March 10 11:43am wht mtn—Front FOUR will break RECORD

Jeff King, first into White Mountain and the leader of our race, is on the ice with his team of huskies.  The front four dogs of his team are still in their “cave” under Jeff’s open sleeping bag.  He is scheduled to depart at 3PM after his 8 hour mandatory break.

Next to him in parallel lines resides Aliy Zirkle, Dallas Seavey the Younger, and Mitch Seavey the Older.  Mitch is on the ice feeding his team of dogs lined up neatly on strawbeds on the right hand side of his towline.

All four of our front competitors are separated by comfortable margins of time, yet the four are expected to easily spank John Baker’s 2011 record run of 8 days 18 hours.  Furthermore, King appears faster than Zirkle, Z  faster than Dallas, and Dallas livelier than his Dad Mitch.  Therefore, we expect them all to enjoy a stress free dog ride to Nome—a dream for the musher purist—enojoy the ride without the pressure of racing.

Our Insider team will depart White Mountain late afternoon and prepare for a Midnight arrival of Jeff King.  Maybe earlier.  We expect him to break the record by eight or nine hours in something like “A new Iditarod record of Eight Days Nine hours.”

Honestly, the run should be very quick.  I walked out a ways on the outgoing trail up Fish River and found it hard.  The only reason it wasn’t glare ice was the snowmachine traffic which chopped it with tracks .  Our trail breakers left this morning in direction Nome, telling me that all reports indicates a trail icy fast by recent rains and thaws.  The trail follows the Fish River , then jumps off to climb a notorious wind blown ascent called TopKok Hill.

Topkok Hill is the subject of its own legend since gold miners used the trail out of Nome in the late 1800’s.  The wind can howl on this stretch of trail which has been marked by spruce pole tripods for more than a hundred years.  Usually a vicious wind storm blows them down, so from time to time metal tripods are also installed, but even these get hammered.  Without the tripods, a winter traveler caught in a snow storm on the bare slopes of Topkok is lost, turned around by the vertigo of blowing white snow.  Many people have been trapped on Topkok and a few have lost their life.

This year presents an unusual situation.  Without snow cover, the hill presents bare ground with rocks and the trail off the north side of the mountain to the Bering Sea Coast should be a challenge—but doable.  The trail, we are told, is mostly a ribbon of ice , so times should once again be fast.  From Topkok to Safety, a remnant of the gold rush days and a checkpoint 22 miles from Nome, the trail runs on the beach, encountering a few famous “blow holes”, a venture like effect from wind blowing down valleys with ferocious velocity—enough to knock over sleds.   Today’s weather report indicates “mild” for the mushers.  Jeff King told me that the lack of snow has allowed him to see the  normally snow buried creeks and lakes and  see terrain. 

On the beach of the Fish River I get to talk to Mitch while he feeds his dogs.  “I lost a lot of time on the ice out of Golovin.  My dogs were convinced that it was better to run on the beach.  But that wasn’t working either so I had to get them out on the ice.”  Just as Jeff had predicted, unless you have the exact leader, navigating on glare ice is slow going.

Mitch has a cool axe with sort of a heavy framing hammer head.  He chopped a little hole in the ice and then thumped his  hook solid in the ice.

In the checkpoint, the volunteers are preparing for a surge of mushers, but also have time to exchange stories and photos of  their pet dogs.  Sometimes looking at photos of pet dogs is like viewing your uncle’s vacation photos, but mostly really entertaining.

Expect King to shatter record by eight or nine hours.