Asked to name a highlight of the trip, Dave told me that they were exiting the village of Nulato, driving the dogs off a steep slip from the high bank of the village to the river bed below when the dogs diverted sharply and the slid skidded over glare ice. In an instant the team was loose and Tekla was just sliding to a stop. The dogs and sled in tow, Dave viewing the drama from above and realizing that it could be a separate adventure to retrieve a team now travelling down the Yukon, saw the dog team running and heard his daughter calling the team. Then, in one of those once in a lifetime turn of events, the leaders lifted their heads, looked back, made a grand cinematic circle on the river, and returned to a kneeling Tekla—–a mushing classic for a father.

This afternoon I was sitting down to fresh salad, looking out the large plate windows of Fat Freddies, the habitué of mushers, directly out over the white of the Berring Sea Ice and the Nome Golf Course, a three hole assemblage of green carpet, a few plastic palm trees, and green pins. Rick Casillo, who finished at noon, sits at the next table with his entourage of supporters, and orders, like a man who has pondered a decision for a very long time, a steak and potatoe. Noticing that he looks recovered I ask him why he looks unblemished and discover he was careful to wind protection on his face. No, he reports, he tried to be as careful as possible, but then shows me where he was frost bit on his eyelids and bridge of his nose, the one area he had to leave uncovered to see.

Now, our table wants to know more. Rick then tells us about his passage over Rainy Pass on the second day of the race and describes winds so fierce that he and his travelling companions came face to face to discuss the trail, shouting to be heard above the wind. One of them, Louie Nelson, let his guard down and paid for it with frost bite to his face, the prevalent injury on this years Iditarod. I saw “Uncle Louie”, one of the best known mushers on the trail, famous for his travelling banquet of native Eskimo foods—smoked salmon, muktuk, dried reindeer, et al—-and could see he had toughed it out with a tender face for days. From winner Lance Mackey and second place Paul Gebhardt, the signs of frozen cheeks, chins, and finger tips is the record of the race—-constant wind. Thirty to fifty mile an hour winds, some directly in the face teams and dogs along the Yukon River, and across the ice of Norton Sound from Shaktoolik to Koyuk, were unrelenting.

But, I didn’t realize how unrelenting. From the next table, Mark Lindstrom, race judge, shows us some photos of Mike Williams, one the most popular mushers on the trail. Mike, a really uplifting and inspiring ambassador for sobriety in the state of Alaska, and a tireless worker for native americans nationwide, is a saavy outdoorsman from Akiak. Mark clicked through some photos of Mike, his face blistered by frost bite, and then, more photos of Mike slathered in the same white salve that mushers use to assuage the paws of their huskies.

Linwood Fiedler, a familiar personality on the Iditarod trail, ran into some bad luck in Iditarod. Rick Casillo told me a wind at Linwoods back caught him offguard and froze his ears. The end result was a lot of pain and swelling, forcing him to scratch—-and the wind and the resulting phenomena of wind chill needed only a few minutes to do the damage.

Tough race, a few lessons learned, and empathy and sympathy (if you have had broken ribs, hands, feet, frost bite) well deserved for this years Iditarod pack.

The Incredible Lance Mackey — In Five Hundred Words Or Less

Lance Mackey, age 36, finished on Front Street, weaving his team through crowds of fans, slapping hands with hundreds of his supporter, in Nome at 8:08 41′ PM, March 13, 2007 and won the 1100 mile 2007 Iditarod. In addition, just ten days before the Iditarod start, he negotiated the old Klondike trail across Lake Lebarge, then portaged to the Yukon River, and won the 1000 mile Yukon Quest from Whitehorse, Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska.

And, get this, you won’t believe it—it seems impossible— and defies all conventional knowledge—he did it with the same indominatable huskies, including the “brains of the entire operation,” a tireless and resolutely dependable gray huskie with a serious, thoughtful demeanor, who sits unquestionably at the head of the Mackey team of man and sled dogs as leader, the dog we know as LARRY.

What could possibly motivate and drive a musher and his huskies to accomplish this overwhelmingly difficult feat, and in this moment of extreme self-preoccupation, share it with his family?

Our story begins with the young Lance Mackey born into the world of sled dogs. His father, Dick Mackey, wins an historic Iditarod in 1978, eclipsing the legendary Ric Swenson at the finish line by just one second. His older brother Ric establishes his own kennel of huskies, and wins the Iditarod in 1983. The Mackey name is indelibly printed in Iditarod history.

Although Lance can visualize himself as an Iditarod winner as a youngster, he flounders, by his own admission, aimless and not “a person a father could be proud.” When we pressed Lance, he gave it to us straight—like he always does. Working as a fisherman, foregoing an opportunity for more education, he admits the wasted sesnselessness of partying and drinking. As a result, his personal life grew desperately self-destructive and he realized he had to change—-to survive.

It is a familiar drama, the human experience with a little sadness, and , for the sentamentalist, a love story too—- but with twists. At this low point, he meets his wife Tonya and both resolve to change direction. They move several times, change behavior, separate themselves from past associations, and eventually move to Kasiloff on the Kenai Peninsula, close to the ocean and water that Lance learned to love as a fisherman. He and his wife arrive with one dog, a Labrador.

Lance inevitably meets local residents Timmy and Dean Osmar (the Iditarod champ), Paul Gebhardt, and other mushers. The life he had as a boy is rekindled and by 2000 Lance has acquired 10 dogs, the off casts from other kennels. Working, Lance neverthess finds times on the weekends to enter his dogs into one or two day “sprint” races, and discovers that he does well enough to pick up a little side money—-”could be fifty bucks or five hundred, but I always placed.”

Surprised by his success, he announces to his wife that he might do better with his own kennel operation, and with her unwavering support, Lance formulates a plan, and gives himself a 6 year window to produce results. If not successful, he logically concludes he will put his energy into another project.

But the plan has obstacles. He finishes the 2001 Iditarod in 36th place, but after the race Lance and the Mackey family discover he has an advanced cancer which must be aggressively treated. He is thirty years old. “We didn’t know if he would make it,” his father Dick told us with an emotion that deeply affected me and our media group recording the interview.

With an inconclusive prognosis, Lance returns home and sits for hours in his truck, the heater full blast, and studies and contemplates the dogs tethered in his dog yard. Gradually, his strength returns, and for ten minutes he lugs half a bucket of feed down a line of hungry huskies. The interval increases to twenty minutes before he returns to the truck for another redeeming rest, and day by day, he recuperates and the “plan” transforms from an idea into a singular passion. Dick Mackey, thinking out loud to that time in the past, told us “the dogs brought him back to life.”

Lance returns to the Iditarod in 2004, then discovers the art of winning with three successive victories in 2005, 2006, and 2007 in the Yukon Quest, a grueling 1000 mile race from Whitehorse to Fairbanks. His trademark style of exuberance, unencumbered emotion, and ceaseless activity leave his fans in respectful awe. To compensate for salivary glands that were removed, he always carries a water bottle, sipping and then chewing, and generally finds that he must wait for checkpoints to eat. He also races the Iditarod ten days later, an inconceivable physical effort for most mushers, and notices and discovers the subtleties of racing long distance dogs over many hundreds of miles. He places in the top ten, a monumental effort in itself and becomes convinced by his experiences that his dogs are capable of these incredible efforts. Even more, with correct handling and care, Lance believes that they are actually better prepared to compete. He vows to prove it.

Finally, in 2007 he triumphs again in the bitter cold of February and wins his third Yukon Quest. He begins the Iditarod a considered favorite, but pundits are skeptical, clearly not convinced that one musher and team of dogs could triumph in both endurance venues. On the Yukon River, over halfway on the historic Iditarod trail, however, a persistent doubt is replaced by a curious revelation as Lance’s dogs advance on the river in an easy, fluid, ground-covering trot. “Is it possible?” fans and mushers ask, that we have not explored the limits, not thought deep enough about the possibilities of men and animals?

On Tuesday, March 13, Lance Mackey wins the Iditarod, and becomes the only musher to conquer the Yukon Quest and Iditarod—-back to back— in the same year. He also wins the hearts of his fans, who not only witnessed a magnificent performance—-but also grew and learned, by his example.

Mechanically, the last seventy seven miles to the Nome finish should be easy for Lance and team. The dogs are so trail hardened, after winning the 1000 mile Yukon Quest, and now after 9 days on the Iditarod, that the last section of trail should be the victory lap for Lance. His good friend and traveling colleague, Paul Gebhardt, is about two and a half hours behind.

Paul is just behind me putting on gear, preparing to go outside to feed his dogs one last time. “We are travelling at identical speeds. IT would be really hard to catch him.”

As a matter of form, the dogs will go through a sort of evolution on the trail to Nome. Lances dogs waddled out of the checkpoint, heavy with food. After forty-five minutes, the canine engine will gradually fine tune itself, and the dogs will be trotting briskly. Lance told me he expected to be in Nome in nine hours—in time for a sunset finish at 6;30 PM.

Check out some great interviews with Lance at the Insider.

We’ve just landed the helicopter after a morning in the air following competitors from Unalakleet to Shaktoolik to Koyuk and beyond.

First, the news roundup of this mornings top ten. Our helicopter saw John Baker, Tolloff Monson, and Ramey Baker enroute from Unalakleet to Shaktoolik across brown, barren, snowless tundra, and finally miles of freshwater glare ice leading parallel to a long spit and the village Shaktoolik. In Shaktoolik, Ed Iten, always a fast late finisher was turning his dogs past the checkpoint and on the trail again towards the sea ice and crossing to Koyuk. AT the same time, Ken Anderson, had decided to layover in Shaktoolik for a short rest and was feeding his dogs, now resting on straw behind the Shaktoolik Armory building.

