UNALAKLEET — There’s something about this stage of every Iditarod that’s just tough on the mushers and the dogs. More than usual this year. It’s a mental low point for many. They’d rather be sleeping, putting their feet up — just about anything but going on another run.

At least one of the top 20 drivers going through here said this would be his last Iditarod for a long while, but that’s the kind of thing they’ll say when their eyes are red and swollen from lack of sleep and bodies ache from more than a week on the trail. A week after the finish and they’re already scheming for next year. That glum individual was not John Baker, who seemed to have more spark than others, maybe because the Kotzebue native is heading into his own country. He always seems happier here.

Baker, hovering around 16th place, described his team as “extremely slow” but that they picked it up just a little coming to Unalakleet. Maybe they smell home as well. “They’re doing fine, they’re just a slower team than I’m used to having,” he said. Baker ran straight to Unalakleet from Kaltag, taking four or five 15 minute pit stops, often just to re-bootie his dogs.

Booties have become a dirty word among the mushers this year. Bootying dogs is always a necessary but onerous and back-breaking task. But the soft snow on the trail this year forms ice balls on the booties, forcing mushers to either brush it off or replace the bootie more often than they’d like. Everyone is complaining about it. Asked if he’d run low on booties because of the conditions, Baker said unfortunately not. “It’d love to run out of those things,” which prompted a loud laugh from DeeDee Jonrowe, sitting nearby.

Owens pulling forward
Melissa Owens, the 18-year-old from Nome, had a slow start in this year’s Iditarod but is proving to be just as steady in racing as she is in person. She’s the lead rookie at this point, but William Kleedehn of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, is close on her heels out of Kaltag. They’re running 27th and 28th. Owens blew through Kaltag, so she’ll stop by Tripod Flats cabin about 26 miles up the trail, if not sooner. If Kleedehn, the cagey veteran of 11 Yukon Quests, opts to take a break at Old Woman, about two-thirds of the way to Unalakleet, the pair could show up fairly close together at Unalakleet.

Owens had a tough start, personally, in this race. She couldn’t eat and couldn’t keep any food down for a few days. Owens is unflappable, and told me simply that anxiety does that to her in races sometimes.

The race for first
Lance Mackey and Jeff King continue their slug fest up the trail. I don’t mean that literally. The pair are awesome competitors in every sense. It’s just that they are obviously engaged in a serious game that should wind up with one of them adding one more winner’s trophy to the mantel.

Remarkably, King still hasn’t dropped a dog in this race. Is he considering going all the way with a complete team? Has anyone ever done that and won? I doubt it.

King has been banking on his faster run times but the pair’s run times seem to be fairly similar at this point. Mackey has been intriguing. He’s behaving like a guy fully in the hunt to win, but sounding a tone when he talks that he’s not. He’s been worried almost from day one with one issue or another but consistently leading arguably the most competitive Iditarod field in the race’s history. He may just worry himself right under the burled arch in first place.

The roughly five hour rests they each took at Shaktoolik indicates something, though. If one of them had gas in the tank to blow through there, they would have. Mackey did it last year, which just about sealed his victory. King prefers to rest at checkpoints, and now they both are. This could be a dog fight to the finish.

At this pace, barring more complications, the race finish may be between 8 p.m. Tuesday and 1 a.m. Wednesday in Nome.

The hunt for the current third place slot is too murky to guess at. Watch Paul Gebhardt, Rick Swenson and Martin Buser. They may skip a checkpoint and move up. There’s actually a massive pileup in the top 12 or so. It’s anybody’s race for top five, and there’s always hope for these teams for a victory. They know not to stop racing until it’s over. Wrong turns, storms, quitting teams — anything can happen up ahead.

Notes from Unalakleet
• Silvia Willis had a very peppy dog team getting in here; her dogs were rustling around in the straw and looking far from tired as she rubbed some massage oil into one dog’s wrists. “There’s a couple that are a little tired, but I think they’ll come back,” she said. She was a little frustrated at her speed, but she noticed everybody else was going slow, too. Her run time of 11 hours here (17 hours minus a five hour break on the trail) was about average. “It’s really exhausting, and it is for the dogs, too,” Willis said. “They’re working and working but not getting forward.” Cim Smyth was trying to convince her to blow through Shaktoolik and pass other teams.

• Wind is always an issue here on the coast, and the forecast for Shaktoolik and Koyuk is for a cool headwind out of the north. Winds were 13 mph out of the north at Koyuk, but a mere whisper at normally gust Shaktoolik. It was zero to 6 mph. Light snow was falling at Unalakleet.

• Ryan Redington is at Unalakleet, waiting for a flight home after he scratched at Cripple. The Iditarod flies scratched mushers to its hubs of Unalakleet or McGrath, where they wait for a flight back to Anchorage. Redington was waiting it out to see brother, Ray Jr., come through. Ryan scratched because his dogs were overheating and he had to drop all his main leaders. He said he was left with a real strong team of 10 dogs, but no front end. He may enter the Kobuk 440 in April with his team.

• Rick Swenson, the only five-time champion, was a happy camper when he pulled in to Unalakleet, joking with fans and checkers here. Someone asked what his wife, Kelley, would think. “She’s probably pretty proud. She oughta’ be,” he said. Are you moving well?, another person asked. “I don’t know, you’ll have to tell me. I just ride it. I’ve got a chair. It was good getting here, though. Wonderful trail… Most of them are eating pretty good. They eat good when you run ten hours at a whack. When you stop, they eat. The other day I ran ‘em, like, 18 hours. I ran ‘em from Ruby to Nulato… I don’t think they’re tired.” (The quotes are courtesy of an audio recording made by Ellen Lockyear, a reporter for the Alaska Public Radio Network.)

• Sebastian Schnuelle rolled on out of Unalakleet at6:29 a.m. with 15 dogs. He’s been on cruise control the entire race, really fun to watch. As he pulled his hook to go, he said he’s just going checkpoint to checkpoint at this stage. “I just want a top 20 finish, so if I’m 19th, it’s cool.” He was 14th out of here. He should reach his goal.