It was an “uneventful, cold” run to Ruby, John Baker says.
“Things went smoothly.”
The Kotzebue musher and 2011 champion (and current record-holder for the fastest Iditarod run ever) talked with KNOM’s Laureli Kinneen in Ruby on Friday morning.
With Laureli, Baker talked about the strategy of when and where he’s taking his mandatory rests (the 24-hour layover and the 8-hour layover on the Yukon River).
Baker took his 24 hour layover in the Cripple checkpoint, he says, so that he could hold off on his 8-hour (Yukon) layover until later in the race – ultimately, to allow him to bring a “fresher” team to the Norton Sound coast.
In Ruby this morning, Baker was thus hoping to delay his 8-hour Yukon layover until Kaltag, the last checkpoint where he’d be eligible to do so.
With 12 dogs, John Baker was feeling pretty good in Ruby this morning:
