Or does it? Mackey in position to draft off King
KALTAG — The lead in the Iditarod shifted overnight as mushers got a taste of cool air for the first time in this heat-wave of a race. Jeff King trotted past a resting Lance Mackey at Tripod Flats cabin, grabbing a lead of roughly 10 miles, perhaps an hour and a half. But did the lead really shift?

It’s usually easier to give chase, and Mackey is as trail savvy as anybody out there. With a shorter run to Unalakleet, the reigning champion will also be in a position to take a shorter rest and vault back into the lead.

With Mackey and King duking it out for first, a large field of 18 powerful dog teams either rested briefly here or blasted through. They were in the hunt for third, but also still within reach of second place or victory. The front teams, working on less rest, risked slowing down to the point of being vulnerable; and the teams behind them, including Paul Gebhardt, Hans Gatt, Jessie Royer, Martin Buser, Ken Anderson and Rick Swenson (to name just a few), were large, powerful and running fast.

With more than six hours separating Mackey and King from the rest, however, the miles for a significant come-from-behind effort are dwindling.

Both the front two teams looked great leaving Kaltag in the darkness. Mackey had painfully slow run times getting to Kaltag, but his dogs had the misfortune of high-stepping it through some of the wettest, deepest, softest snow in the race. It shouldn’t hurt them. The trail from here on out is reported to be excellent, groomed and set up with the chillier air overnight.

King rested here four hours and 20 minutes, bootied his dogs in the wee hours, talking idly to observers but just as much to himself to keep awake, then roused his team off their straw. The full string of 16 dogs milled a little, which is typical for King’s no-neckline system. As soon as they started moving, though, his dogs shot out in one fluid motion into the night and a long haul of 76 miles uphill then down the Unalakleet River to the Bering Sea Coast.

There was plenty of horsepower parked in Kaltag this morning; the majority of mushers were calculating how best to break up their runs to Nome. Should they give extra rest early and save energy for a long run, perhaps skipping a checkpoint such as Shaktoolik later? Or was it best to make the whole run to Unalakleet in one shot of 10 to 12 hours? Many didn’t know even as they left here, packing straw on top of their sleds just in case they needed to pull over at Old Woman cabin, about six hours from Kaltag and four from Unalakleet.

“The competition is thick, man,” noted Ken Anderson, feeling confident with 15 dogs still in the race. “I could see things getting real interesting here, with us in the back. It’s easy to let it get you down, if you think about it.” The trick, as always, is to focus on your own dogs and make the best decision based on your own strengths.

Anderson described his dogs, many of them veterans from his second place Yukon Quest team this year, as steady. “They’re just rock solid, eating well, no issues.”

Hans Gatt, the three-time Yukon Quest champion, was guardedly optimistic, which is typical for him. But he had a cheeky smile as he got ready to leave. “It’s about time,” he said about his potential for a top five finish. Gatt is one of the brightest mushers with a gift for running sled dogs, but hasn’t managed a finish higher than 12th place, a cause for frustration over the years. Here, he was essentially sitting in a third place tie with Backen. The pair left at the same time. (They’d been passed by Gebhardt, Ramey Smyth, Zack Steer and Sebastian Schnuelle, but those teams were on their way to a camp out along the trail, probably Tripod Flats cabin about 26 miles from Kaltag.)

Royer also is enjoying a position she’s rarely seen at this point in her seven Iditarods. Typically running a team of eight or 10 dogs by the coast, Royer had 12 strong veterans in her team and she’s got a true talent for running fast and passing teams on the coast. “I’ve always been good cruising up the coast with short runs and short rests,” she said, adding concern that a long run too soon would trigger her dogs to slow down. She considered taking a pit stop of a couple hours at Old Woman cabin to keep her speed up.

Two notable teams still in the hunt for a single digit race finish are Aaron Burmeister and Jim Lanier. Neither has cracked the top 10 before and each was plainly enjoying himself this morning at Kaltag. Lanier’s dogs were up and alert, looking relaxed as he went down the team to give them bowls of soupy food. And Burmeister was thrilled about a gamble he made to run straight here from Galena. His team actually picked up speed in the night air, and they ate like pigs when he got in — a good omen for any musher. Dogs need the calories and water to maintain their energy in the final push of the Iditarod.

Swenson had another powerful team, and his sights on second place, but acknowledged his odds for claiming an unprecedented sixth win were slipping away. “I actually didn’t come out here to race for second place,” he said. Swenson had the fastest run time from Nulato to Kaltag, a shade over five hours, and said there was plenty more where that came from. Then he began speculating about the teams up ahead. Given their slower run times, he predicted there was a chance that either one could “still crash.” That is, slow to a crawl or have leaders quit outright. “It won’t take much,” he said.

“Paul (Gebhardt will keep King moving. Paul knows where he’s at.” Swenson praised Gebhardt and his dogs for being “incredibly resilient.”

Then he said it was his opinion that Mackey “finally wised up,” meaning that he pulled over, stopped trying to be the rabbit, and let King go in front for a while.

Most of these teams fighting for a top five position will wind up running to Unalakleet without stopping. A great run time over to Unalakleet, nonstop, is about nine and a half hours. Ten hours is excellent, and 11 hours is very good.

Some might opt to pull over at Old Woman cabin, then actually blow through Unalakleet and run an additional 40 miles through steep hills to wind-blown Shaktoolik. Every rest stop is time given away, but every long run slows the team down. The top 18 in Kaltag will have to read their dogs and make the best calculation in an epic battle to slip into the top five.