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.

Team Baker is proving to be solid and strong

As suggested this morning, the list of contenders is starting to materialize as teams  approach Takotna.   The top ten teams on the current list have all earned contender status, and a handful more also deserve watching.   John Baker is certainly a factor with a strong  move up  today, currently  listed as 12^th.  A handful of teams back in the pack also could contend including Martin Buser who will  likely regain the lead after doing his 24 hour rest in Nikolai.  Kelly  Maixner also bears watching based on his fast dash to Rohn before taking his rest.   Mike Williams Jr.  is not far off Buser’s  pace, but he is down to 10 dogs.

Katherine Keith is solidly  in the running for rookie of the year, currently in the top 20 and not that far  behind Baker.  Her move out of Nikolai after the obviously grueling run into that village shows her durability.

Sonny Linder was the first team out of Nikolai and also first into McGrath, where he  is doing his 24 hour rest.  Lindner is currently the oldest musher in the race at  64, and many consider him to be a serious contender for the top spot.  He has a previous second place finish, and has gradually improved his finishes in the past few years. His  day in the lead caused me to remember two  Lindner  stories that are worthy of sharing.  

One story involved  the Coldfoot Classic  dog race in 1986 when he and I shared a snowbank  for a few hours during a break.  As most  racers will admit, there are times that are less fun than others, and this one of those moments.   Lindner asked me that day to promise him that if he was still racing dogs after the age of 50 that I would  find him in some checkpoint and shoot him.  Of course I promised and I remind him of that every year around  March 1^st.

The other story involves a visit to a bar in Nome after  the All-Alaska Sweepstakes in 1983.  Lindner  had helped  winner Rick Swenson  in the race and I finished back a ways.  We planned to have a couple beers to rehash the race. The young attractive waitress came by and  asked if we were dog racers.  Somebody  said yes, and while looking at Lindner she gushed  “Oh I recognize you, you’re the cute one.”    Guess who got stuck with the tab.

There won’t be a lot of movement tomorrow with a bunch of teams taking their mandatory rest, many at Takotna where the hospitality is unmatched.  Tomorrow’s report  will detail  how hospitality at Takotna has changed from earlier years.

The deck is about to get shuffled...24 hour layovers

Martin Buser’s early  Tuesday arrival in Nikolai is  astounding.    He got there  about  4 ½ hours ahead of Nicholas Petit,  and no one else will be within 6 hours it appears. The next couple of runs will  show whether the frantic pace has taken too much speed out of Buser’s  team.  Recent history  suggests that will be the case. 

The tracker shows  John Baker and Katherine Keith about 40 miles out of Nikolai at  7 am,  which places them in the mid teens in the standings.  It is interesting that the Iditarod has changed the format of the tracker.  It started  by having the teams in order of their bibs, but now it is in the order of placement which makes it a lot easier for fans.   Next they should put numerical position next to each racer.  Spot Trackers are now used for the first time by the Iditarod,  and  the tried and true format used for the trackers in other races was  junked.  This morning  there is a reference to outside interference with the Iditarod website, which has had some technical  issues  from the start of the race.

The Team Baker website also has issues.  No one has figured out how to update the  basic  information from last year’s  site.  Of course,  most have figured out  that the same guy is writing these reports, Myron Angstman,  and obviously  all the dates should read  2014.

Mike Williams Jr.  is currently in the top ten.  He has had a tough  year for training in Akiak on the Kuskokwim.   The last couple of months have been on glare ice, and before that it was only a bit better.  Yet he is running with the front of the pack.  It probably doesn’t hurt that  the trail he is now using is similar to the one he trained on.  Dogs learn to move differently  on ice with a little practice.  My dogs have always  done fairly well on ice, and  poorly in deep snow because of their Kuskokwim training.

Today the teams will start  arriving in Takotna and  the order will be a lot  different than it is right now.  It takes a strong team to keep the current pace of the front runners, rest a few hours in Nikolai and then  drive 75 more mile to Takotna where  a majority of the teams  will take their  24  hour rest.  By tomorrow, predictions start to make a little sense.

