11Am Activity in the Front, Zirkle and Mitch prepare for blast off

A nerve impulse goes to Mitch and Aliy’s primitive area of the brain, who I imagine have been in a very deep sleep, when the checker gives a “wake up call.”  By force of will, they are to their feet.  I see Aliy in the furnace room almost disappearing in draperies of hanging clothes and then emerging with her warm gear.  A girl covering the race for Alaska Public Radio has some lotion, which Aliy uses on her cheeks for sunburn.   In ten minutes that “just woke up” look ebbs away and she is ready to go to the yard to check on her huskies.

Mitch, is handling the pressure of being a target to the front by approaching the finish to this year’s 2013 Iditarod like a construction worker.  He already has donned his coveralls and warm gear, and since last night has never mentioned the looming duel on the last 77 miles to Nome.  All his confined in the close quarters of the city hall serving as the Iditarod headquartes.  Mitch and Aliy are by the mushing “sleeping room”, a cleaned out office.  I hear Mitch confide,  “Man, I still feel really tired,”

Both of them are set to put on a show.  Although its only 11:10AM, Mitch is changing batteries to his headlamp, then puts it on as if it were a pair of gloves.  Both want to be prepared for the entire ten or eleven hour run without stopping unnecessarily.

If you want to know how to race, then you will have to check out their layered system of clothing.  Unable to upload a photo on the nearly paralyzed connection here at the office, you will have to imagine layers which can be undone and put on again.  Climb a hill and the handlebars are draped with windbreaker and parka, down a hill and it’s time to gear up with the parka and windbreaker.

How about the time of day?   Not perfect .  A musher would not intentionally leave when the sun is shining most directly.  But the team has had a long deep nap over eight hours, so we can imagine Mitch and Aliy working their way slowly up the Fish River and then diverting on a long climb over tundra, short brush, and the occasional spruce tree, stunted like a bonsai and twisted by hand of constant wind.

By five or six, the sun starting to dip to the horizon, the teams should become animated in the change of light for the final push to Nome.  Weather is said to remain relatively clear and calm with a minimum of wind.   Normally, blow holes from Topkok hill at  can be expected to hammer the teams.   Slots  in the mountains can act, with a pressure differential from the high reach of the mountains to the ocean act like giant venturis, but today’s weather is suggesting that they will not be violent.   For a century, the miners of Nome have marked the trail with tripods, and even the steel ones are occasionally toppled by a good blow.  Locals take note when the wind is blowing because you can find yourself in jeopardy on the exposed trail.  This is the coast with its uninterrupted vista of tundra, a zone with only a few places to hide.

It will be a long day at the office for Mitch and Aliy and the outcome will depend on factors accumulated over nine days of racing.  Which leader is ready to take command of the trail and which team will find motivation in remembering the end of the trail.

Final thought

Nicolas Petit, Berkowitz, Burmeister, and now I heard Dee Jonrowe filter into the checkpoint a raise the population.