Iditarod veteran, Palmer Sagoonik, runs the Shaktoolik checkpoint and is a master hunter and outdoorsman. He told me the strong winds across the sea ice to Koyuk would be a formidable challenge for mushers. However, he said Lance Mackey’s dogs were animated, fired – up and ready to challenge. Mackey turned his dogs out of the checkpoint in Shaktoolik for direction Koyuk, making a statement early this morning. He is now the leader of the race, posting the fastest times, and driving the biggest team.

Readers may recall that Lance won the Yukon Quest, finishing just ten days before the start of the Iditarod. Conventional wisdom has it that dogs racing the Quest would not be rested well enough to race Iditarod. Lance, on the other hand, believes the conditioning gives the dogs a significant advantage—and he is proving it. He crossed Norton Sound ice in about six hours, well ahead of nearest competitor Paul Gebhardt, Martin Buser, and Jeff King. Mackey was now looking back at his competition this mid morning.

Buser countered with a move after Mackey. He took just a short rest in Shaktoolik. Gebhardt, not wanting to miss an opportunity, launched soon after and passed Buser on the ice of Norton Sound, now establishing himself in second place. King, who is always by nature more conservative stayed in Shaktoolik and rested his dogs additional hours.

Once again, the order of the race was shuffled, leaving gamblers in a frenzy. No sure bets exist.

Meanwhile, Zach Steer, Ed Iten, and Ken Anderson have entered the fray.

By the time our helicopter arrived in Koyuk at noon, we discovered mushers on the trail nearing Koyuk. Gebhardt was closing in on Koyuk, followed by Buser, then by a fast moving Zach Steer who was making time on Buser, Jeff King, then followed by a very fast moving Ed Iten.

Our chopper reported winds of thirty to forty on the nose and in the face of mushers and dogs—-another challenge to the strength of teams.

Noon — Koyuk: The Race Changes

Thinking we had it all figured out, we focused the camera on Gebhardt approaching Koyuk in second, about noon. Assuming that Mackey would remain resting in Koyuk, all seemed logical.

However, we saw a thin moving line, looking very much like a moving dog team, on the distant beach line. Just as Gebhardt and team climbed up the hill off the beach to the community hall acting as the Iditarod headquarters, Mackey was cleverly making a convenient exit.

This is the age old technique employed by mushers—the “ghost team technique.” Mackey has enough of lead that he has decided to remove himself from conscious memory of his competitors. By the time Gebhardt arrives, the straw beds of Mackey’s dogs are cold. Mackey has now transformed into an unseen entity. His goal is to remain distant, unknown, and unseen.

Gebhardt arrives in Koyuk as a camera records the rapidly moving Mackey at about 12:30PM. He is 3.6 miles from the checkpoint. However, in a move that amuses wizened race veterans, Gebhardt notices the vacancy in Koyuk. Ah, what a great idea, he thinks, and grabs a half bale of straw and a sack of dog food and also exits the Koyuk checkpoint for direction Elim. Certainly he will camp halfway between Koyuk and Elim in a protected grove of trees, and he too will be a transparent phantom traveling out of sight.

The ruse ends when Martin Buser arrives an hour later about 1:30PM. The 4X champ, pragmatic and experienced, beds his dogs down and feeds them snacks, kibble, and a hot ration. He is camping for a good rest.

A new entry into this mix of characters arrives shortly after Buser. Zach Steer, tall and athletic, running behind the sled, has a good run to Koyuk is now situated fourth, and threatens the position of Buser. His dogs, heads up, rolling on the ground, grabbing snacks from Zach’s hands, are clearly wound to run. If he continues to post fast times, he could very easily surpass Buser and move up on Gebhardt.

Meanwhile, Ed Iten at 3PM is moving fast across the sea ice to Koyuk and threatens the position of Jeff King, the defending 2006 Iditarod champ. He appears, according to our estimations on the helicopter, to be moving faster than King and also eclipsing the lead of Buser.

In short, a great race, a reality adventure drama.

What to Look For

Lance Mackey has seized the moment and is now leading. WE will fly to Elim, the next coastal checkpoint, and expect to see him about 6PM this Monday afternoon resting his dogs on straw.

The trail to Elim has been altered, villagers report, because the sea ice has been dislodged by strong winds. Therefore the trail has now been routed overland over almost snowless and bare ground from Koyuk to Elim.

What will he do? My guess, he will continue to look back down the trail. When the “scouts” in Elim, mounted snowmachine riders from the village, report an approaching dog team, my guess is that the Incredible Lance Mackey will quickly pack and disappear into the darkness—-the phantom that may be the first musher to win an Iditarod Quest and an Iditarod in the same year.

King Arrives First into UNK, Mackey Closes Gap

That’s the headline in Unalakleet, first village on the Berring Sea Coast, as four mushers, King, Mackey, Buser, and Gephardt thrust, parry, and posture with strategy moves and changes in momentum that leave the race decidedly undecided.

A shifty Iditarod fan needs to look only at the time sheets to conclude that another shift in the delicate balance of power between the four has shifted.

In summary, Jeff King arrived in Kaltag yesterday evening and appeared to have seized the lead with raw power and speed by gaining time on Martin Buser, our leader at Eagle Island. However, Paul Gebhardt and Lance Mackey team indicated that a battle was looming when their posted times from Eagle Island to Kaltage matched Kings. For pundits in Kaltag it appeared that King was defending the front and Martin Buser was regrouping to challenge King. In arrears, Paul Gebhardt and Lance Mackey were strong, but even they acknowledged that Buser and King had a significant lead of over two hours, a huge advantage at this stage of the race.

Therefore, no one was surprised when King, as commander and defender of the front, led the pack out of Kaltage early this morning at 4:46 AM. Of course, Buser must challenge with an exit from Kaltag at 4:59.

Remember, these teams and mushers often shift momentum from day to day. One team may do well on hills, another in wind, so the mushers have learned that every day is a separate event, keeping in mind that a change in the order of their dogs, or a new leader combination could swing advantage.

Now, the reader may ask why Gebhardt (who was the fastest on the trail yesterday) and his traveling partner Lance Mackey would refuse to the impulse to chase King and Buser. The reason, of course, is prudence, which Gebhardt and Mackey have exercized through the entire race. Mackey, for example, and Gebhardt, too, are extroverted personalities with consistent ability to interpret events positively. On the other hand, they are calculated and deliberate, an unusual combination of character traits, as mushers. They will not budge from their mantra—a fair deal for their dogs. Therefore, they rest for six hours, the time needed to eat, rest, lounge and digest a mountain of calorie rich food.

At 6:23 AM Gebhardt exits Kaltag on the 90 mile trail to Unalakleet and in pursuit of King and Buser. Paul chuckled and told me that Lance thought he was edging out of town. “We got to go now, Lance,” he told him. Lance Mackey, with fourteen evenly trotting dogs follows at 6;28AM, the stage now set for a test of wits and physical grit.

What Happened As We Saw It from The Helicopter

Our chopper, mounted with a gyrostabilized long lens camera, lifted off from the Kaltag airport a little after 10AM. Based on traveling time of about 8 miles an hour we expected find our loose pack nearly halfway on this portage trail near a conspicuous and solitary landmark known as Old Woman Mountain, whose shadow guards the headwaters of the Unalakleet River and an ancient hunting camp used by locals.

At 10:49AM we discovered Lance Mackey, dressed in a red parka we easily recognize, and a fourteen dog team of easily trotting huskies. A half mile further Paul Gebhardt and 12 dog team move fluidly through stands of thick black spruce, just as we expected. By our GPS they are 39.1 miles from Unalakleet, guessing they are probably 45 trail miles from Unalakleet.

Lance stops the team, grabs an insulated picnic cooler from his sled and runs to the front of the team, a long handled ladle in hand. Quickly, he scoops a mound of feed, probably a warm mixture of selected meats and fat and a specially designed kibble, in front of each dog. In turn, he serves the entire team, each husky consuming their portion. In less then three minutes, Mackey is reloaded and back behind the runners as the team trots briskly off. This is a ritual he perform over and over, supplying the calories the huskies need to fight the cold, the wind, and to perform work.

In front, as we expected, Martin Buser is spotted at the Old Woman Cabin, his dogs blanketed to block the wind. Based on the distance gap, we surmise that Gebhardt and Mackey have gained time on Buser. Still, his team is impressive, and after a little misdirection in a maize of snow machine tracks converging on the Old Woman Cabin, he lines the evenly trotting group of pullers in direction Unalakleet and the Berring Sea Coast.

Now, the last question remains, and that is the location of the 4X Champ, the presumptive favorite, the winner of 2006, and one of the winningest mushers in history. King, his distinctive “caboose sled” with the handle bar heater and miniature oven for heating burritos and packets of lasagna, and yellow blanketed team of 12 huskies is about five miles in front of King. The black spruce is more scarce, the vistas longer over tundra and low brush, the wind busy moving a blanket of snow crystals across the trail, as the trail leads closer to the Berring Sea.

King has widened the gap to Buser by at least a half-hour and moving steadily to Unalakleet. It seems, or it appears, that he is maintaining distance with Gebhardt and Mackey.

WE leave these four and go forward to Unalakleet to fuel and then return to find the four again at about 3PM. Suddenly, it is evident that momentum has once again shifted. Lance Mackey has caught and passed Buser. In a line of a mile we see Mackey, Buser, and Gebhardt as they travel on the glare ice of the Unalakleet River. Five miles to the front, King is just crossing over the fresh water estuary of the Unalakleet River in a direct line to the village and the Iditarod checkpoint.

Suddenly, what seemed simple and evident a day ago, is topsy turvy. Buser made a statement to the Yukon. King demonstrated strength on the Yukon. Now Mackey and Gebhardt are unleasing a demonstration of speed to the Berring Sea Coast.

