Iditarod leader passes King, Backen; claims first to Yukon award
RUBY — Lance Mackey rested less and ran longer than the competition, still cruising in to the first checkpoint on the Yukon River with a fast, lively dog team just as dawn broke and a few lazy snowflakes drifted from the overcast.

“It was long, but nice,” the reigning Iditarod champion said of the trail from his camp out 20 miles on the other side of Cripple to Ruby. It took him about 14 hours. “I’ve still got some issues, but their enthusiasm is there. They’re coming ’round — don’t count me out yet.”

Meanwhile, King took off about three and a half hours behind Mackey and appeared to be maintaining a similar pace. Hans Gatt, Aaron Burmeister and Rick Swenson blasted through Cripple, and some of them were expected here not too long behind Mackey. Most of those teams were incredibly strong, putting those mushers in a position Mackey enjoyed last year, when he reeled in King and Martin Buser up the Yukon River. This year, those teams will be gunning for Mackey.

Although he was in the lead by a margin of a few hours, Mackey said he still did not think of himself as the front runner, saying he was looking over his shoulder for mushers such as Paul Gebhardt.

Mackey took some time as he bedded down his team to talk about his problems, which center around a kind of general desire to run slow and nagging dog diarrea right from the starting chute in Willow. The enthusiasm is there now, he said, but many dogs in the team still have troubles with their guts, and many aren’t eating as well as they should. He counted off at least five dogs in his 14-dog string that had less fat on their bones than he would like to see at this point in the race.

Backen, Mackey and King all took off from Takotna within an hour of each other early Wednesday morning. But by midday, they went their own way. King mustered on through the heat of the day for a 12-hour run to Cripple. Mackey pulled over to wait out the heat for five hours. He said Backen rested four; the Norwegian then spent another four hours at Cripple before taking off just behind King. “Everybody’s doing it a little different,” Mackey said, doling out bowlfuls of kibble mixed with beef, water and pork fat. “I was taking advantage of he darkness. It was nice trail. I can’t complain.”

With three hours less rest than the other two, Mackey played a characteristic move, one that has paid off for him countless times since he’s been winning long distance races in the last few years. His team as a remarkable ability to run half a day, take five, then go again.

For being first to the Yukon, Mackey won the Millennium Hotel’s First to the Yukon award, which includes a seven-course meal prepared by the hotel’s head chef on a couple of Coleman stoves at the Ruby community center, and an “after dinner mint” of $5,000. (I incorrectly wrote $3,000 last night.) The meal included chicken and wilf mushroom terrine, Yukon potato bisque, halibut flowers, filet of beer stuffed with Alaskan king crab, asparagus and bleu cheese, poached pears and reaspberry crepes and several bottles of wine to sample.

Mackey, who sat down alone to take in the meal, said he was famished and and tired of gnawing on frozen Snickers bars and his mother’s delicious home-made fudge. Many mushers can’t make it through the entire dinner, and Mackey jokingly asked the Millenium’s food and beverage director Brooke McGrath if he’d get an extra award for devouring the whole thing. “A full stomach,” was her reply.

Mushers must take an eight-hour layover somewhere on the Yukon River, and they frequently do it in Ruby after the long haul down from Cripple. There are three more Yukon checkpoints: Galena, about six of seven hours away; Nulato, another five hours away; and Kaltag, about four hours from Nulato.

With so many strong teams still cruising along, we may begin seeing more mushers risking it by running long and dare the others to follow, continuing what King described at the ceremonial start as “a race of attrition.”