King, other multi-champs plan on making it a race in 2007
KASILOF, Alaska – It really doesn’t matter what your bib number is - starting positions don’t make or break the Iditarod - but that fact sure didn’t prevent 59 dog mushers from signing up at the earliest opportunity for the 35th running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
The race attracts about 100 entries by late fall, and about 85 of those teams make the start. Among the competitors planning to race in 2007 were the usual past champions, including the 2006 winner and four-time champ Jeff King. On hand for the signup festivities was virtually every musher who made 2006 so fascinating. They included Doug Swingley, Mitch Seavey, Paul Gebhardt, Martin Buser, Ramy Brooks, John Baker, Ed Iten, Aliy Zirkle and Jason Barron, among others. Rick Swenson signed up as well.
About 25 of the mushers spent at least one night sacked out in tents, cars and campers at the race’s headquarters in Wasilla; some, like Lance Mackey of Kasilof, camped in the parking lot for about 10 days. The big draw was the race’s first-come, first-served rule that allows mushers to pick starting positions based on the order they sign up. Mackey was first in line, so he’ll undoubtedly choose bib number 13, the same number his father, Dick, and brother, Rick, wore when each of them won the Iditarod on their sixth try. This will be Lance’s sixth race.
Mackey may have a sentimental and superstitious reason to be an early bird, but the 58 others were just jockeying for the right to choose, even if that choice probably won’t affect the outcome of next year’s race. Case in point: Last year, King started 30th and finished first; Swingley started fifth and finished second; Gebhardt started 84th and came in third; and DeeDee Jonrowe started 31st and finished fourth. There was no pattern to the conclusion of the race, even though most mushers sought starting positions as close to the front as possible.
The early signup date coincides with the race’s annual volunteer picnic, which gives the Iditarod’s most ardent fans a chance to casually hobnob with racing legends such as Jonrowe, Baker, Buser and King, as well as the newer faces of those who plan to be rookies. On the night before the picnic, the scene was one of quiet, friendly conversation around campfires on the green, manicured lawn of the log-walled race headquarters. Mushers of all stripes talked about past races, the latest gear, trials and tribulations from the last race and, of course, dogs.
Some of the talk came around to race strategies, with mushers weighing the choices made by King, Swingley and Gebhardt (first, second and third place) last year. King pulled up early by current standards, taking his 24-hour layover at Takotna, choosing to rest his team and let others pack down the typically soft trail to Cripple. Swingley made his usual move by cruising on to Cripple for his 24-hour layover. For the second year in a row, Gebhardt ran long, running all the way to the Yukon River checkpoint of Galena to rest his team for a day. Sitting around a campfire by King’s tent, Ramey Smyth said those who tried to rest their dogs at Cripple wound up enduring temperatures plunging to 50 below at the remote tent camp without running water. Smyth was one of them. His dogs were on straw and in insulating jackets, but they still didn’t get the usual benefit from the 24-hour break, he said. Because King pulled up half a day earlier, his dogs were literally sprawling in the sunshine back at Takotna. Smyth wondered if Gebhardt’s long push was also beneficial. Gebhardt’s dogs enjoyed a cozier break a day or two later in warmer Galena.
Gebhardt said it sure helped. “It wasn’t easy to get rest in Cripple,” he said. “It’s not the best spot to take a break anyway, and the severe cold made it worse.” Is he planning another long run like that in 2007? After all, he also pushed to Anvik in 2005. “I don’t know,” he said, but added that he’ll have drop bags packed with enough food for a 24-hour layover well up the Yukon River. Takotna has long been a Gebhardt favorite stopping place, though, and he said he might just as easily stop there next year.
Gebhardt was able to turn that late rest into a third-place finish by leaping out of Galena on a series of 100-mile runs all the way to the finish, eventually passing Jonrowe on the way up Little McKinley as they raced toward the second-to-last checkpoint of White Mountain.