In total, Mackey recouped enough time to be serious threat. He is only 45 minutes behind King and has eclipsed Martin Buser. Paul Gebhardt, always patient and experienced, is 52 minutes from front leader King.

The Strategy

In the Unalakleet checkpoint, I see Mackey, Gehardt, and Buser and congratulate them on a great race. King has already retreated to the Mushers Quarters for a nap.

They are good friends, congenial, and true sportsman. Without exaggeration, I can report that their sportsmanship and character is as tough and flawless as their teams. They joke and recount the trail, but at the same time they all expect each other to be unrelenting in effort. Dead tired after eleven hours on the trail, and confident their dogs are well fed and now sleeping, the grab a meal provided by locals here in Unalakleet, and think about a nap.

But what about the strategy? Will someone ease out of the checkpoint building while the others sleep for a quick exit in direction Shaktoolik?

Gebhardt, when I asked him, shook his head. Of course, they want six hours rest. That’s the civilized standard. But, for the moment, King controls the race. From now on, it will be difficult to give him more than a 45 minute lead.

Therefore, it is essentially King’s call. If he stays six or even five hours in Unalakleet, the others are likely to follow his example.

What To Look For

Mackey’s run today and his large fourteen dog team indicate an emerging player in the front four. Jeff King’s team is very well prepared and capable of long runs—he will leverage that strength at the appropriate moment. Paul Gebhardt will reduce his team to eleven, but that may actually increase his speed because the dog he is leaving in Unalakleet was not in rhythm with his other smooth trotters. Martin Buser is among the elite, one of the best, at maintaining a dog team. Although he slowed on this run, the team I saw on the trail was very smooth and working evenly. His team speed could increase dramatically with a few simple adjustments—a different feeding strategy or a change in leaders and front end dogs.

Bottom line, these four are unusually balanced, each with their own strengths. Over the last two days, we have seen four dramatic momentum changes. Buser led the race to Eagle Island. King was in the lead yesterday to Kaltag, yet Gebhardt had the fastest trail time. King led to Unalakleet, yet Mackey had the fastest time and gained an hour to the front of the pack.

Ahead

The run to Shaktoolik requires the strength to ascend and descend a divide of mountains enroute to Shaktoolik. Legendary winds could develop to further test the teams.

While it is relatively calm in Greyling, a constant downriver wind blows in the face of huskies and dogs. From the air, we saw bands of brown sand bars, the work of ceaseless winds. In the dark moonless night, the wind is the obstacle.

Jeff King’s, according to trail pundits, is traveling like a mirror image of Buser’s. Jeff and team arrive at 10:22PM and give Buser more than an hour advantage. He also breezes through Greyling and drops down on the Yukon and a hard 65 mile trail to Eagle Island.

Wild Card

Lance Mackey and Paul Gebhardt are shadowing Buser and King. The question for their fans is a question of speed and strength. Are they closing the gap on the two leaders Buser and King? According to race pundits looking at checkpoint data, Mackey and Gebhardt are faster—-at least temporarily.

After we watch Buser and King buzz through Greyling, the phone rings at the checkpoint and a fan living upriver reports that he sees Mackey and Gebhardt in pursuit and considers them faster. This heightens the uncertainty, and of course the interest, in the front of the pack.

While the crowd of villagers and fans waits for the next mushers at the checkpoint, a few of us argue about a time sheet and report which shows Zach Steer still in Shageluk. Someone them deduces that an eleven must have been mistaken for a seven, and it is to understand the cause of world war. Shortly after, Zach Steer arrives at 10;50 PM and immediately asks for a parking spot. The team looks animated and lively, so we are surprised when he tells us that he is stopping for four hours rest. But after a little thought, it is a great idea and totally consistent with his very cautious strategy. This little rest in Greyling will set him up for a powerful run to Eagle Island.

What does it mean to the following pack? Still located in Greyling, I walked around the checkpoint log cabin and did a reaction survey with AP writers, Cabellas Jon Little, our Iditarod media group, a few self made experts including checkpoint communication volunteers, and reactions from mushers lounging in the EXTREMELY warm checkpoint.

Buser, first and foremost, posted the fastest time from Anvik to Greyling of 2:19, so he is still the speedster on the trail. One musher piped up and pointed out that he was not the fastest into Anvik from direction Shageluk, while our Communication Expert noted Buser’s time of 9 hours 24 minutes into Eagle Island.

That time is slow by normal standards. For example, Doug Swingley had a time of 7 hours 40 minutes in 2005. While we all digest this fact, the 55 gallon wood burning stove in the checkpoint swallows another dry spruce log, and MAN, is it ever hot in here. A few mushers sleeping on the floor, where the air is cooler, sigh, snore, and roll over for another ten minutes of deep sleep.

Jon Little listens to Ellen ( with Alaskan Public radio) who feels that Martin stopped and snacked his dogs, therefore accounting for his slow time. Aaron Burmeister, alert with a cup of coffee in hand, theorized that blowing winds had stacked drifts on the trail and delayed progress. Little, the pundit operating at Cabelas.com, nodded and also supposed that the trail must drifted and soft. Aliy Zirkle, using the available for practical purposes, turns to Aaron Burmeister, who also has been posting fast times, announces that she is going to stay another hour to insure that her team is fully recharged for a long run of 9 to 10 hours.

Meanwhile, Robert Sorlie rises from a sleeping mat in a far corner, and exits to check on his resting dogs outside the checkpoint. John Baker, the annual top finisher from Kotzebue, Alaska, is motionless in a deep sleep position at the far end of the cabin.

For insiders here in Anvik, the benchmark has been set. Martin set the time, now the others must match it. Tmes posted on this run from Greyling to Eagle Island will reveal the trend. Is Buser gradually separating from the pack or finding his lead eroding?

The Trail

Once mushers exit Greyling down a steep slip on to the Yukon, the trail at first appears interminably boring and featureless. At places, the Yukon, including islands,oxbows, and braided channels, can be four miles wide. It is an immense river, which to villagers, is referred to as a personality. The Mighty YUKE, transporter of huge runs of salmon, the conduit of transportation for villagers, is frozen solid in November and a main highway for villagers.

AT each bend, the river exercizes its force and energy. In winter, winds accelerate and decrease with the lay of the river. Buser certainly encountered wind tunnels enroute to Eagle Island, all of them directly in the face of his huskies.

I asked villagers here in Greyling if they had traveled 140 miles upriver to Kaltag this winter. No, they replied, gas is $5.50 a gallon in the village, a fact requiring no further explanation.

Buser started from Eagle Island about five minutes behind King, but King widened the gap through the 70 mile section of trail. Buser lost about an hour in total when he arrived in Kaltage about 10:15PM.

How It All Happened

Our helicopter and Wescam camera arrived in Eagle Island this mid-morning Saturday March 10 and discovered Buser, King, Mackey and Gebhardt teams camped out of the wind in a north channel slough of the Yukon. Basically, we find Buser slightly ahead of King, and Mackey and Gebhardt about two hours further back.

The day has all the feel of a Tour de France time trial. The 70 mile run from Eagle Island, mid-way between the villages of Greyling and Kaltag, is flat and mind-numbingly monotonous with long interminable runs on the wide river bed of the Yukon, further complicated by a strong downriver wind that drives spindrift directly into the face of dogs and musher.

The question is simple. Which team and musher will post the fastest time and demonstrate the strength and momentum to take over the destiny of the race.

In what I think was a surprise and daring move, King boots his dogs after a five and a half hour rest. Recall that he was just on the trail from Anvik to Eagle Island for almost a dozen hours. He gives the ready command, moves a few dogs into different positions in the team, distinctly but softly commands “alright” and team unceremoniously trots off down a narrow slough at a brisk trot.

Buser, who has rested longer than King—almost six and a half hours-is five minutes behind King in preparation and also departs. It is possible that he felt it a strategic move to force King to lead out on the unbroken trail and lead him into Kaltag. After all, Buser was posting the fastest times into Eagle Island—–precisely the reason he arrived at the front of the pack.

We launched the helicopter to watch this drama and immediately noticed that King’s team had the advantage. After 35 miles on the trail it appeared that King had widened his lead from five minutes to a half hour, then steadily gained advantage to Kaltag.

Other Developments in The Future

Lance Mackey and his 15 dogs are demonstrating very impressive durability and strength. The team dogs are consuming mountains of food and bright eyed when I saw them in Eagle Island. His supporters are looking for a break out run which will propel him to the front. Although his team speed has matched King and Buser, he has not notably surpassed them. Since he is two or more hours behind, he will have to demonstrate superiour speed to gain the lead.

Watch His Run Time to Kaltag

Paul Gebhardt and team are also very strong but likewise not surpassing the speeds of Buser and King. On a physical level, the always optimistic Gebhardt, is fighting a terrible cold. To protect his eyes, Paul wears a snow machiner helmut with a clear viser—a great idea on a windblown track like the Iditarod trail. Unfortunately, it leaves a an area of cheek and chin exposed and he arrives with good frost bite.

Ed Iten has fifteen dogs in terrific shape. But he acknowledges that he has given so much time to King and Buser that he understands his team will have to be much faster to recuperate time. Still, he is committed to his strategy of runs complemented by very generous rest. Iten is a come behind master, predictably vaulting to the front in the last third of the race. He almost caught Robert Sorlie, in a wild rush to the finish, in 2005. Is there enough time or luck for Ed Iten to spoil the victory party?

Sunday Morning

I talked to King about his exit time for Sunday morning out of Kaltag. Traditionally, mushers rest six hours before attempting the 80 mile traverse over a coastal mountain range to the Berring Sea Village of Unalakleet. King did not commit, probably gauging his competition to make sure he keeps advantage.

My prediction? Expect a 3:30 AM departure by King. In 2005, King made the traverse to Unalakleet in 11 hours 2 minutes.

