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By Gwen Holdman
I’m glad to see Ken decided against taking his 24 hour layover in McGrath, and is pushing further up the trail as I write this.
In fact, he has posted the fastest time of any team on the stretch from McGrath to Takotna, and he still has a full team of 16 dogs. Now he is en route to Ophir, which just consists of a small, remote cabin in an old mining district. Unfortunately, his GPS tracker has quit working so I don’t get to see exactly where he is anymore.
He’s also run a fairly inconspicuous race to this point, which is typical for him. There are no Iditarod Insider videos on Ken, or mention of him in John Little’s blog.
Ken took a solid 7-1/2 hour break in McGrath. I expect him to take a shorter rest in Ophir before running straight to Cripple and potentially taking his 24 there. It will probably take 8 to 9 hours to run to Cripple, or even longer if there is a punchy trail.
You can expect most of the teams either out of Takotna or currently resting in Ophir are planning on the same strategy, since Ophir is far from an ideal place to take a 24 hour layover. But then again, neither is Cripple. In Cripple, there is not even a cabin – it’s just a temporary tent camp set up just for the Iditarod on this remote stretch of once populous mining country. From Cripple, it is another 8 or so hours to Ruby, the first checkpoint on the Yukon River.
I spoke to my old friend Brian Imus this morning. Brian and Ken and I used to be fierce competitors but good friends, but Brian gave up mushing a few years ago and traded in his dog team for a plane. We often compare notes during the Iditarod, with Brian being a big Jeff King fan, since he worked for Jeff for many years.
Brian called to see if I might be interested in flying out to the Yukon River with him Friday afternoon through Saturday to see the teams in Galena. He’s checking the forecasts since he doesn’t want to fly in any sort of adverse conditions, but it might be fun to go out on the trail.
In all the years Ken has run the race, I have never made it to any checkpoints other than White Mountain at the very end. So we’ll see what happens
Teams take layover
Now that mushers are playing their cards and we can see where most of them will take their 24 hour layover, the true leaders are beginning to emerge from a cluttered picture. I calculated several mushers’ positions relative to Ken, who is currently en route to Cripple just behind Martin Buser and Ed Iten. Some of the results were a surprise to me. Ken is still in a good position with what appears by all indications to be a strong team with lots of rest under their belt. And he still has all 16 dogs – something I am sure he is relishing.
I didn’t look at every musher in the top 15 or 20, so there are some names missing here, but this is where Ken stands right now, or actually where he will stand leaving Cripple assuming he takes a 24 hour layover there and other teams continue to run a relatively aggressive schedule.
Ken is 6 hours behind: Jeff, Kjetil, Swenson, and Gatt. The last two names are a surprise to me. So these are the current leaders as I see it, although they are camped in Takotna and McGrath on their layovers.
Ken is 5 hours behind Seavey and Willomitzer
Ken is 3-1/2 hours behind Hugh Neff, who I expect to eventually fall back
Ken is 2 hours behind Jessie Royer
And finally, he has closed the gap between himself and Iten and Buser to 20-30 minutes.
In reality, I think none of these teams, nor a few others I have not included on this list, can be counted out yet. Mackey and Gebhardt were about 6 hours behind the leaders last year and were able to make some long runs to catch up to and ultimately pass Jeff and Martin. There are plenty of examples like this from years past.
I am going to bet that unless Ken thinks he has a chance to be the first team to Ruby, which is highly unlikely, he will take his 24 in Cripple. If he does 24 in Cripple, it will mean he leaves at about 7:30 am on Friday morning, which is not too bad. If he pushes on to Ruby for his 24 hour layover, he will be doing that long run with a tired dogteam right through the hottest part of the day. While ultimately that will probably be unavoidable at some point, better to put it off as long as possible.
I’d like to thank Dana Easley from Clarendon Hills Illinois for sponsoring Haakon for the first time in 2008. Haakon is one of our young 2 year olds, but we expect great things from this boy. Thanks, Dana!
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