For her part, Jonrowe said she couldn’t have been happier to have been passed at that point. Jonrowe, who has steadily fought her way back into the top five since battling breast cancer about five years ago, said her amazingly fast and steady team was finally feeling a little out of it after fighting through winds for a few days. They were thinking about camping on the way up Little McKinley, when all of a sudden Gebhardt’s long string of dogs went marching by. Jonrowe was able to catch a draft off the passing team and follow him all the way to White Mountain. “It went soooo good this year,” Jonrowe said of the entire race.
Looking fit and energetic as always, she said she’s planning to participate in an Iron Man race in Kona, Hawaii, in October, and said she hopes that event can springboard her physically and mentally into a positive winter of racing.
Jonrowe has 26 Iditarods to her credit, and she was easy to spot as a familiar face at the catered Saturday picnic of hamburgers and hot dogs. Other mushers weren’t so well known. Among the two or three returning rookies from 2006 was Eric Rogers of Chugiak, Alaska, who said the 2006 race shattered his preconceptions. “It was more difficult than I ever imagined,” he said. He’d anticipated the infamous trouble spots such as the Happy River Steps and Dalzell Gorge, but there were countless other unheralded difficulties that caught him off guard. The soft snow and relentless winds last year took him by surprise. He also discovered, as many a rookie does, that his feeding program wasn’t as aggressive as it should have been. He couldn’t seem to pump enough calories into his dogs.
In short, the race put Rogers through the wringer, yet here he was again, smiling on a warm summer day, laying down $1,860 to do it again. Why? “It’s addictive,” he said. “It’s incredibly rewarding.” He talked about the joy he felt when one of his lead dogs, named Bass (that’s like “base,” the stringed instrument, not the fish), got serious on the windy coast and drove the team to the finish line in Nome. Rogers clawed his way to Nome in 68th, just four hours ahead of the last-place musher. He said he hopes to run the Iditarod at least a couple more times — “once more as a slow learning year - the dogs and I need to understand what we’re doing,” he said. His goal is 40th for 2007. The goal after that is to race a little harder.
Smyth’s aching back
Ramey Smyth still looked a little stiff and acknowledged that his neck and back still ached from his late-night collision with a low-hanging tree branch on the way into McGrath this year. During the race he feared he’d broken a bone, joking that he’d duct-tape a tree limb to his spine if that’s what it took to finish. He didn’t wind up making a backcountry spine splint, but an X-ray after the race confirmed that he had actually broken something. His treatment involves some minor medication and the healer of all wounds: time. Smyth builds log homes for a living and said operating a chain saw was tough at first, and his employees had to pick up the slack. But, he said he believes staying active is the best cure, and he was confident he would be ready to race in March 2007.
The call of the Yukon
Speaking of backbone, four mushers from Whitehorse, who make up some of the most serious competition in the Yukon Quest, all were on hand to sign up for the Iditarod this year. Hans Gatt, who won the 1,000-mile Quest three times but has yet to perform to his satisfaction in the Iditarod, will race in 2007 after taking a younger team up the trail in 2006. Sebastian Schnuelle is back for his second year. And the race has attracted William Kleedehn, a perennial Quest contender, as well as Gerry Willomitzer, who has made a name for himself with his smooth-running, competitive dog team. The four said they weren’t sure how they would end up juggling the races in 2007, but Gatt and Kleedehn said it was unlikely they’d run both Iditarod and Quest. One of the two races would give way. Kleedehn seemed pumped about the Iditarod. He smiled broadly and voiced a twisted logic that seems to infect all competitive dog drivers this time of year. Since he seems to always wind up right behind Lance Mackey in the Quest, and since Mackey hopes to follow in his family’s footsteps and win the Iditarod this year, it should bode well for Kleedehn. “I signed up because Lance Mackey’s going to win, so I should do pretty good,” he said.
Team Norway to be piloted by Sørlie
Conspicuous in his absence, and understandably so, was Robert Sørlie. It would have been a tad costly to fly from Norway for a picnic. The Norwegian won the 2005 race, took a year off while his nephew Bjørnar Andersen raced to sixth in 2006, and plans to return in 2007, according to the Team Norway Web site. Sørlie, and anyone else, has until midnight, Dec. 1 to enter the race.