Martin Buser and Jeff King end all conjecture in Iditarod when they arrive in quick succession about 4:30 PM Thursday evening. Incredibly, they have made a giant leap of 90 miles to include several short stops to feed their huskies. Conspicuously absent is Zach Steer, who departed earlier this morning in front of Buser and King.

Our helicopter saw Zach parked on the tundra about half way between Ophir and Iditarod but those of us working in the checkpoint assume he is only stopping for a short break. Finally, an hour after dark, we start to wonder if Zach broke his sled or had an accident. He seems long overdue and by 8PM even Martin Buser is asking if anyone knows the whereabouts of his fellow musher.

In a race full of twists and turns, Zach Steer finally arrives with 15 animated dogs at 9:30PM and quietly announces that he is checking in to Iditarod checkpoint, loading the sled with additional dog food, and straps a half bale of hay to his caboose sled. This ends all speculation about Zach Steer stranded helplessly on the tundra as he obviously appears in good enough health to steal the spotlight as the leading character in the 2007 Iditarod drama.

An hour later Martin Buser attempts to stealthily slip out of Iditarod in pursuit. He boots the dogs before his last feeding, which is not his normal procedure. Then he offers his dogs a last meal and then easily starts to put the dogs back in line for departure. He is not attempting to snooker the competition or the media but trying to catch his team off guard.

He has a female in heat, which is destroying all vestiges of team discipline. A small group of checkpoint volunteers, including vets and our film crew, witness a meltdown of organization as the team suddenly tangles in a ball of huskies. Martin quickly jumps off the sled and straightens out the team, and indicates to the checker that he has to get going. In seconds, after a comical exit, he disappears in the darkness in pursuit of Zach Steer.

Jeff King, characteristically, is more cautious than his competition Martin Buser. He rested a full eight hours, considered the “full tank” in Mushdom. He exited, dogs squealing and barking, a ridiculous display considering they had just come across a dismal stretch of tundra. Obviously amused by the behavior of his team, he was disconcerned about the time gap between he and front runners Steer and
Buser.

Lance Mackey and Paul Gebhardt

Mackey and Gebhardt prepare to leave off their 24 hour Mandatory rest at about 2:30 AM and 2:40 AM.

Clear, starlit , and moonless, the quiet of the checkpoint is broken by a raucous pack of Mackey hounds. A group of twelve veterans at the front of the team whine and yip, ready to leave the boredom of the checkpoint. Young dogs positioned in the rear of the towline near the sled look about quizzically, wondering about the enthusiasm of the veterans. Mackey told me earlier that these first year dogs are just beginning to understand the rhythm of the trail.

At 2:25 AM Lance moves his team from the straw bed onto the main trail and waits for the checker to announce his exact departure time. Lance avoids a prediction, and concentrates on the moment. He is entertained by his dogs, which have devoured buckets of feed, and are lunging to go. The only canine personality which seems out of place is Lances super leader Larry. Larry is standing staunchly at the front of the team, in contrast to his happy go lucky team mates. Larry, we discover, is not the fastest on the team but he is serious, never makes a mistake, and totally reliable. Lance has kept Larry anonymously in the team through the rough stuff of the Nikolai burn and the tussocks on the way to Iditarod. But now, says Lance, “Larry is going to make some time, I hope,” and laughs and smiles.

“You’re good to go , Lance,” announces the checker. Mackey and team reach the limit of the cameras light. A headlight bobs in the dark and then disappears in a wide curve of the slought. Ahead, the trail proceeds over rolling hills. Mackey is about three hours behind race leader Steer and Buser,

Ten minutes later, the steady Paul Gebhardt, departs. Fresh off a 24 hour break, Lance and Paul look to gradually reel in the front runners.

We are in a hard number data void at Iditarod checkpoint since we have no internet connection. The most successful communication tool is ham radio, which survives even when our generators sputter and die in minus 20F temperatures, a rubber oil line cracking in the cold.

But, we are rich in impressions. At the checkpoint, race leaders Mackey, Gebhardt, et al wait for the arrival of the pursing pack, led by a tall, lithe newcomer to the front echelon named Zach Steer. While the mushers at Iditarod are lounging, recharging for twenty four hours, Steer and his older mentors Jeff King and Martin Buser, are steadily advancing from their 24 hour mandatory taken in Ophir.

This the grand convergence, the moment of truth, for the dedicated fan. Mathematically, times are adjusted at the 24 hour mandatory to compensate for different start times. After the 24 hour break, all mushers are equal on time. The only thing that is not equal is the place where the 24 is taken——a great management tool for the musher, who may opt to give the huskies a glorious break of 24 hours in any checkpoint, except of course the last.

But here is the catch. A musher, if he or she choses, can often bump a rest stop, or abbreviate a rest stop, after the 24 hour because, of course, the dogs are well rested. This creates the illusion, for example, that Steer, King, and Buser are running well ahead of Mackey in Iditarod. In fact, Mackey can pull the same trick later tonight when he leaves about 2;30 AM and vaults quickly to the front again.

The unanswered question is how fast can the pursuers make it to Iditarod. Can they make it one giant run of 11 hours, or must they stop and rest the dogs, making the total run 15 or 16 hours? At noon, our helicopter arrived and reported Zach Steer (and company) just short of half-way. Quickly we computed that he is on average schedule with a six hour run. Will they take a rest midway, say of four hours, or continue to Iditarod in one giant run, to arrive in Unalakleet well ahead of Mackey and company?

Meanwhile Mackey subconsciously waits for the commotion of an arriving dog team later this evening. Ideally,Steer, King, and Buser will be on schedule to match Mackey when he is released from his 24 hour mandatory sometime around 2:30am Friday morning.

Amongst volunteers and officials here at Iditarod, the arrival of Steer , King and Buser , is a point of interest. The entire race will come into focus tonight at Iditarod checkpoint.

Trail to Shageluk

Reports from Iditarod trailbreakers on snowmachines indicate the trail to Shageluk is hard packed and good—-great information for Lance Mackey.

Lance Mackey continues to travel the Iditarod Trail with a full complement of 16 dogs and arrives first into Takotna at 22:52, Tuesday night. Our helicopter crew followed Lance out of Nikolai earlier this afternoon and watched his magical ride. He has the team into a smooth efficient trot. We interviewed him in Takotna after he fed his dogs a five gallon ration of kibble and meat, and he admitted this was the first time he had arrived in Takotna with a large team, not to mention sixteen dogs. Sirens sounded and the community hall emptied to watch Mackey arrive first to this interior mining town. After a six hour rest, he planned to continue with the same sixteen, a fortunate development. He will need the power when ascends a steep road out of Takotna and travels rolling hills to the next checkpoint of Ophir.

Buser is running a different strategy than leader Mackey and has his team bedded down in McGrath. Inside fans are unanimous in identifying Mackey and Buser has race leaders, even though we find them leapfrogging checkpoints. Sometime around 5AM their two strategies should merge into a race to the 24 hour mandatory checkpoint when Buser will probably blow through Takotna. This will be pivotal. Will Mackey be able to continue to challenge Buser’s team speed. Though neither Mackey or Buser will identify a final destination for the 24 hour, it appears they are headed to the front of the race—-maybe Iditarod.

Meanwhile, the front of the pack has a legitimate new visitor. Emerging from a pack of pursuers, Zack Steer arrives second in Takotna about midnight (time not posted when we watched him arrive.) A mathematically inclined fan pointed out that he and team roasted the trail from Nikolai to McGrath–maybe tonight’s fastest. In a race that has included many unexpected twists—-Jeff King and John Baker lose the trail to Rohn and sacrifice two hours, Dee Jonrowe and Doug Swingley scratch due to accidents on the trail—–Steer has quietly emerged as a real deal competitor with his team of 15 dogs.

Zack Steer has positioned himself in the top three—-to include Mackey and Buser. Team speed is very difficult to guage, often changing from run to run, but it seems that Steer and Mackey teams have the steam to travel with the Buser speedsters.

The Iditarod can now define a leader. Lance Mackey (”The Incredible Lance Mackey”) arrived in Rohn Checkpoint at the head of the Iditarod column of leaders at about 4PM Monday afternoon. Forty-five minutes later, Martin Buser arrived in gray dusk, the air almost misty with spindrift kept airborne by forty mile winds.

Our helicopter crew followed Lance through the mouth of Rainy Pass and down the glacier blue ice, open water, and bare ground of Dalzell Creek Gorge. It’s worth a description.

We found Lance crossing a broad valley approaching the divide of the Alaska Range at Rainy Pass, our GPS indicating 3400 feet. About 45 miles earlier the mushers are at 700 feet above sea level. Rainy Pass is an obvious notch in the imposing serrated Alaskan Range. Once the trail enters the mouth of the pass the route continues uphill following a willow and tundra bound creek. Finally, the trail crests the summit and drops down the north side of the range and this is where we find Lance Mackey and team dropping rapidly to the floor of Dalzell Gorge. Strong winds channel through the gorge and pound the helicopter. Therefore we focus our Wescam camera from a high altitude and watch Mackey negotiate a snake of a trail on glare ice.

Several times Lance stops the team, deep blue open water just ahead, slips and slide on glare ice and grabs the leaders, doubles back to a sharp turn in the trail and continues. Luckily, his dogs are easy to handle, many of them just two weeks off the Yukon Quest trail and —its daylight and he can see the trail.

An hour later, we land at Rohn at talk to Lance and he confirms what we saw from the air. The trail is abysmal and he is certain that mushers traveling in the dark will find it a gorge of mushing horrors. For Lance, it is another success. He arrives with sixteen strong dogs, quickly parks in the protection of tall spruce, feeds the dogs, and contemplates the view from the front of the Iditarod pack.

