ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The highest 5 mushers within the Iditarod Path Sled Canine Race seem like taking an prolonged break within the ghost city of Cripple, Alaska.
All mushers within the almost 1,000-mile race throughout Alaska should take three necessary relaxation durations: a 24-hour layover at any checkpoint, an eight-hour layover someplace alongside the Yukon River and one other eight-hour layover at White Mountain, which is 77 miles from the end line.
5 mushers and their canine groups arrived Wednesday, and none had left as of Thursday morning.
Brent Sass was the primary musher to succeed in Cripple Wednesday afternoon, profitable $3,000 in gold nuggets for the feat.
He was adopted into Cripple about three hours later by defending champion Dallas Seavey, who’s attempting to win his sixth championship. That might be probably the most ever by a musher on this planet’s most well-known sled canine race.
When Seavey arrived in Cripple, he requested race officers the place long-term parking was, as he declared he was taking his 24-hour layover there, in response to a video posted on the Iditarod web site.
Different mushers who arrived in Cripple Wednesday night time had been Hugh Neff, Ryan Redington and Mitch Seavey, a three-time champion and Dallas Seavey’s father.
Eleven different mushers had been en path to Cripple from the earlier checkpoint of Ophir, the place all of them had accomplished their 24-hour layover.
The race began for 49 mushers Sunday in Willow, simply north of Anchorage.
Late Wednesday night, musher Anja Radano of Talkeetna withdrew from the race, saying the choice was in the most effective curiosity of her canine staff. She scratched on the Nikolai checkpoint, and he or she had 12 canines in harness.
The route for the remaining mushers will take them over two mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River, alongside Alaska’s windswept western coast and onto the treacherous Bering Sea ice to the end line in Nome.
The winner is predicted beneath the burled arch end line someday subsequent week.
Story by Mark Thiessen
