorlie, both Seaveys and of course Jeff King.   King provided a rare glimpse of  how it feels to be on a sled descending  Rainy Pass.  His helmet cam video is posted on Iditarod Insider and is scary to watch.  I did the same trail with  a primitive sled with no brush bow, meaning I didn’t  glance off trees as well as I should have.  That was a  long time ago, but that video brought back intense memories of the  run down, my first ever steep drop on a dog sled.

Most teams, including Katherine Keith, stopped at Takotna to rest. Pictures of the food spread there are easily found on  various media sites.  Meals are made to order, and homemade  pie is always  available.  I don’t know when that tradition started , but there was  a time when the checkpoint  was  located at the Takotna tavern (now closed)  It was an old time place, with a small bar that seated about 6 people, and a larger back room for dancing and card playing.  When I raced,  there was a local guitar player, a guy making sandwiches, and one free beer for each  racer.   I stopped  at -30, and it was hard to leave.

Part of my description of Takotna hospitality was deemed to  racy for publication.  If you bump into me anytime, ask me to tell the story.  It’s a good one, and of course its true.

Tomorrow evening it will be time to pick five teams from which the winner  will emerge, but  because that will be hard to do, it may expand to  8, and I still might be wrong.

The Race Goes On

Wed morning report--   The growing number of scratches (12 as of now) will  focus discussion for a while on the decision made  recently  to use the traditional  Willow start  instead of switching  the trail to Fairbanks to avoid the Alaska Range.   I don’t have enough of the facts  known to the  race organizers  at the time  they made their decision to second guess.  As  one of the people who has made similar decisions for the Kuskokwim 300  for 35 years,  I know such issues are hard to deal with.   It is not a simple as looking for  the best available trail.  There wasn’t going to be unanimous support for either  starting spot this year.

I do know that after the decision was made the weather didn’t  really cooperate.  Warm temperatures race week surely made the trail worse than it had been.  And for many racers the location of the main area of concern moved from one side of the Alaska range to the  other as race day approached.  But one question  still lingers in my mind: knowing full well  the conditions  ahead, why do so many teams still drive such tiny lightweight sleds during the first part of the race?

Because  racers can send out replacement sleds, why not  have a sturdy sled for the tough going and more of a  racer for the rest of the trail?   When Andy  Angstman ran the race in the low snow year of 2007, he used an all aluminum sled  built like a small tank. Such a device was designed to be more or less unbreakable, and  would have been a good choice for this year.  Not only are such sleds harder to break, they provide the racer more protection from obstacles in tough going.

Meanwhile, the race goes on but with a number of folks moving past  Takotna for  their 24 hour  rest, including John Baker.  That makes analysis very difficult.   It will stay that way for  another couple of days as we see how teams fare in their   first big runs after their break.  Naming a leader right now would be difficult, but two guys driving fast teams last night were Jeff King  and Robert Sorlie.   Those fast speeds were recorded during the run from  Nikolai to McGrath, at a time when long runs and short rests  would have made the dogs somewhat weary. It’s a long way to the finish, but both of those teams should be among the top few  at  Nome.

Tonight, as promised, a report on Takotna hospitality.