Later, still in daylight, Martin Buser arrives with his exquisite set of sixteen pullers and seconds the motion. The trail will be very problematic and dangerous for mushers following in the dark who must decipher a myriad of snow machine scratch marks on glare ice and sort out a trail with a narrow beam headlight searching the dark. Intent of breaking his 26 minute record at Skwetna, he quickly grabs a plastic sled and jogs down to the river about a 150 yards from the checkpoint, dips two buckets of water, beds the dog, feeds snacks, and is the first one to the small Rohn cabin, quite prepared for two hours deep sleep. He is fast on the trail and fast in checkpoints.

Macky and Buser announce they will stay for a substantial rest—-around 6 or 7 hours.

On the Trail

It is confirmed that Doug Swingley, the 4X champ and race favorite, has scratched from the race at Rainy Pass. I saw Doug in Rainy Pass and it is a no brainer. No way he could have continued racing, not to mention the challenging trail he would have faced, with busted ribs near his backbone. About three miles from Rainy, Doug and team hit an angular glacier and ricocheted into spruce trees. The dogs are OK, but Swingley is nailed with a game ending injury. For reader information, the Iditarod Trail Committee will arrange to fly Doug’s dogs back to Anchorage and volunteers along the trail will assist if Doug needs it. When I saw him this afternoon he was slowly moving with some snacks for his dogs, then said he was going to lay down in a warm cabin at the checkpoint and collect his thoughts. Lot of pain and bad luck.

Later this Monday evening Toleff Monson tells me about a huge tangle of sled dogs on a glacier section of trail just before Rainy Pass with Dee Jonrowe’s team. After forty five minutes dissembling dogs and repositioning them on tow lines, Dee remarks that she may have broken her hand. Early Tuesday Morning, I hear confirmation on Rohn River radio traffic that she has in fact scratched from Iditarod 2007.

To emphasize the difficulty of the trail, Sigrid Ekran rises from a nap in the warm checkpoint cabin of Rohn, an eye shiner beginning to develop. Well, she explains, it doesn’t hurt that bad, but she has broken her nose. Good news is the nose is back straight, but the bad news is her sled his radically out of alignment—but good enough, she reckons, to get she and team over the next 75 miles of trail to Nikolai village.

Lost on the Trail

Gut wrenching but a typical mushing screw up. AliyZirkle continued on the Iron

Dog Snowmachine race trail to Ptarmigan Pass and missed the turn-off to Rainy Pass. Eventually, she discovered her error and returned to fix the trail with markers. An hour later, John Baker did the same thing lost an hour and a half despite Aliy’s precautions.

Besides the hour and a half in travel time lost, also figure that the dogs must be compensated.

IN the dark, the fork in the trail which leads to Rainy Pass (the Iditarod trail) and the fork which follows the Iron Dog Snowmachine trail to Ptarmigan Pass continues to befuddle numbers of following mushers, including the defending champ Jeff King, who also loses a good hour and a half.

First on the Trail to Nikolai

Jason Barron, embracing a schedule different from Mackey and Buser (our titular leaders for the evening), led out of Rohn in direction Nikola at about 9:30. However, he was packing extra straw and it was clear that his intentions, and others on his same schedule, planned to camp on the trail.

Therefore, I’ll take the license, to identify the race leaders as Lance Mackey, who left about 10:30PM this Monday evening, followed minutes later by Martin Buser. These clearly intend to make the traverse to Nikola in the darkness of Tuesday morning.

Both teams left with a surge of power. Buser’s dogs, frisky after nearly seven hours of feasting and sleeping, barked and whined and hammered their harness, a clear indication of team strength. Temperatures at the checkpoint were recorded at minus 22F with a solid breeze.

Buser still had the tug lines of his towline snapped to a ring located at the shoulders of his huskies. Of course it made sense to harness them this way so that he could stop them more easily on glare ice, so I was curious when he would snap the tug line further back towards the hips for more power. Martin told me that it was working well and felt sufficient power with his present tow line. He’ll let his chargers enjoy the freedom of his shoulder harness until he needs the power. When would that be? Answer, heavy trail breaking, for example, through fresh snow.

Mackey impresses members of the musher pack remaining here at Rohn with his vibrant team of even trotting huskies, but it seems the consensus that Buser, for the moment, is the fastest traveling on the trail.

Our film crew departs Anchorage about 7:30AM and arrives at the Willow Restart Staging area at 9:10AM. The Staging area for parking for mushers is organized with spray paint spaces with musher numbers on the ice just below the Willow Community Hall. It’s a good set up with lots of room for hooking up dog teams and manavuering trucks and trailers.

For the spectator, if you are thinking about being one in the future, is a little grittier. I talked to one fan who had arrived at 8AM, six hours before the 2PM start, and was parked in the hinterland about a mile an a half from the start line assembled on the ice by the musher parking lot. Although it was minus 12 F at 9AM, she was flushed with heat.

By 9AM, we had interviewed a selection of rookies but had not spotted one veteran. The concern for the newcomer is getting stuck in the long lines of traffic coming out of Anchorage to watch the race. By 10:30AM I spotted Sonny Lindner, a prime time contender, and assumed the majority of mushers would soon be arriving.

Pre-Race

Number one topic in the dog yard was trail conditions—-expected to remain hard and fast up the south shoulders of the Alaskan Range to Pontilla Lake (Rainy Pass). On Monday, the advisory for front runners is a trail down the north side of the Alaskan Range through Dalzell Gorge to be good, but hard and fast. By Tuesday Morning, leaders will be traversing from Rohn River to Nikolai through the Buffalo Tunnels and Nikolai Burn on bare dirt. The latest advisory I heard indicated big winds, maybe enough to ground airplanes. Strong winds will not stop dog teams, but it is a strategic element to consider.

In the yard, we interviewed Matt Calore, Rich Humm, Scott White, and Mike Rossi (Herbster, Wisconsin)—all rookies—and looked for one of those wild-eyed interviews, but didn’t find it. These rookies are very prepared and realistic about their race strategy. Requirements for first year entrants includes a couple of preparatory races, extensive vet check of dogs, and rookie meetings.

Pre-Race Drug Testing

Iditarod dogs are tested. WE saw the drug testing team, headed by Dr. Maurie Craig of Oregon State University, located to collect samples from randomly selected teams. Always a question from fans, the use of drugs is an interesting sidebar to the Iditarod race. In my experience and conversations with mushers, performance enhancing drugs, even if it were allowed, do not gain an advantage because the negative effects out weigh the benefits. For the sake of conversation, steroids seem like a likely choice to build muscle strength, but it is common knowledge amongst mushers that this drug is diametric for use with long distance animals and reduces resistance to infection, for example. Its generally held to be a bad ider. At any rate, drug testing is comprehensive on the Iditarod and puts a secure control on the competition.

The Leaders

Our film crew is trying hard to document team leaders of teams. But here is the deal—most competitive, really championship quality teams, will have an abundance of leaders. In fact, in training, nearly every dog in the team will have the training and experience to lead. Sure, there is a special athlete in every team, but often the mushers will protect this dog by putting them in the middle of the team, and save them specifically for special sections of trail where they feel like a fast run would be a good strategic move.

On the other hand, a good sensible, but less animated and slower leader, may be the best for today’s run from Willow to Yetna and Skwetna. Why? Because the mushers goal is to conserve energy and reduce team speed to a controllable level. In addition, the really elite teams are so well matched, that the musher is not certain which animals, by luck, good fortune, or raw genetics, will emerge in the later stages of the race as the strongest and most vibrant leaders.

To Watch:

Willow to Yetna (the mushers take off their start bibs and return them to checkers) and then to Skwetna, the first checkpoint with food, should be about a seven or seven and a half hour expedition. By midnight tonight we should have a good idea how our leaders are organizing their schedule. My main interest? Robert Sorlie will certainly influence the race because he is, by nature, inclined to take control of the front of the race on the first day, if he can. Note that he is starting at position 50, which will give him about a 4 PM start. Most of our front running personalities, to include Buser, Seavey, King, and Swingley will be in front of him. The Dynamics of this first day of racing are going to be great. WE’ll keep track of them.

Tonight: Sunday night arrival in Skwetna. Don’t get confused. Mushers will dramatically differ in strategic moves. Some will rest outside of Skwetna and blow through the checkpoint to camp in the woods enroute to Finger Lake. Others are likely to head directly for Skwetna and rest in this remote checkpoint, despite the noise and chaos of hundreds of dogs and a coterie of spectators.

This strategic manavuering, however, can be the most interesting for the Fans.

Big Moon tonight.

After watching teams from the vantage of a helicopter, one thing noticed is the symmetry and smooth running of the elite teams. It was no surprise when we saw Sorlie’s #50 team shortly out of Willow. Sorlie is a traditionalist driving a classic tobaggan style sled with none of the cabooses and trailer sleds of others and uses the old style harnesses that pull off the hip of the dogs. Noticeable, and a key to his game plan, was the trotting team. Sorlie had already settled the team into an efficient traveling speed.

Even though mushers wear their bibs with numbers out of the start chute to Yetna station (about three and a half hours on the trail) it is difficult to read numbers. We briefly saw John Baker, a top contender, at number 48 trotting ahead of Sorlies team, then Swenson, King, Seavey, Buser, Gebhardt, Swingley, Jonrowe, Brooks and the pack one by one. On several occasions we saw passes, sixteen dogs flowing in an arc around a slower team, with an immediate impression. It was clear that the top mushers have trained their teams to travel at a trot. Some teams were loping, but overall it was my observation that the top teams had adapted a strategy of easy trotting.

Finally, just outside of Yetna, traveling in direction Skwetna we spot #5 Ramy Brooks at the head of the pack with a half bale of hale tied to his sled. Obviously, his intention is to camp for a rest—-normally a four hour rest at this stage of the race—-and then continue up the trail by simply blowing through Skwetna. Swingley, on the other hand, told me he planned on an arrival in Skwetna about 9;30PM. This means that Doug plans to make the 6 hours 70 mile run in one leap and will not camp outside the Skwetna checkpoint.

