UPDATE :: Iditarod 2017 Leaders

UPDATE :: 2017 Iditarod Current Race Leaders 

Click on a mushers name to learn more about them.

1. Wade Marrs
2. Dallas Seavey
3. Mitch Seavey

Father, son and hopeful spoiler, such is the lead pack at the front of the 45th running of the Last Great Race.  Things are certainly heating up, but it is a bit nebulous to determine who is really in the driver's seat 415 miles from the burled arch on the Front Street of Nome.  One thing is clear, the leaders are separating themselves from the rest of the pack. It was 20° with overcast skies as the top teams arrived back on the Yukon after covering the 86 miles from Huslia.  Wade Marrs of Willow, AK was the first to arrive at 10:05 this morning with 14 dogs in harness.  Seavey the Elder pulled into the checkpoint 14 minutes later and the Younger 11 minutes behind him. All three mushers need to take a mandatory 8 hour layover on the Yukon, which means either Koyukuk, Nulato or Kaltag.  Arriving in Koyukuk at a late morning hour seemed to be a good time to shut down the teams and rest during the heat of the day and depart down river this evening with cooler temps and no wind.  Perfect mushing weather.  But Mitch Seavey surprisingly pulled the snow hook and "hiked" his team of 13 toward Nulato just 22 miles away.  And he covered that distance in 2 hours flat, which is a blistering 11mph this late in the race.  Obviously his dogs are feeling their oats, or should I say kibble. Both Mitch and Dallas continue to rotate dogs back to the sled to snooze in the comfort of their padded compartments.  They were both carrying two dogs into Koyukuk.  Wade Marrs doesn't agree with that strategy and feels that you shouldn't finish in Nome with some dogs that only ran 750 miles of the 1000 mile race.  And while he is a purist in that regard, the Seaveys have no qualms about maximizing the rest of their dogs by rotating and leaving some gas in the tank for the dash up the Bering Sea Coast. Will Mitch's dogs continue to hold their speed after the fast run to Nulato during the heat of the day?  It should be noted that he only spent 1 minute in the Nulato checkpoint and headed down the Yukon for Kaltag 47 miles away where he has obviously decided to take the 8 hour layover. Will Wade be able to keep pace with the Seavey Express trains?  Both Seavey teams still have 13 dogs but more than likely they are evaluating which 8 to 10 they will take to cover the final stretch to Nome.  On the coast they most likely will switch to lighter sleds and the majority of the last several hundred miles is flat and easier traveling so a team of 7 or 8 canines can still be a fast team.  The smaller the team the less time required by the musher in the feeding, putting on of booties, and all round maintenance on the dogs as well. Nicolas Petit still has all 16 dogs and posted the fastest time from Huslia to Koyukuk. He has already taken his 8 hour Yukon layover.  However his team is not as fast as it was before the 24 hour layover in Huslia.  It is doubtful he can maintain the pace Mitch and Dallas are setting. Any long time observer of this race knows that with 400 miles of racing left anything can and usually will happen.  Top teams have come down with the flu for example.  Fresh snow can mean a soft trail for the front runners and gives a chance for those behind them to make up time.  A blizzard on the coast that obliterates visibility with winds so strong it is difficult to stand up in has occurred in many past Iditarods. Mushers have been known to fall asleep on the sled and tumble off.  In fact Linwood Fiedler, a race veteran, arrived at the checkpoint of Ruby about an hour behind his dogs after falling asleep and toppling off his sled.  “I wish I had some great story about how a moose attacked my team, but I just fell asleep,” Fiedler told CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA-TV. “I nodded off and caught a snowsnake, and I went flying, and I yelled for them to whoa, and they almost stopped, but they know where Ruby is,” referring to the checkpoint.  He was able to ride the runners of another team into town. Wade Marrs runs up the hill as he arrives in first place at the Ruby checkpoint during the 2017 Iditarod on Wednesday March 8, 2017. Photo by Jeff Schultz/SchultzPhoto.com (C) 2017 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED   Dallas Seavey holds up his winners check after completing the 44th running of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race in Nome on Tuesday March 15th during the 2016 Iditarod in record time of 8 Days 11 hours 20 minutes 16 seconds. Photo by Jeff Schultz (C) 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED   Iditarod 2006, Official start in Anchorage, AK. Musher Mitch Seavey | By Carl Chapman / Wikimedia Commons