What an bizarre race this year.

Martin Buser & Jeff King have blown through Shageluk and are on their way to Anvik. Who will be the first musher to the Yukon and to the AMAZING meal that waits for them there? Mackey & Gebhardt are following right behind went through the check point just under 2 hours later.  Zach Steer should be to Shageluk any minute now.
But, in the meantime .

Lets run down the list of weird events that have happened so far, making this one of the strangest Iditarods in recent history.

We started out with an extremely competitive field, numerous former winners and a handful of young, experienced mushers looking for a win to usher in a new era of Iditarod champions.

Within the first full day of mushing we saw four time Iditarod champion Doug Swingly scratch from second place because of broken ribs due to an injury on the trail to Rainy Pass.

A few hours later, one of the most veteran mushers on the trail this year, DeeDee Jonrowe got injuries from that same section of trail that caused her to scratch the race.

In all, to date there have been 16 mushers to scratch, an extremely large majority of those scratches coming into Rainy Pass.

Mushers heading up the wrong trail into Rohn has become a theme for this year’s race. Even veterans like Ed Iten were fooled for a short period of time onto the wrong trail, and turned around. However some never figured out what added 40 miles to their run until they made their way into the checkpoint.

We had a 61 year old musher get lost on the trail for a little over a day, forcing search crews to be sent out. She was found and is continuing in the race.

Then yesterday GB Jones lost a dog completely while he was on the wrong trail. He proceeded to the next checkpoint hoping that the dog would be there waiting for him. When it wasn’t, Jones decided to withdraw from the race so he could search for his lost team member.

AND, we still don’t have a clear leader in the race. Right now Martin Buser & Jeff King are battling it out, but surprise competitor Zach Steer came out of no where a few days ago to lead the race and he is still a contender, along with pretty much the entire top 15. Everyone is running so close that one storm or one amazing run could change the entire dynamic of the leader board.