Out of the chute, we are witnessing dramatic differences in strategy, which is all the fun of watching the Iditarod.

The Master, Ric Swenson, true to his patient strategy that led him to 5X’s wins, is observed comfortably seated on his caboose sled, a respectable rooster tail of snow exiting from under his brake (to slow the dogs.)

Dee Jonrowe’s team looks magnificent, working carefully around overflow on the river, and trotting and alternately trotting just short of Yetna Station. Unlike most of her male top contenders, she is driving a traditional tobaggan sled with none of the modern attachments. Reason? She is being extra careful. Since she is concerned about the rough trail she wants to be safe. If she has to jump off the sled, she will not be in danger of being entrapped by trailer sled to the rear.

Jessie Royer, #3, another elite female musher, is spotted just at Yetna about 5:30PM still in formation. Only Ramey Brooks is slightly ahead, about a six minute advantage after three and half hours of running.

What to Look for:

Our crew is now positioned in Skwetna looking for a first team in the checkpoint. Insiders are more interested in strategy, than time, because it is clear that the top teams are actually trying to go SLOW, so they can go faster tomorrow. All this posturing is confusing, but it makes the race. Note, which mushers camp before Skwetna, camp in Skwetna, and those that blow through Skwetna for a camp further up in the woods.

The race Detective enjoys this challenge. By midnight, we will have a tighter notion of strategy. In particular, I want to see Sorlie in action. His influence is profound because he was quite willing to take an hour from the competition on the first night of mushing. Will top mushers be willing to give it to him this year?

Just Reported

Stan Hooley, Iditarod race director, reports a musher five miles out of Skwetna at 7:45 PM.

Temperatures quickly dropping to 0 F and wind ceasing.

Jim Lanier and Zach Steer arrive first into Skwetna at 8PM. Top contenders Martin Buser and Dee Jonrowe arrive within the next half hour.

As a little mental exercize I decide to time Martin Buser, who I know to be one of the best in checkpoints, and see how long it takes him to park the dogs, prepare a straw bed, remove booties, run to the water hole in the river for cool fresh water (which he immediately offers his dogs in bowls), then run and walk fast back to a giant cook pot of hot water, add the hot water to a cooler full of kibble and meat and fat, then serve the dinners to his hungry huskies. In 26 minutes, which is a record in my book, Martins dogs are satiated, and now settling in on their straw beds for a nap.

After this flurry of action, I inform Martin of a 26 minute time. He smiles, and says “I am sorry I couldn’t have done it faster,”—-an understatement. While Martin walks from his resting dogs on the frozen river up to the Dehlia cabin, high on the bank of the Yetna River, the rest of the mushers in the yard are still doing dog chores. Martin could have said thank you very much for the half hour gift. His dogs were already resting while others were waiting for dining room service. Rest is the bank account of the musher. The more you collect, the easier it is to invest in running.

Doug Swingley, at exactly 9:28PM, arrives in Skwetna with one dog riding in a special carrier in the back of the sled. He explains that he has been alternating dogs every hour just for a little rest—–a practise similar to Jeff King. I asked what he thought, and Doug shrugged his shoulders and thought it was worth trying. For sure, he reasoned, he had plenty of power and it was better than riding the brake to slow the team.

By 11:30 Mackey, Sorlie, Baker, et al ,blew through Skwetna enroute to a camping ground up the trail out of Skwetna in direction Finger Lake. Their probable camp spot is a lake midway to Finger Lake known as One Stone Lake. Theoretically, it gives this group a good shot for a one run push to the divide of the Alaska Range at Rainy Pass. Our film crew caught the action in the dark while Buser , Swingley, and Jonrowe had dinner in the Dehlia cabin and remained unconcerned and indifferent. They have witnessed this dizzy divergence of schedules before and understand that they will converge at the Rohn River Checkpoint tomorrow Monday night.

Easy to decipher? Not yet, but this puzzle of moves and thrusts will begin to reveal itself.

In the dog yard, I was impressed with Martin Buser and Doug Swingley. They were the fastest of any in the Skwetna yard to bed and feed their dogs. That means they are minutes ahead of the pack because their dogs are logging sleep. Rest minutes are as important as run minutes.

In the Checkpoint

Skwetna is a loose connection of a few cabins and lodges -beautiful houses— separated by miles but centered around the Joe and Dehlia Residence on a high bank of the Skwetna River. Their new house is our work station, and the old residence, a sturdy two story log house, is the checkpoint where mushers can sleep in the top story. Below, volunteers have prepared a wonderful meal for the mushers and the trail crew. Martin Buser finishes his ham dinner and salad and observes that is precisely the reason he has docked at Skwetna.

The others, who have checked in and moved further up the trail, prefer to camp in the woods to avoid the chaos and noise of barking dogs and snow machines. However, about 2:30 AM a natural maelstrom begins to howl. The wind, as predicted, is gusting and blowing hard and one can only imagine the 50 mile an hour winds predicted further up the shoulders of the Alaskan Range at Rainy Pass. Rainy Pass is the destination of front runners, scheduled for a Noon arrival tomorrow Monday.

The insulated Tee Shirts of Doug Swingley’s team, which seemed superfluous in sunny warm Willow, are now an advantage. He demonstrated how he can also attach a “blanket” to the rear of the dog, also, to protect the flank. He might use these enroute to Rainy Pass.

Generally speaking, all top competitors in Skwetna have taken a four hour rest and are now on the trail by 2AM, Monday morning.

First, arrival time for the very interested fan, should be about 9:30 PM in Skwetna, according to 4X champ and last year’s second place finisher Doug Swingley.

Swingley was putting on dog “tee shirts” just before harnessing the dogs. The very professionally fitting tee shirts actually serve several purposes. For one, they insulate the shoulders and upper torso of the dog. When temperatures descend this evening to ten or twenty below zero, the dogs shoulder muscles will be warm—a good prevention for sore muscles. Also, the shirts are a good padding for the harnesses that fit over the neck and chest of the huskies. This is all very good planning, and I was impressed.

When asked if the dog’s would have a tendency to heat up in the afternoon sun, Doug commented that it would probably happen and the dogs would naturally slow up as a result—which is exactly what he is looking for on the first run of Iditarod. Slow and deliberate is the musher’s mantra, because the inclination of these animals is to go fast and hard.

In addition, Jeff King, Doug, and others are using a modified “King harness” (after Jeff King, the 2007 champ) which connects the tug line of the towline to the shoulders of the dogs. The mechanics of this harness are interesting. Although the dogs can pull easily and have the freedom to move on the trail essentially unencumbered, they are also not able to pull hard. Doug told me he could easily stop the team with a sled brake—not an easy thing to do with a willfull team of sixteen dogs.

To pull hard, the harness tug line needs to come off the hips. As Swingley explained, however, that is exactly the goal. Since the trail is hard and fast, the dogs do not need to pull hard, and in turn benefit from the modified harness. Later in the race, he will switch to another set of harnesses that allow the dogs to pull harder off the hips.

More Innovations

Martin Buser, our prime time contender, gave me a quick tour around his dog truck and team posted. Gorgeous, absolutely, gorgeous animals. Noticeably well fleshed with some weight over muscle, he told me how he had prepared the team. In stages, using preliminary races to test his dogs, he noticed that they would recover after an event (such as a 200 mile race) and add weight. With each event, the team became physiologically more efficient. In the end, the trick, the genius, the skill, of Martin was to catch the dogs when they are on the curve going up to gain weight. Today, the team arrived rested, powerful, and gaining weight.

Jeff King, the defending 2006 champ, is the measure. He resides in Iditarod’s top echelon. A quick visit at the champ’s truck found Jeff packing his unique sled, known as the caboose sled. Now used by Swingley, Buser, and others, the caboose sled positions the musher in the middle of the runners, with loads to the front and rear. Of course, it is contrary to the classic photos of the old time freighter, but for racing it is easier and more efficient for the dogs.

An added twist, as if to remind the Pack that he was still the Master of Innovations, Jeff had an improved handle bar heater (fueled by the same alcohol that powers cookers for melting snow) and another tail dragger mini-sled behind his main sled. The purpose? The tail dragger was an air kennel big enough for two of his leaders. The idea is to start out with two dogs in the kennel, at rest, while the other fourteen easily pull the sled on flat river bed trails to Skwetna. AT Skwetna he can decide to abandon the trail dragger or continue to use it if he judges trails good enough.

What to Watch for:

WE will follow Robert Sorlie out of Willow at about 4PM. Since he starts 50th, he will be well in the back of the Iditarod pack. Then we will follow with the chopper and a special gyro stabilized camera, Wescam, and document the first hours of racing on this year’s Iditarod.

Dark falls here about 6;30PM. Musher Doug Swingley told us to expect a musher in Skwetna about 9:30PM. That musher, could be Doug Swingley, will take an approximate rest of four hours and then launch his team of swifts in direction Finger Lake.

Like all Iditarods, most travel is done in darkness.

Therefore, appreciate that the Ceremonial start is not timed, and other than the fact that an appearance is mandatory, Saturday is a day for the mushers to mix with crowds of fans and give a select group of Iditariders a mushing experience.

From our vantage point on the broadcast podium today, however, a few catchy innovations and precautions caught my eye. Every musher I saw go out of the chute today had booties on their dogs—-probably not a necessity for such a short run on loose snow, but a precaution to avoid any risk at all of damaging the paws of their huskies.

Interstingly, sled dogs are able to pull harder when the tug line of the harness comes off the hips of the sled dogs. But over the last several years, innovators like Jeff King, John Baker, and many others have experimented with harness design so that at times the dogs are pulling off the shoulders. Although the dogs cannot pull as hard, the theory goes that they are actually more comfortable and less likely to develop chronic injuries—-the same thing we see in many sports with the same motion or type of gear being used. As a result, I saw many twelve dog teams (that’s the number required on Saturday) with shoulder tug attachments. These teams were still creating a rooster tail of snow out of the start chute pulling two sleds and three or four passengers, but they were controllable.

