Steer sticks with the top dogs

The Associated Press

Published: March 9, 2007
Last Modified: March 14, 2007 at 06:35 PM

While top contenders Lance Mackey, Jeff King, Martin Buser and Paul Gebhardt continue to jockey for position at the front of the Iditarod Trail pack, surprise contender Zack Steer refuses to go away.

The Sheep Mountain dog musher and three-time Iditarod racer has quietly but efficiently kept his team at or near the front of the pack throughout this Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and he was the first to leave the ghost town of Iditarod Thursday evening, coming off his required 24-hour rest with 15 dogs still in harness.

The top five mushers in the race have already taken their 24-hour rests, and they have all left Iditarod, enroute to the tiny Yukon River village of Shageluk. Steer stayed in the once bustling gold mining community of Iditarod just 10 minutes before continuing along the trail Thursday night. On his heels was four-time champion Buser, whose team has maintained the fastest pace of the race thus far.

King, the reigning Iditarod champ, and Mackey, this year's Yukon Quest champion who is trying to prove that winning both big dog races in one year can be done, left Iditarod between midnight and 2:30 a.m. this morning (Friday, March 9).

Mackey was the first to reach the halfway point of Iditarod, but Steer beat him out of the checkpoint by several hours while Mackey's team rested.

Meanwhile, a search for rookie musher Deborah Bicknell, 61, of Juneau, was a success. The search was launched Thursday after Bicknell left the Rainy Pass checkpoint Wednesday morning but never arrived in Rohn.

The 48-mile run from Rainy Pass to Rohn was a particularly treacherous stretch where far more experienced mushers had gotten lost, with some flipping and crashing their sleds on the icy, snow-barren trail.

Bicknell was spotted Thursday afternoon from the air driving her team on a trail through Ptarmigan Pass, a route formerly used in the race, said race spokesman Chas St. George.

"It appears she took the wrong trail," St. George said. She was seen driving her dog team 18 miles from the Rohn checkpoint. Both she and her dogs were tired but otherwise in good condition, race officials said after she arrived in Rohn.

Bicknell, who was in last place before getting lost, planned to rest before analyzing her situation Friday, St. George said.

With temperatures falling to 35 degrees below zero, Mackey, 36, was the first musher to arrive in Iditarod on Thursday, pulling in just after midnight to win $3,000 in gold nuggets. Gebhardt, 50, of Kasilof, soon followed. Ed Iten, of Kotzebue, was third, just two minutes ahead of 2004 Iditarod winner Mitch Seavey.

Seavey said the section of trail leading into Iditarod was the worst he's seen in his 14 races. There were many stretches of windblown tundra where he couldn't even find enough snow to melt for drinking water for his dogs.

"It has been a tough race," Seavey said. "If you actually think this is fun, you have a problem." Gebhardt said his sled wouldn't go on the bare tundra, so he was forced to walk up the hills, get back in, and then get out again for the next rise.

Gebhardt said five-time winner Rick Swenson of Two Rivers, who is competing in his 31st Iditarod, told him the trial this year was just about as bad as it gets.

"Swenson says he's seen it worst. But he says it matches right up there with the worst," Gebhardt said. "It seems it's the worst to me."

Various accidents and injuries on the brutal trail have prompted 16 of the original 82 mushers to drop out of the race.

Mackey said at the start of the race that he wanted to prove to people that the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race and the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race could be won by the same musher in the same year.

Mackey won his third consecutive Yukon Quest race this year. "If Lance can win the Quest and the Iditarod in the same year, he's a super musher," said Seavey as three veterinarians checked out his team while he rubbed ointment between the pads of his dogs' feet.

Seavey later stopped in at the checkpoint headquarters, which is actually an old trapper's cabin with tilted floors and green peeling paint, to soak his hands in some warm water.

Potatoes in foil were cooking on the back of the wood stove. A blue enamel coffee pot was balanced on the top.

"We are halfway already?" Seavey said, jokingly. "It seems like we just got started."

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