Recap of Day 2 on the Trail

Flying home from Anchorage by light plane at 120  miles per hour  I barely beat the  front runners through the Alaska Range.    I don’t keep records  but I  sure don’t recall anyone arriving in Rohn earlier than  Kelly Maixner did today,  and there were several more teams not far behind.  As noted last night, the traveling speed has not been unusually fast but the rest time has been shorter than ever.

Martin Buser rested a bit at Rainy Pass and then blew through Rohn, and has a 19 mile lead over Aily Zirkle at this moment. Both  Team Baker  outfits rested  at Rainy Pass and should be arriving at Rohn shortly.  Interestingly,  Katherine  Keith beat  John Baker into Rainy by 13 minutes.  Of course those minutes are  meaningless at this point, but anyone who expected Katherine to lag far behind is in for a big surprise.  She has had excellent preparation for her first Iditarod, and  has  a good shot at rookie of the year.  She mentioned before the race that in training she would sometimes beat  John home.  A weak team rarely beats a strong team home, but of course John attributed  that to her failure to keep the dogs’ speed under control.  Right now Katherine is the top rookie but there are a bunch of strong rookies in the same vicinity.

As for other rural teams,  Mike Williams Jr. is speeding along and was the third team into Rohn where he rested.  Richie Diehl and  Pete Kaiser left Rainy a bit before the Kotzebue pair.   

News accounts describe rough conditions on the back side of Rainy Pass.  Most years that run is a challenge.  Many of the current bunch of top racers has done the pass  10-20 times or more. They still admit that getting through can be dicey.  In my only run through the pass as a total greenhorn,  I remember dropping onto glare ice at the bottom of the pass on a flat stream that runs toward  Rohn checkpoint.  While glare ice is not great trail, after the pass it seems like a treat  to be on flat going for a bit.  Before the race Pete Kaiser  mentioned  he looks forward to that ice as well, even though he is a skilled racer  with several races in his resume. I don’t remember much of the pass though because my  eyes were closed much of the time.

The  long run to Nikolai from Rohn usually sorts out a handful  of teams who try unsuccessfully to stay with the front runners.  The winner of the Iditarod is almost always among the top ten out of Nikolai, and usually  in the top five.  But in recent years the eventual  winner is rarely the first team to leave. 

2014 Iditarod is well underway

The 2014 Iditarod is well underway, and once again I will be providing race analysis  here on the  teamjohnbaker  website.  This will be my third year providing regular analysis, and I look forward to an interesting race. 

During the first night of the race, familiar patterns  have developed.  Martin Buser is speeding along in front, nearing  Rainy Pass  at 6 am.  Reports from the trail describe very hard packed snow, and  the pace suggests  a very fast trail.   That doesn’t always mean that the dogs are moving at an exceptional speed, sometimes it means that there is little drag and the teams can move longer distances on less rest because  they are not working as hard.  Tracker speeds don’t seem to be unusually high on the front running teams.

Buser’s strategy has worked well for him some years, other years not so well.  Just last year he jumped in front and stayed there for quite a while, but was moving much slower than the top teams which passed him later in the race.

John Baker has usually employed a much more conservative approach to the start of the race.  He rested almost 4 hours at Skwentna leaving in 39^th place.  Katherine Keith employed a similar strategy and she has already rested for  more than 5 hours at the same checkpoint after arriving just 18 minutes behind John.

Temperatures have cooled a bit overnight after a very warm day at the  restart in Willow.  Forecasts today call for below freezing temperatures along the trail into the Alaska range.

Puppy Training

The 'Avenger' puppies scout out the 440 trail for the first time!
Photo by Katherine Keith

The 'Genius' puppies LOVE to run!
Photo by Katherine Keith

While much of the training focus is on the dogs that will be racing in the 2014 Iditarod-preparation for 2015 begins now.  These puppies are now four months old and LOVE to run and play.  

The two litters are within a week of each other.  The Avenger Puppies consist of Wonder (wonder woman), Natiri, Stark, Thor, Hawkeye, Flash, and Shadow (White Shadow).  There might have been a small bit of creative liberty taken with the names.

The Genius Puppies are called Plato, Newton, Einstein, Mozart, Currie, and Patia (short for Hypatia).

These 13 puppies have Team Baker running fast and making us very excited for 2015!