Seavey leads pack into Rainy Pass checkpoint
PUNTILLA LAKE — Happy River is typically the Iditarod’s first gnarly section of trail, splintering sled bags, bones and hopes before teams arrive here from Finger Lake. But word from the early birds at the Rainy Pass checkpoint was just about all good.
“It’s a real pleasure,” said Jim Lanier, as he set a hook in the soft snow and unsnapped the chinstrap of his bomber hat. The trail is good to the point of seeming groomed in places, he said. Others said the same. “It’s absolutely gorgeous,” said Jeff King, the third musher to arrive. “Based on my experience, it is one of the most beautiful trails up here we’ve ever had.”
That’s saying something. Last year, a glaciated sidehill knocked many sleds into some trees, breaking DeeDee Jonrowe’s hand, Doug Swingley’s ribs and at another musher’s leg, on top of shattering quite a few sleds. Mushers were scratching at Rainy Pass left and right. The trail has sharp corners around poorly placed trees, and sudden, jarring drops that make steering a sled difficult.
But based on the first four teams to show up, the race’s record field of 95 mushers should hold up a while longer. The only caveat came from King, who said there were still a few trees in the way. If anyone can’t steer around them, those snags will do some damage, and he predicted that could happen as the trail gets chewed up by sled brake teeth. And Mitch Seavey said the hard-packed surface could crumble later, leaving some teams swimming.
Seavey was the first to arrive here at 11:10 a.m., but was under no illusion that he lead the race. “There’ll be 20 teams teams blow through here before I leave,” he said. Front-runners Lance Mackey, Martin Buser, Kjetil Backen and others had pulled over and camped at Helicopter Lake. Buser does it every year.
They’ll blow through Rainy Pass checkpoint and be down to Rohn ahead of Seavey and others who got here within the hour. In fact, Backen did just that at 1:20 p.m., stopping only to sign in and leave.
The teams start the race with two or three strategies. Seavey, Lanier and King opted to rest long either at Skwentna or just beyond there, then make one long run skipping Finger Lake. They would rest here about six hours, then likely blow through Rohn and rest the team one more time before pulling into Nikolai Tuesday morning.
Buser and the others at Helicopter Lake (not a checkpoint, but simply a nice place to pull over) will skip Rainy Pass, camp at Rohn overnight, and launch into a long run either to another campout an hour shy of Nikolai, or straight to Nikolai in one long leap of nine to ten hours.
Seavey planned to rest six hours, or even a little longer, and said he had to convince himself not to get in race mode this early into a thousand-mile race. “It’s easy to get caught up in racing right now, when what we ought to be doing is keeping our dog teams together. We just got started.”
All the early teams — Seavey, Lanier, King and Sigrid Ekran — looked very good arriving, with bright, happy dogs wriggling, wagging tails and eating well. Of the four, King’s dogs looked the most fiesty, yapping and lunging in harness when he checked in. It doesn’t mean much, but it’s interesting because he’s going out of his way to run slowly. He’s obviously convinced that slow and steady wins the race. “This is all the faster they should be going,” he said. “If a guy can keep it steady, it’s all you need. If you don’t go fast, it’s easier for them. They keep their hydration.” Asked if he was happy so far, King said, “They just keep puttin’ along.” It’s obviously on his mind.
Seavey took three hours and 20 minutes to get here from Finger Lake; Lanier did it in three hours and 43 minutes; King, three hours and 13 minutes; and, Ekran, three hours and 50 minutes.
Word from former mushers watching the race, such as the Insider’s Bruce Lee, is that some nice moving teams belong to Rick Swenson, Paul Gebhardt, Kjetil Backen and Jeff King. Those teams loked good on the trail and appeared happy when camped, Lee said.
Light snow has been falling at Puntilla Lake in temperatures in the upper 20s Fahrenheit since volunteers and race veterinarians showed up Saturday; the snow was getting a little thicker Monday afternoon. Winds were light, so there wasn’t an immediate fear of the kind of storm that pinned mushers here for 24 hours last year.