Jeff King is the first Musher to the Yukon River. Courtesy of the Millennium Hotel, he is going to enjoy a very nice dinner soon. Before the race started he invited Emmitt Peters to join him for this meal. Emmitt is the 1975 Champion and has last run Iditarod in 2000.
Jeff clearly had this planned out, and he is sticking to it. When Sonny Lindner was resting in McGrath I asked him how long he would stay, and he replied: ” 5hrs, I want to give them a good rest “. With that, it was clear he would not stop anytime soon. I wonder if he is going all the way to Galena to take his 24hr. A move which had been done by Paul Gebhardt last a few years back.
A few hours ago Martin Buser arrived here in Cripple with a nice looking team. His run time over from Ophir was about half an hour slower than Jeff King’s. Looking that it took Jeff a bit more than 10hrs to reach Ruby indicates that the trail continues to be hard and fast. Temperatures here in Cripple have not dropped as far as the night before and there is a bit of an east breeze going on.
Pretty soon we are expecting the next wave of mushers. Kelly Maixner, Hugh Neff, Aliy Zirkle, Nicolas Petit and Robert Sorlie. Once again Robert had one of the fastest runtimes to Ophir. His team partner Thomas Waerner said ” I know Robert well, and he now has that look in his face, he is ready to race.” Robert and Nic have already passed Aliy Zirkle and they will catch Hugh soon, if he does not speed up a bit.
More from Cripple later
Sebastian
