Mitch Seavey became the second musher to reach the checkpoint of Timber, at 16:22. Because Jeff King (who was there early this afternoon) hasn’t reached Topkok yet (its only 16 miles away) one could assume that while Mackey and Seavey spent their time resting in Council, King decided to head on and get his rest in Timber. He arrived there at 13:03, so has been there for quite some time now. Once these guys start, its pretty safe to assume that they will be headed straight into Nome. They are 85 miles from Nome (Council) or 67 miles from Nome (Timber). They are getting as much rest in this leg of the race as possible in order to sprint to the finish line as they would in Iditarod from White Mountain (which is 77 miles from Nome). I mentioned earlier that the trail from White Mountain intersects with the AAS trail after or around timber (before topkok). Once these teams hit that area of the trail, both the musher and the dogs will know exactly where they are, and where they are going. The trail from Council to Nome is going to be nice, hardpacked, and wide…. its a very common route for folks in this area.

Interesting strategy just coming in over the ham from the Boston checkpoint (at 17:10), Ramy Brooks got in a little while ago, but came in the back way and is setup up in the trees behind the checkpoint, but hasn’t signed in yet. Look for his incoming time to Boston to most likely be his outgoing time as he will probably checkin after he has finished resting.

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Posted in the comments section, from Marlene Moto, a resident of Deering (which was only a 45 minute snow machine ride to Candle).

I was at candle to witness the top 10 mushers in and outta there, king waited in candle just when mackey was coming in, he came in just in time to sign in and take off, I’m sure king heard me yellin “welcome to candle Lance , bye!” (then i yelled)”WAY TO GO LANCE, WAY TO GO”witnessing this outcome MAKES a grown women like me wanna cry. I’m a former vet student from the chucki college at kotzebue (thru university of alaska fairbanks). All the dogs looked lively, seaveys team wanted to keep going while he was feeding them, so did brooks team. Looks like all the dogs are in their best racing SPIRITS themselves. One of the race officials at the candle check point said “my gosh this is a TOTALLY different race than the iditarod, kusko-300, kobuk 440″ or any other races he’s seen so far. The race officials have good ham radio operations for this race, also the locals like the shermans, weinards, fairbanks and kotzebue-buckland-deering people are using vhf radios channel 68 for communicating, in case sno-go problems,Vic Lawyor a pilot and a candle local himself has been busy himself with the planes coming in on the “Candle River”makes shift airport, we even had the last born “candle kid”dickie moto sr.”there (born in the middle 60’s) to witness this historical event. In the end everyone there was making sure the Candle end is having a safe trip there, dog’s first. Vets, Race Officials, and People from all walks of life are having the best welcome for mushers in and otta there,”GOOD LUCK”to the WINNER, and thank you all for mushing in this historical event, MAY GOD RICHLEY BLESS YOU ALL

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13:03 this afternoon Jeff King arrived into the checkpoint of Timber (67 miles from Nome), while Mitch Seavey and Lance Mackey were resting in Council (85 miles from Nome). At that time, Seavey had been resting for 3 hours, and Mackey had been resting atleast 2. Because there are no outbound times from each checkpoint, we don’t know if they continued to rest after 13:00, or if they shortly after headed out on the trail.

Jeff has been pulling further and further away, but doing so by using Lance’s Iditarod strategy, take shorter breaks. Has he learned from Lance, or are Lance & Seavey planning on the fact that King has got to let up sometime. Something important to note is that while trail into Timber was pretty tough (tougher for support teams & snowmachines than it was for dog teams). Once teams leave Timber, they will be joining up on where the Iditarod Trail meets the Sweepstakes trail, both mushers and dogs know this area well, and the trail will be perfect for running.

Also interesting is that while weather is pretty nice right now, we’re expecting a mini-storm to hit some of the teams that aren’t in the lead pack, slowing down their time into Nome.

Now, I want to clarify a correction that we’ve mentioned in a few audio podcasts, and briefly in a written one, all regarding Hugh Neff scratching from the race. We earlier reported from the Race Director that Hugh’s scratch wasn’t due to an injury to himself, or to his dogs, but because of harsh trail conditions. That information was early, and ended up not being correct. Official communication coming from the judges has been so sparse that it took even the race director quite a while before getting word on the scratches. In fact, there was no press release issued on Hugh’s scratch until over 24 hours after it happened. Mike Santos’ release took over 12. Hugh’s partner, Tamra was on his support team and wanted to set the story straight as to exactally why their team isn’t racing anymore.
She said first off that it wasn’t because of a tough trail, Hugh signed up for this race because he was looking forward to a tough trail, and was in 4th place when he scratched. We had reported later that it was issues with his support team, and she was more than happy to elaborate on what those problems were. She said the trail between Telephone and Haven on the way north was tough, just like everyone was expecting…what they weren’t expecting was that because of the lack of snow, it would be tougher on snowmachines than it was on the dog teams, most mushers beat their support teams into Haven. Tamra, along with a hired local musher got into some trouble on their snow machines on the trail, and after a period of time had passed, they were diverting teams up a steep hill through these stuck machines. The hired local musher all of a sudden then decided that he was going to help another musher’s crew, got his machine going, and left Tamra in the middle of nowhere. She was finally able to get free and took her machine (without supplies) to met Neff in Haven. When Neff learned of the loss of one of his crew members, he didn’t see how he would be able to compete. He is now running his dogs back on the trail into Nome and we will attempt to speak with him once he returns.

