UNALAKLEET, Alaska — The 2007 Iditarod appears to be firmly in Lance Mackey’s hands as the race hits its home stretch. The son of 1978 champion, Dick, and brother of 1983 champion, Rick, posted the fastest time to Shaktoolik, dropped a dog and merrily bolted back onto the sea ice to Koyuk with a string of 13.
Every one of the other teams in the hunt pulled over. Martin Buser rested two and a half hours; Paul Gebhardt rested three and a half; Jeff King was still parked as I typed this. The bottom line is Mackey now has a nearly four-hour head start and most likely a dog team capable of easily gobbling up the nonstop run to Koyuk.
Why did the others let him go? I won’t have the answers for sure until I catch up with them later today, but the reasons probably boiled down to care of their dogs’ psyche. After an entire race running headlong into cold winds, some of these dogs are feeling it emotionally more than anything. That is the way it appeared last night back here at Unalakleet.
When it comes down to it, these four-time champions and one proven runner-up put their dogs ahead of trying to win.
The race behind them stretches back across Alaska, with the bulk of the dog teams either approaching, at, or leaving Kaltag. But several are strung out farther back along the Yukon, with the stragglers – Eric Rogers, Ellen Halverson, Heather Siirtola and Donald Smidt (running a Siberian team) – on their way to the Iditarod checkpoint. I do not use the term straggler disparagingly. Every one who finishes this race, especially this year, is a winner. I look forward to catching up with them as they cross the finish line; and, if I’m not there in person, by telephone.
Mackey should arrive at Koyuk in the 9 to 10 a.m. range, and he will take a small rest there of four to six hours. It is still possible that one of the teams close behind may try to run from Shaktoolik to Elim, temporarily passing Mackey, but he can pass them back on the way to White Mountain. He’s in the driver’s seat now, and the feeling as his dogs trot over the Bering Sea in first place must be hard for the musher who is as exuberant and upbeat as his dog team. (They say a dog team is an extension of the musher’s personality, and I believe it.)
The move to blow through Shaktoolik wasn’t even in an Iditarod musher’s playbook until Robert Sørlie and Kjetil Backen first did it as rookies in 2002. Now it has become expected for the front-runners. They break the run from Unalakleet to Nome, about 250 miles, into three chunks – Unalakleet to Koyuk, Koyuk to White Mountain, and White Mountain to Nome.
I thought Team Norway invented that move, but they just made it mainstream. This morning, Cim Smyth said he and Ramey were doing it back in the mid-1990s. It takes a very solid dog team to pull it off, Smyth said.
Smyth has had issues of his own this year, as have most dog mushers in this battered and bedraggled 2007 Iditarod. He wrecked a sled, endured all the winds and tried to race hard, only to have his team slow down. “This has been a crazy one, for sure,” he said, after I caught him staring off into the sunrise by his dog team at Unalakleet.
“Lost in thought?” I asked.
“Lost, but there were no thoughts at all,” Smyth said, laughing. He said he’s had trouble sleeping the whole race, but that he’d stopped the team in the middle of the night on the way over from Kaltag. He leaned forward over the handlebar and the team was motionless as he slept for 15 minutes.
As Ramy Brooks said back at Eagle Island, only a handful of teams have that magic, and Smyth said this wasn’t his year. Smyth was still planted firmly in the top 20.
One team that still has a magic spark, even if it isn’t on a pace to win, is Tollef Monson’s. The 27-year-old commercial fisherman from Kodiak Island is running second string dogs for John Baker, and likely will pass Baker and finish ahead of him this year. His team is really moving, and Monson – one of the steadiest, easygoing guys in the race – looks fresh and as comfortable as the day the race started. For years, Monson has spent his winters in Kotzebue, first handling dogs for Ed Iten and, this year, for Baker. He’s not some newcomer, and says the experience in the two kennels will help him as he builds his own dog kennel.
When he does, keep an eye on Monson. He could be the future of long-distance racing. One of the secrets to his success at this point is his pattern with the dogs. He said he stops them at three hours for a fish snack, two hours later for a lamb snack and two hours after that for wet kibble. They’ve come to rely on him and know just what to expect from their master.
Keep an eye on Zack Steer, too, in this race. He’s blown through Shaktoolik, and if his team stays happy through the long run, he may finish in fourth place or even higher.
It is a little too soon to crown Mackey the winner, but it isn’t too soon to guess when the winner will cross the finish line. At the leader’s current pace, the first team to Nome should arrive some time Tuesday night after 9 p.m. but before midnight. That’s a guess.