UPDATE: In the three hours after John Baker left, four more teams followed him out onto the Kaltag Portage over the Nulato Hills toward Unalakleet. Sebastian Schnuelle, Ramey Smyth, Hugh Neff and Hans Gatt were all on their way by 8:10 p.m. Several others were not reported out but had been in Kaltag for more than four hours at 11:15 p.m. Interestingly none of the nine leading mushers has ever won the race before.
KALTAG -- Kotzebue musher John Baker's thick-coated huskies lay in the straw Saturday afternoon, their breath steaming, as veterinarians surrounded the team like a pit crew.
Baker sliced open a blue plastic bag of straw tossed piles for the dogs to sleep. But it was the musher, more than his team, who needed the rest.
"He's got probably the toughest dogs in Alaska," said Ramey Smyth of Willow, who arrived at this Koyukon Athabascan village in second place. "They eat good, they stay happy and he doesn't need to stop."
Though he gained ground on Baker along the wide, frozen Yukon River, Smyth still trailed by more than an hour and 40 minutes into Kaltag.
This is where the northern and southern routes of the Iditarod meet, and where mushers make what GPS measurements call a 76-mile push to Unalakleet and the punishing Norton Sound coast.
Baker, who lives and trains in blustery Western Alaska, rested four hours before leaving for ahead of a chase pack of contenders.
"If you make up any time on John, you're doing good because his team looks like it's peaking," said Smyth, who parked a nearly fully loaded team of 14 dogs beside a red, rusted shed.
A few miles behind came Sebastian Schnuelle of Whitehorse and Hugh Neff of Tok, the pair sharing Kit Kat bars and chatting about their personal lives as they pressed into the Yukon River wind.
They passed Hans Gatt of Whitehorse, another distance expert, who rested his team along the river in the warm afternoon sun.
Iditarod veteran Bruce Lee -- whose PhD in dog racing includes a combined 12 finishes in the roughly 1,000-mile race and the equally tough Yukon Quest -- quietly watched the teams arrive. Now an analyst for the Iditarod Insider, Lee looked at the dogs, not the mushers.
The growl of snowmachines rose and fell and the smell of straw and wood smoke filled the air.
"That's what it's about," Lee said, nodding to Baker's team resting nearby.
The huskies were sitting up, ears forward. Their eyes trained on Baker.
"They're tuned in," Lee said.
The roughly 150 miles of river that leads to Kaltag is traditionally a tough run, said race judge John Anderson, who rode the 10 miles of trail on a snowmachine trail Saturday.
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Before crashing to sleep, Baker pulled a bag of breakfast food from his sled.
"If someone comes along with a faster team, then there's not much I can do about it. But they're definitely steady," Baker said of his team.
Baker, who left Kaltag at 5:18 p.m., was long gone by the time four-time defending champion Lance Mackey of Fairbanks arrived.
Mackey is down to nine dogs and has been running a small team most of the race. He pulled into Kaltag at 6:50 p.m. and conceded that a fifth victory won't happen this year.
"I'm out of it for a victory,'' Mackey told the Alaska Dispatch, "and I know that. It's a reality. I will be back with a vengeance.''
Smyth, meantime, is known for his rapid runs to Nome at the end of each Iditarod.
"We're already sprinting in my mind," he said, as Hera, Happy and Thor bit at the Velcro straps of their booties.
Unlike Mackey -- who blasted through Takotna last year in a marathon run that secured him the lead -- Smyth said he's not known for making risky moves on the trail.
It would take healthy dogs, speed and luck for him to win, he said
"It would probably take my dogs and myself to step outside of my comfort zone and cut a few rests. I'm not used to taking chances, you know," he said.
Smyth resisted the urge to give chase when Baker left Kaltag. He stayed behind for nearly three more hours and was among four mushers who left Kaltag in a 30-minute span. Schnuelle led the way at 7:40, Smyth followed at 7:50 and Neff and Hans Gatt of Whitehorse both left at 8:10.
Schnuelle and Neff have seen plenty of each other on the trail lately. Both top 10 finisher last year, they were surprised to find each other mushing onto the same stretch of trail from different chutes out of Eagle Island, Neff said.
The unpopulated checkpoint is about 60 miles from Kaltag. The two were unable to shake each other and ended up talking along the flat run past spruce, moose and willows.
"He gave me little candy bars on the trail," Neff said. "We're both candy-aholics."
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