Changing the angle of harness attachment is a nifty innovation which mushers will use in different terrains and situations to control power. On Sunday, of course, top mushers will use the 16 dog complement allowed by the rules, lighter sleds, and more than sufficient power from the 850 lbs of biomass in front the sled.

Long time fans will have appreciated the Memorial staged this morning for Susan Butcher. Great memory for Alaska’s most famous athlete and public figure.

Info heard at Headquarters:

Horrific winds could develop Monday and Tuesday. Will it stop the dogs? No, but it will wreak havoc with the airplane logistics of our film crew.

Trail condition forecast remains unchanged for tomorrow Sunday, with hard and fast trail reported.

Circulating this Friday morning on the eve of tomorrow’s Ceremonial Start on downtown Anchorage’s 4th avenue, the fan will observe an early morning frenzy. While fans regard this Friday as a casual day of preparation, organizers, trail breakers, and volunteers are hustling to complete final arrangements for the start of the race.

Meanwhile, mushers are contemplating the facts, as we know them today. Clear weather forecasts make it likely that trail conditions are not going to change. Good trail with sufficient snow for a nice ride over frozen terrain from the Willow Restart to the divide of the Alaska Range puts mushers at ease while considering the first day of trail. At least, mushers can introduce their fired up teams to the rhythm of the trail under controllable conditions. To reduce speed, the primary responsibility of mushers on the first day of racing is to keep the team traveling at a reasonable speed, usually with conservative and slower leaders to the front, and by riding the brake or a drag especially attached to the sled.

However, on the second day of the race, trail conditions are advertised as dicey. The Dalzell Gorge, which takes mushers and teams down the north side of the Alaska Range, is famous as a technical and jarring ride to the checkpoint of Rohn River. Less snow means the packed trail will not camouflage the frozen ground, ice, rocks, and ice. Fortunately, Iditarod trail groomers have worked hard to keep this trail in good form. Mushers need to pay attention, but this section of trail should be a good transition.

Readers who watched some great musher interviews posted at the Insider will recall Dee Jonrowe’s great description of the next section of trail from the checkpoint of Rohn to the village of Nikolai. Collectively, this run that transitions from the shoulders of the Alaska Range to the wide and relatively flat basin of the Yukon Drainage is known as the Buffalo Tunnels and the Nikolai Burn.

As Dee pointed out, this run requires special attention for Iditarod 2007. Low or no snow conditions, and a warm weather thaw, has left the trail a petrified frozen bare dirt, glare ice image of itself in summer. Stiff winds are surely blowing whatever snow existed off the trail. What we have left is a concrete hard trail, with all the irregularities of root wads, rocks, and ruts in the trail, to test sled strength and musher endurance. Dee for example, who is slightly built, recognizes that she does not have great upper body strength. That means she is going to rely heavily on pre-race training of her sled dogs so she can “talk them down” to a reasonable and safe speed.

The most dangerous area in most musher’s estimation is about a twenty-mile stretch just outside of the Rohn checkpoint, known as the Buffalo Tunnels. Literally, this trail has been modified by a herd of local buffalo into a well-used dirt and rock game trail through thickets of brush and black spruce. On a good year there is very little snow, and this year it is reported that there is little or none—-which is precisely why the buffalo like this area in winter. As a result, visualize bouncing through this trail like a pinball over frozen ground, rocks, and root wads, with the occasional near collision with a trailside spruce tree or boulder. This is the testing ground for sled durability. In addition, for some contrary reason, dogs love to run through this section, rich with the smell of game, full of interesting turns in the trail, and bare ground footing which makes running easier.

Having survived the Buffalo Tunnels in good shape, the mushers and teams will begin the crossing to Nikolai through the Nikolai Burn—an emerging landscape of small green spruce growing between stark trunks of spruce burned by a fire. It is likely we will have one of those years in which we can spot mushers on the Nikolai Burn at 30 below zero from the air—–by looking for the clouds of dust that follow the trotting dog teams.

Two basic approaches work for this challenge on the second and third day of the race. One is to accept the situation with equanimity and not change plans. The other, for mushers with a little free time today to tweak their plan, is to think about altering plans to help get through this potential nightmare. Dee Dee Jonrowe’s solution? Stop at Rohn River and give she and huskies a wonderful 8-hour rest. With the rest and strength that will give her, hope she can control the exuberance of her team into a manageable speed, and negotiate her way through the Buffalo Tunnels, and then the Nikolai Burn.

Best Thought of the Day:

Our film crew producer and I found Ric Swenson at the Thursday night Mushers Banquet and cajoled him into an interview in one of the side rooms of the Sullivan Arena. Typically, filmmakers like to ask similar questions to all the participants so that they can develop a “thread” of interest through the final documentary. One of these questions went something like this: What sport or athlete would you compare a sled dog? To help the musher, one of our guys made a logical suggestion that sled dogs were the Lance Armstrong of the sled dog world. It was one of those very sensible questions typed up in New York that was sure to elicit a predictable answer. AT any rate, the expected answer to this rhetorical question was not going to come from Ric Swenson. Ric

Thought about three seconds, and debunked the suggestion. Of course not, Iditarod sled dogs are not Lance Armstrong. They are tough, gritty, soccer players or hockey players bouncing off the ground or ice, playing with no substitutions, adapting to constantly changing conditions. The film crew enjoyed Ric’s answer. You should too. Check it out on Iditarod Insider.

Up for Tomorrow:

The Ceremonial Start in Downtown Anchorage begins tomorrow at 9:30 AM. Although this display of sled dog power is not timed for the final results, it is mandatory. The obligatory gear required on the race trail will not be required. Mushers will be entertaining their Iditarider passengers, and at the same time carefully watching to keep the run fun and safe. John Baker told me this morning that he would have two passengers in his sled, followed by another sled connected with a bridle loaded with a passenger and handler. With twelve dogs he felt fortunate—the extra weight would keep the speed down. With four or five passengers, it just goes to show how much power a team of huskies can generate!

Finally, the mushers arrive in one location for the mandatory 9:00AM 2007 Musher Meeting at the third floor conference room of the Millenium Hotel, Anchorage. 82 mushers, at last count, walk through a gauntlet of media reporters, some with notepads and voice recorders, and the ubiquitous cameras which will now document the 35th running of the Iditarod. Seated at long tables, Mushers are set to work signing packets of mail that will be carried in their sleds to Nome, and meet final demands for veterinarian documents. The meeting comes to order and the business of introducing Mark Nordman, the Race Marshal, and his group of judges, and the supporting cast of volunteer managers that engineer the logisitics of the race are introduced. Roll call is taken, and the names of rookies and veterans in alphabetical order are read.

The race has now begun, even as the mushers sit in the confines of a musher meeting. At rest or in motion, every action with the dogs is now taken seriously. Most of the mushers have completed their final tune-up training runs and allow the dogs to rest and lounge in their dog boxes until the Ceremonial Start on Saturday. However, the strategy of feeding is now becoming more important because the elite mushers are calculating calorie intake to parallel demands. Energy demands will jump from 1500 Kcal on a rest day (like today) to close to 10,000 kcal after the second day of resting. Each musher must decide whether to feed a little extra and allow the dogs to gain weight in the next two days, to maintain calorie intake and weight, or whether to actually cut back on feed and put the team in a slightly hungry status before the start. Some theorize that having the dogs slightly below calorie demand is physiologically better since the dogs will be hungry and ready to ramp up their metabolism on the first real day of racing on Sunday Afternoon.

If you read and absorbed our yesterday update, the reader understands that four champion mushers—King, Buser, Swingley, and Sorlie have taken the stage to demonstrate four possible strategies. However, the field surrounding these four is calculating and motivated, and they took time this morning to remind me, and of course, the readers that the race is always counterbalanced by the intrigue of competition. There is no given winner, no guarantee of success—-that’s why we have a race.

Ric Swenson, the 5X Champion, Iditarod’s most successful musher, won his first Iditarod in 1977. If there is one icon recognized by the entire collection of media, fans, and mushers gathered this morning at the Musher Meeting, it is Ric Swenson. As a generality, his successful strategy is first based on an exquisite preparation of his sled dogs. He is undeniably the master of dog care and the art of patience. He is willing to watch the race unfold, often keeping to the front, but quite willing to run anonymously behind the trail leader, and then seize the moment in the last miles of the race, as he did in his 5th winning race of 1991. He is the paradigm that mushers study. In an individual conversation, he is a fascinating analyst with an interpretive memory of thirty years of mushing experience. He is not easy to calculate or predict, because his curiosity prompts him to try many strategies. Like all great strategists, he will only reveal his strategy by racing. In fact, it’s considered bad manners to ask a musher to reveal their strategy. Watch carefully and we will learn Swenson’s plans to race this year’s Iditarod.

In this list of his students, put on your race checklist for mushers to watch, Mitch Seavey, the 1X Champ, who has been eerily close to the action for the last three years and is ready to pounce on first place again. I saw him briefly this morning and now believe that Seavey will be a force in this years Iditarod. His entire strategy, it seems to me, is focused on controlling events in the last third of the race, and is indifferent to parries in the early going.

Paul Gebhardt, John Baker, Ramy Brooks, Ed Iten, Lance Mackey (the “Incredible Lance Mackey”, yet again, the winner of the Yukon Quest), Dee Jonrowe, Aliy Zirkle, and Jessica Royer quietly mixed with the crowd, confident that their well prepared team could vault to the front. Interestingly, I thought current trail conditions which are known to be hard and fast for the moment and a weather report for an extended window of clear and cold weather, has tempered race strategy. In conversations with these mushers, I came away with the feeling that none of them, despite the temptation, was going to be a rabbit.

