Off and running

WILLOW — More than 900 dogs and their 62 drivers gathered for the restart of the 39th running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Willow Lake Sunday afternoon.

Under bluebird skies and with temperatures above 30 degrees, mushers from as far away as Scotland, Jamaica and New Zealand steered their dog teams down the spectator-lined starting chute and off the lake in two-minute intervals.

Fans waved signs and leaned over orange barricades to slap hands as the teams set a fast pace on their way to Yentna Station then on to Skwentna for the first 86 miles of the race.

DeeDee Jonrowe left the starting line first, followed by Ray Redington Jr. then Trent Herbst from Ketchum, Idaho. Jonrowe, a crowd favorite and one of 15 women in the race, won the Tustumena 200 on the Kenai Peninsula in January. Her best finish in the Iditarod has been second in 1993, a performance she repeated in 1998.

Anticipating fast, hard conditions and a blistering speed, mushers began changing their runners before Sunday’s start. But for Kasilof ‘s Kristy Barrington, being prepared for any weather conditions is par for the course.

“I’ve heard lots of good things about the trail and the weather,” Barrington said about conditions along the Iditarod Trail. “We checked out the 10-day forecast and it sounds really good, but this is Alaska and you have to be prepared for anything. That’s why my sled feels so heavy, because I don’t want to be out there wishing I had something I didn’t.”

According to race marshal Mark Nordman, the trail is fast.

“The trail looks wonderful,” Nordman said Sunday afternoon just before the official restart. “We just got a report from our trailbreakers in Rainy Pass. They were in Finger Lake last night and there were some trees down over the trail, 17 or 18 of them. They got all those cut out. Otherwise, it’s a very hard and fast trail up through Puntilla.”

Even though Nordman says conditions look good, he cautioned that the race could change quickly.

“There is one thing that happens here,” said Nordman. “I think that once we get out toward Ophir and head over to Iditarod then to Shageluk, there’s a lot of snow. You get off the main trail and you are up to your neck. I think that’s where the race will become more of a working dogs race.”

For a young Dallas Seavey, the confidence boost of his recent Yukon Quest finish will move him fast down the trail. Seavey, a 23-year-old third-generation musher is the youngest winner in Yukon Quest history.

“We’re definitely feeling confident in the team and not so much from having won the race, but more from what our goal was out there,” said Seavey as he prepped his sled for Sunday’s start. “That was to prepare the dogs for the Iditarod. Winning was a nice bonus on the side, but the dogs having had that experience coming into the Iditarod is huge. It’s a huge confidence booster for me.”

For four-time champion Martin Buser, the first 24 hours is going to be fast with no stops.

“I got that new awesome schedule,” said Buser. “ I go all the way to Rohn take my 24 (hour mandatory break) there and just go nonstop like crazy. If they still look great maybe go to Nikoli and take my 24 there. Hopefully, I will have about a 15-hour lead by then and scare everybody off.”

Buser is the musher in the 2011 race with the most consecutive Iditarod finishes at 25, and has 27 total race finishes. He finished in 14th last year, and his last win was in 2002.

Buser raced off Willow Lake with a full line of dogs ready to set a blazing pace to Nome. This, however, was not the case for Wasilla musher G.B. Jones. Jones started the race with only 14 of his 16 dogs.

“One is healing from surgery and is not recovered enough and the other in training the other day collapsed on us and was just sluggish, so better safe than sorry,” Jones said.

A top-10 finish for Jones, 62, has not materialized in the six times he has run the race. Out of those six attempts he has only finished twice. His best showing was in 2002, when he finished 52nd. His last race was in 2008.

Like Jones, rookie musher Kelley Maixner is also looking at possibly dropping to 14 dogs. During a training run Wednesday, Maixner noted a few dogs having some trouble.

“I got a few little banged-up dogs,” said Maixner. “They are doing pretty good, but a little bit gimpy. There (are) two of them, so we will see how they do.”

Contact Robert DeBerry at robert.deberry@frontiersman.com or 352-2266.