Mitch Seavey is the first Iditarod musher to reach Kaltag. He arrived at the Yukon River checkpoint at 7:40pm Saturday after running his team from Koyukuk. Seavey blew through Nulato in the heat of the afternoon and declared his eight-hour rest upon checking into Kaltag, the last possible spot. As the race leaves the Yukon River for the 85-mile portage trail to the coast, Seavey was confident.
“This isn’t even really that hard. I hate to say it like that. The way we train, I mean, I ended up telling Dallas it’s only 1,000 miles, we do what we’ve been doing. We go 9-10 miles per hour and take short breaks. It’s going to be hard, because we’re going to put the hammer down. But to here, we’re sort of maintaining. We put a little push on today. We need to make use of this 8 [hour rest], right, so I did a couple of shorter stops. The speed was the same. The dogs are happy; they ate every scrap.”
For being the first to reach Kaltag, Seavey wins the Bristol Bay Native Corporation Fish First Award, and with it, $2,000 cash and 25 pounds of Bristol Bay salmon.
The race picture is coming into focus now that the top teams have competed their mandatory rest. Seavey will swap out his large sled for a smaller, more nimble one to head toward the coast. Seavey has strategically rotated out dogs from the gangline throughout the race to rest in the sled, but that technique is coming to an end.
“Whatever we do will be to keep the speed in the dogs. I don’t want to slow down; it takes too long and is too boring. I don’t want to slow down. Maybe right at the end. Keep resting them, keep taking care of them. We need to be clever, because the guys behind me haven’t given up.”
Seavey has a shot at earning his third Iditarod title. He says he’s too tired to be nervous, but he knows there are a handful of young mushers pushing to Kaltag overnight that will be looking to make a move.
“I guess I’m little bit anxious, because I’m in a position where I can win this thing if something doesn’t go wrong. My son Dallas is extremely tough and extremely competitive. He’s already talking to me like ‘oh, you’ve got this sewn up.’ I think he’s playing poker. I don’t think he believes that. He won’t quit; he won’t give up. It will be a race. I think I have more speed and a better position, but that can change.”
Seavey has placed second to his son Dallas in the past two races.