Behind the Scenes

TV camera crews held their own meetings this morning, attempting to decipher the overwhelming complexity of covering the event on a 1200 mile playing field. Imagine the planning required to position by small aircraft the crews responsible for documenting the Iditarod?

This year’s biggest problem? The clear and present possibility that race leaders will diverge dramatically in strategy on day three of the race. In fact, mushers I talked to agree that the race will explode at Takotna into a lightning storm of opposing strategies.

Let me explain. It is very possible that we will see two schools of thought. Just for explanation purposes, consider that Martin Buser will be dedicated to a strategy of overwhelming speed. On the other hand, Robert Sorlie will be an exemplar of a slow and deliberated strategy. Therefore, imagine that Buser and his colleagues will land at Takotna or Iditarod for their mandatory 24 hour rest in record time.

Sorlie and his school, to include Paul Gebhardt, for example, might be inclined to proceed well past the halfway point to the Yukon River—-maybe as far as the village of Kaltag.

Remember, Jeff King won last year’s Iditarod by stopping relatively early in the race in Takotna for his mandatory break of 24 hours.

There is a possibility that the leaders of the race could potentially be separated by over 200 miles on Wednesday next week. The possibilities for news coverage are overwhelming, and by Thursday or Friday, when strategies collide again, we may see a front pack advancing to the Bering Sea Coast in a train of equal competitors.

Of course, for the true TV documentarian, this uncertainty is great stuff—-but practically speaking, difficult to organize.

Our camera guys, the work horses of the media team, studied maps and possibilities this morning to make sure they capture the inevitable surges of the front pack. My prediction? This could be the most diverse strategy display in Iditarod History. Expect a strategy implosion about the time our lead pack approaches Takotna early next week. Day one and two across the Alaska Range will likely be calculated posturing, but pay attention on Day 3 of the Iditarod.

Up for Tonight:

Tonight’s annual banquet, Alaska’s biggest social event, will include Mushers, guests, VIPS, and hundreds of fans. Banquet tickets, I am told, are in high demand.

Strategy moves? Starting orders for the Ceremonial Start on Saturday, the real start of the race in Willow on Sunday at 2PM will be formally announced.

A possible insight for the fan:

This morning, our film crew talked about the metabolic rhythm of the dogs after several days of hardening on the trail. Here is my take. These incredible canine athletes will accelerate from rest to over 300 heart beats a minute on the trail. In addition, these canines increase calorie increase from 1500 kcal or less at rest, to over 10,000 kcal per day while racing. Read the following for what it feels like to travel with these super performers:

The huskies instinct to travel is heightened at the turn of light in evening and early dawn.

Every good musher understands this primordial instinct on the Iditarod. In the late afternoon, after lounging and dozing in the arctic sun for six hours, round and full after eating copious amounts of calorie rich food—-beef fat, liver, chicken, specially prepared rations—the musher prepares the dogs for the evening run. The first order is booties, for no husky can travel 150 miles per day on crystallized snow, without them. Some huskies have trained 3,000 miles for this race and have not taken one step outside the kennel without the precaution of booties. It takes a capable musher 40 minutes to boot all sixteen dogs in the team.

Then one by one, with a kind word or a pat, each is snapped back into the tow line until finally, the leaders, looking back at the musher, know all are in harness and it’s time to go. By the third day of the race, the dogs are hardened to the trail, their bodies metabolically adapted to the astounding schedule of 120 to 150 miles a day. Rest six hours, run six hours for 60 to 75 miles, rest six hours, and run again.

Here is the miracle. The dogs waddle slowly from their straw beds, stretch, then at the command of their musher, walk briskly up the trail. Yet, “ How can they ever make it to the next checkpoint, 65 miles away, by midnight?” asks the bystander. The musher, the really elite musher, that has experienced the miracle, calmly, quietly, without a word— waits. In fifteen minutes the dogs are walking faster, and a few whine, hammer the harness. In thirty minutes, the lethargy that comes from sleep and heavy eating is disappearing. A few of the dogs break into a slow ground covering lope. At forty-five minutes after departure, the exquisite fat burning metabolism of the sled dog, the physiological attribute that allows canines to travel long distances for days, is now operating at capacity and the 16 dogs are traveling with power and drive—over eight hundred pounds of biomass propelled by sixty-four pistons.

At an hour, the sun is beginning to set in a pastel blue and pink horizon, and daylight wanes. This is an ancient time for travel, a time to be alert, and with the pack. All mushers have heard the story. A ptarmigan erupting from a thicket of brush, the smell of moose, caribou running in the distance, or a snowshoe hare bolting in the darkness ahead excites the sled dogs into a chaotic celebration of their instinct to travel . The dogs are now trotting with power, then surging when the trail is good into a lope, Some mushers smile, others laugh out loud, at the miracle of the sled dog. The elite mushers expect it. For the next five, six, or seven hours the dogs will travel with unabated enthusiasm, covering ground at an extraordinary rate.

Close to midnight, it is time to close the doors on this raucous party. For fifteen minutes the dogs are animated, full of the run. This is the time the knowledgeable musher offers food and water and quickly prepares a straw bed. The dogs eat enthusiastically, then look their surroundings over, and settle into the rhythm of the trail. The huskies metabolism shifts and heart rates that were at times over 300 drop dramatically as they curl up on a straw bed. Depending on the strategy, the dogs will eat another one or two times in the next six or eight hours, usually a thick hot stew of meat, fat, and specially prepared rations. In a day they will eat over 10,000 kcal, or more than five times their normal intake.

In early morning, musher and team will depart, another powerful run culminating as the sun rises, and then trotting until late morning. The big rest comes in the afternoon sun—a recharge for the evening. With proper training, some luck, and the guidance of a musher whose instincts equal the huskies, a championship team will emerge on the Bering Sea Coast and finish to the front, after nine days resting and running, the Iditarod trail at the old Gold Rush town of Nome, Alaska.

Walking around the rooms staked out as temporary offices, conversations are overheard. Media gurus discuss the merits of formats, cameras, and editors. Volunteers organize the telephone banks and central computers logging times and progress of the racers. At the same time, the Iditarod Air Force is beginning the transport of gear and food to checkpoints along the trail. This Wednesday, counting down to the Saturday Ceremonial Start, has this feel of chaotic energy, but there is no outright tension. Why? There are no mushers, and the reason is very logical.

The mushers are conspicuously absent. I am given the media assignment this Wednesday, inspired by an East Coast TV producer, to contact the considered top ten mushers and request that they schedule an interview for tomorrow—-and also bring their lead dogs for a photo shoot “in and around Anchorage.” I ask Mark Nordman, Iditarod’s wizened Race Marshal, the guy you see on TV with a beard and arms and chest like a black bear, if he sees the idea the way I do. Mark shrugs and looks at the wall.

It’s an absurd request. The lead pack, indeed, the entire pack of 82 mushers, have secreted their dogs in quiet locations so that they can focus entirely on the race and let the dogs comfortably rest in the familiar surroundings of their musher. Secondly, no musher intent on winning will be willing to disturb their prized lead dogs, and lead them around the environs of Anchorage for a fashion shoot. And, there are practical reasons.

The dogs have been trained and campaigned in preliminary races for the Iditarod. At this point, a diversion of an hour in the calculated rhythm of preparation, is not tolerated. Jeff King, the 2006 Champ, will fly into Anchorage tonight so he can attend the mandatory musher meeting on Thursday, but his dogs will remain at the kennel in McKinley Park with his trusted handlers. Martin Buser, the 4X Champ, will keep his exuberant swifts at his kennel in Big Lake, letting them rest in their familiar dog boxes. Doug Swingley, the dominating Montanan who trains in the Eastern Rockies and has won four Iditarods, drove the AlCan highway and is keeping a low profile in Willow, Alaska where he is quietly putting the last training miles on his team, and prefers pre-race anonymity for his dogs. Finally, Robert Sorlie, the redoubtable Norwegian and 2X champ, has just arrived from an Atlantic crossing by airplane with his dogs and is intent on acclimating his dogs and focusing on the Saturday start.

Lance Mackey, this year’s Yukon Quest Champ, is a big winner on the winter circuit. Pundits in Alaska are unanimous in pegging Lance Mackey as an up and coming contender to test the four Iditarod Champs —-and Lance has made it clear that the Iditarod is his priority. Already tested by the 1000 mile Yukon Quest in February, and now preparing for the giant test of the Iditarod, he is in a trance of concentration.

The mushers, especially our competitors at the front of the pack, understand that preparation is reflected in the results, and the all important truth that sled dogs are incredibly mimetic. That is, where the mind of the musher is clear and focused, the dogs are willing to follow.

Overheard at the Headquarters:

Trail report (but could of course change)—–Generally good snow conditions to the Alaska Range, but bare ground, ice, and minimal patches of snow to the Yukon and over the portage to the Berring Sea Coast. On the coast, look for hard trail.

In summary: this year’s trail is advertised as an extremely fast and hard trail. Beneficiaries? Buser likes a trail to exercize the speed of his team, but the danger is injuries from the unforgiving trail. So control, and the old adage “the race is more about conserving energy than spending it,” could help the more methodical Robert Sorlie, for example. The merits of trail strategy are already being discussed by the Iditarod Pundits at Race Headquarters.

Up for tomorrow, Thursday—-the Musher Meeting. For the first time in a year, we will see all the mushers gathered in a single conference room at 9AM. Trail conditions, rules, and introductions will dominate the discussions.

Check out my 2007 Iditarod Preview——this could be the closest race in Iditarod history. You decide which strategy fits your personality and sense of competition—–overwhelming speed, conservative and relaxed long runs, or raw power? It’s all there in our top competitors.