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Nate & I sit down again (in a very cold studio) and talk for almost 20 minutes this morning on what has transpired since last night.

In this podcast we cover:

• Current Standings
• Can mushers maintain this pace into Nome?
• When will the first musher arrive?
•  What is going on with start differentials?
• Scratch Updates
• What can we learn from 2007 Kobuk 440?
• Where is everyone else right now?

We’ll have more as the morning goes on! - (click here) to download the podcast

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In tonight’s podcast we sit down with Dr. Phil Schobert, the Executive Race Director and talk with him about how the race is going so far, when we might expect a first place musher into Nome, and briefly speaks about the first scratch of the race, and I try to get some information about all the confusion that is going on with the starting time differentials.

Right now the race leaders are on their way back from Candle - Lance Mackey was the first musher to arrive into First Chance at 19:56, and according to ham traffic stayed and rested there while King and Seavey were behind resting in Gold Run. King arrived into First Chance at 22:58, and Seavey at 23:40.

I’ll have much more news in the morning, and will have a new podcast posted mid-morning. There should be some interesting developments overnight and word on the street is that there is an airplane coming into Nome that contains a second scratched musher’s dogs, can’t mention who yet…..although nothing has been reported officially, I’m sure we’ll know more soon.

Speaking of scratching, many folks have been wondering about Hugh Neff, and wanting to make sure that he and his dogs were ok. As Dr. Phil says in the podcast, Hugh scratched on his own accord… however rumors are that he had issues with his support team, and it just came across the radio a few minutes ago that Hugh has mushed himself back and is in Council right now awaitingfurther instruction from the Lead Judge.

(click here) to download the podcast

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So, after I posted the information about mushers making up their starting time at some unknown checkpoint along the trail, I got a phone call from race headquarters alerting me to the fact that the other day, at the closed mushers meeting, the “dog runners” told race officials that they all would rather not make up time, and just race to the finish line instead.

There has not been any press releases or statements from the Lead Judge about this, and other than the heads up from HQ, I don’t have much to go by. All I know is the official race rules, and what I heard happened at the meeting. I guess all we can do at this point is wait for some official word. I’m supposed to be talking to the Race Director sometime this evening, we will see if he has anything to say on this matter.

Apparently another rule change that came out of that closed meeting was that there would be no 24 hour waiting period once the first musher crosses the finish line, and that they would immediately be declared as the winner. Originally the 24 hour period was another flashback to how the race originally was run, and would give other mushers the opportunity to file a complaint against the potential winner. No word on this change was passed along or put out in a statement after the meeting…… we’ll check more into this as well.

I also updated the top ten standings to include Ramy Brooks…..it was a typo that he wasn’t in there.

In other news, word just came in that Jeff Darling was the last musher to arrive INTO Boston just a few moments ago, and is taking right off on his way to Telephone! The checker said that the weather in Boston is beautiful, and five below.

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updated at 17:45 to reflect a new musher arrival into Candle, and correction

With the top four all having reached Candle (and we can confirm that we *know* both Jeff & Lance just kept going) we’ve now reached the point of the race where mushers will start running into each other on the trail, and the official rule (that was reminded to checkers over the ham radio) is that the INCOMING musher to Nome has the right of way. I mentioned it this morning in the podcast, but can you imagine that scene when Jeff King was headed back on the trail just a few miles outside of Candle and had right of way over Lance Mackey headed to the halfway point? Talk about tense situations… this is a very close race and is running MUCH quicker than I think anyone expected.

There have been some questions about how exactly the mushers make up the time difference between themselves from when they left the starting line. In Iditarod, this is made up at the 24-hour layover checkpoint, and the earlier a musher left the starting line, the more time they have to make up in the middle of the race….. As the first to leave, Conner Thomas will have about 32 minutes to make up, and Sonny Lindner won’t have any since he was the last. Because there are no mandatory layovers in the AAS, there is one secret checkpoint where the time will be made up. The only person right now who knows where that checkpoint will be, is the Lead Judge - Al Crane. Speaking with the Race Director a few days ago, he admitted that even he had no idea where this was going to be. The only information that I can give is what I’ve heard on the public ham airwaves….and there is a small chance that it could be a clue on where the only mandatory layover will be. I heard that Judge Al Crane flew out of Nome early this afternoon to check on the trail and soon after popped up on the ham in the checkpoint of Boston. That would be over halfway on the trail, if you’re guessing….could be a good place to do a stop like this.

Stay tuned….

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15:06 - Lance Mackey, second in to Candle - and BACK out on the trail 20 minutes after Jeff King.

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14:44 - Jeff King arrived into Candle first! - 13 dogs in harness

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2:00pm - Word is just coming in from the Candle checkpoint, the weather is looking pretty good, its 4 above zero, and the skies are clear. They are awaiting the first musher at the halfway point, and it appears via airplane report that the first musher to reach the checkpoint will be Lance Mackey…..but then another plane said it could be King, so we will see!
Other interesting information: details are still coming out on Hugh Neff’s withdraw, Mitch Seavey’s support team had some trouble earlier, 3 miles north of Haven and ended up breaking a sled.

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