Jake Berkowitz: What to watch for as the Iditarod leaders cross the Alaska Range into Nikolai

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Rick Casillo comes over the last drop as he drive his team down the steps onto the Happy River between the Finger Lake and Rainy Pass checkpoints during the 2014 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. (Bob Hallinen / ADN)

With the Iditarod ceremonial start and restart in the rearview mirror, many of the 52 mushers now making their way to Nome are no doubt breathing a sigh of relief to be out on the trail. At this point, it’s just them and their 14 dogs, and nothing but themselves will get them over Alaska Range, down the Yukon River, traversing the Bering Sea and ultimately running down Front Street in Nome and under the burled arch.

The race is seldom won on Day 1, although many have tried (including four-time Iditarod champion Martin Buser, who in 2013 ran straight from Willow to Rohn — a distance of 177 miles, which he covered in 20 hours, later finishing that year in 17th place). But the race can certainly be lost on Day 1.

Although in recent years we have been treated to exciting moves similar to Buser’s Rohn run, for most competitive racers, their goal is simply to arrive into Nikolai (the first Alaska village of the race and the first checkpoint after the Alaska Range) with a happy and full dog team AND in the top 10. But doing that is never simple.

Between the restart in Willow and the checkpoint in Nikolai, a distance of 250 miles, are some of the biggest challenges on the trail. First, the Steps, a set of three near-vertical drops that spit the mushers out onto the Happy River. Then the ever-perilous Dalzell Gorge, which takes you from the highest point on the trail (Rainy Pass Summit, at 3,160 feet above sea level) and drops you down onto the Tatina River after a harrowing journey crisscrossing over open and rapidly flowing water with only the narrowest of ice bridges.

Finally the rough and unforgiving Farewell Burn, which is difficult enough to navigate, but to even make it to the Burn, the mushers need to navigate nearly 20 miles of trail after leaving Rohn along the South Fork of the Kuskokwim River. They need to dodge rocks and driftwood and stay upright while also trying to navigate a short but very slippery “glacier.”

If all of these things weren’t difficult enough on their own, most of this 100-mile stretch is typically done by the front pack of mushers in complete darkness with only their headlamps lighting the way.

A few things to look for in the first couple hundred miles:

• Run times from checkpoint to checkpoint. These can often be one of the best indications of how a team is traveling (primarily later in the race, where the avid follower can really begin to see who has the team to beat). But they can also be deceiving. For example, Jessie Holmes, who led the 2019 Iditarod into both Yentna and Skwentna on Sunday night with a blistering-fast run time of 6 hours and 52 minutes, surely looks like (at least on paper) he is a driving a better team than three-time Iditarod champion Mitch Seavey, who took nearly an hour longer to cover the same distance.

A couple things to keep in mind: Perhaps Holmes was driving a superior team, or Seavey could be pacing his differently over the 1,000 miles, combined with taking shorter breaks out on the trail to let the dogs roll around in the snow and cool off, maybe with a snack break, or as he has done in recent years, he could be moving dogs in and out of his sled, allowing them to rest comfortably while the other dogs are running. Any number of the above possibilities can lead to a slower or faster run time, and although run times are important, for the first 300 miles of the race they seldom mean very much as an indication of who the next Iditarod winner will be.

• Length of rests, either in a checkpoint or on the trail. The Iditarod only has three mandatory stops along the trail, a mandatory eight-hour rest at a checkpoint on the Yukon River, the 24-hour rest at any checkpoint, and the final eight-hour mandatory rest at White Mountain. The remaining rests throughout the race are left solely to the discretion of the musher to decide where, when and for how long. The mushers can choose to rest in a checkpoint and take advantage of some of the creature comforts offered, or they can choose to rest on the trail in the quiet and solitude. Look for the top teams to take on average 14 hours of rest to reach Nikolai from Willow, while some of the back-of-the-pack mushers could take upward of 48 hours — nearly 1.5 days of rest more in just 250 miles of racing.

• Number of dogs. This year, the Iditarod is dropping the number of dogs to start the race from 16 to 14. With two fewer dogs, if a musher has to send a couple of dogs home in the first 250 miles, leaving him or her with 12 or fewer dogs to go the remaining 750 miles, it could mean that their competitive aspirations are over. While there have been mushers who have had very small teams early on and finished incredibly well, it is most likely that a team that has fewer than 12 dogs when reaching Nikolai will have to be operating on Plan B or C at that point.