Aliy is taking a break.
Aliy Zirkle was the second sled into Galena, behind 4-time Iditarod winner Jeff King. Galena is an old mining town on the Yukon River. At that point in race and time, Jeff was technically in first place and Aliy in second in “The Last Great Race” across Alaska.
Galena, population 527, is the 5th of 16 checkpoints before the final run from Safety to Nome. Galena is 396 miles along the trail, with 583 miles yet to sled past the checkered flag and home.
At each stop, or checkpoint, the musher has the option to rest or continue on. Aaron Burmeister did the latter. At Galena, Aaron checked in, dropped the pen, stretched his legs, jumped back aboard, yelled, “Hike!” (another term for Mush! or Let’s go!) and off he and his dogs went flying into the bitter cold. It was -17F (-27C) outside. That was a brief 19-minute breather, and it put Mr. Burmeister, for a time, at the top of the pile ahead of Jeff and Aliy, but Aaron has yet to take one of his mandatory “layovers”.
Enroute, each driver must take an 8-hour and a 24-hour layover before qualifying to cross the line in the snow on the coast near the Bering Sea.
I think Aliy is taking her first “official” nap in Galena.
There is strategy at work here: when to stop and when to mush on. It can make a difference, and this makes the early statistics difficult to interpret. A musher could be in the lead one minute, and the next minute, that racer could be asleep with other sleds passing in dreams over their head to take the lead. Only after the leaders have all checked their sleeping bags and are all on the trail to the finish, will we be able squint and see who really has that top sled.
Speaking of squinting, my favorite word picture from the trailing reporters was this one made over the night: “Jeff King is on the move, followed by Aliy Zirkle. . . . We caught up with him on the river not too far out of town and his team was moving extremely well. 10 plus miles before hour. No wind to speak of and Northern lights dancing above. That run does not get much better than that.”
I begin to see why someone would run a piece of wood and leather for almost a thousand miles over snow and ice behind a team of leaping, panting, barking dogs.
I begin to, and then I realize there are some things you can watch and follow, but never completely understand.
Some things are better that way.
Time to take a break and dream of Nome and home.
And wake, get back on, yell “Hike”, and fly away into the snowy night.
Grandpa Jim