Armchair musher Sebastian Schnuelle talks with Kyle in Nikolai this afternoon about the race - and what it's like running in it by snowmachine instead of dog team this year. He's posting to the ADN and, when he can, on Facebook.

Rest is over for Hugh Neff in Nikolai.

Hugh Neff says he thinks a dozen people are contenders for this year's Iditarod. Neff explains why he's glad to see Jeff King back in the race.

Aliy Zirkle of Two Rivers prepares to leave the Nikolai village checkpoint. John Baker of Kotzebue followed minutes later. (Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News photo.)

From Kyle Hopkins in Nikolai --

Aliy Zirkle may be at the front of the Iditarod pack, but the Two Rivers musher insists she is not really in the lead.

“You have to realize that I started No. 14. I’m two hours ahead of all those in the 50s and 60s, so I’m not really ahead if you look at it that way,” Zirkle said.

Still, the 41-year-old is running with 10 of the little huskies that her husband Allen Moore drove to a second-place finish in the recent Yukon Quest. Those dogs are looking strong, she said.

“One of them, she might rather be in the Bahamas right now, but most of them are doing pretty well," Zirkle said.

I started to ask if it’s too early to say that the race is coming together for Zirkle. She didn’t let me finish the question.

“Oh yeah,” said Zirkle. “(I) have so far run, one, two, three, four runs. I haven’t even run a 300-mile race yet,” she said.

The Nikolai checkpoint, an Athabascan village of 100 people where dog teams park along the frozen river, is crawling with mushers today. Temperatures hovered at 5 below with gusts of more than 20 mph.

Zirkle said she wasn't bothered by recent snowfall on the trail and made a relatively uneventful pass through the famously bumpy Farewell Burn. Other top mushers haven’t been so lucky.

From Beth Bragg in Anchorage --
TUESDAY UPDATE, 10 p.m. -- Stopping long enough to accept her award for being the first to reach McGrath, Aliy Zirkle blasted through the village, still the Iditarod leader.

She arrived at 8:32 p.m. Tuesday and left at 8:36 p.m. with a full team of 16 dogs, according to Iditarod officials.

Iditarod musher Dan Seavey prepares to leave the Skwentna checkpoint of the race on Monday. (Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News)

By KYLE HOPKINS
Anchorage Daily News

SKWENTNA — Musket groaned as Iditarod musher Dan Seavey, 74, hiked the husky to its feet.

“C’mon,” Seavey said. “It won’t be so bad once we get going.”

The dog blinked. Straw, spread on the snow as bedding, clung to its fur.

“They’re in their nice warm bed. How would you like to be jerked out of bed, and your slippers put on your feet and your hands at the same time?” Seavey said as he slipped booties on the dog’s paws.

Even as his son and grandson rocket ahead, each in search of a championship, Seavey is trailing more than 60 racers at back of the Iditarod pack. But it wasn’t the old musher who was sleepy in Skwentna Monday. It was his dogs.

Many of the huskies are making the trip to Nome for the first time. “Their maiden voyage,” Seavey said.

For these 2-year-olds, the 2012 Iditarod is their triple-A training, not the big leagues. Other young dogs are running with mushers like rookie Matt Failor, their race blueprints calling for moderate speeds and long stops.

If young dogs enjoy their first trip down the Iditarod trail, they’ll race harder when called up to compete on championship teams, the thinking goes.

“They need more rest, just like little kids,” Failor said of his team.

Born and raised in Ohio, Failor is driving dogs 2-years-old and younger for four-time champion Martin Buser’s kennel.

Already, growling snowmachines and barking huskies tested some of the puppies’ patience at the Yentna checkpoint. Kinley, who is about one year, 10 months old, refused to lay down, leaping up from her straw bed like a pre-schooler, Failor said.

Musher: Silvia Furtwangler, Pischeldorf, Germany
Gender: Male
Position: Leader

Moby Dick is a half-Siberian dog from Norway, bred by Furtwangler herself. His name comes from the fact that “he was so fat when he was a puppy...,” says Furtwangler. “He is still fat too. But he is a good leader, really my main leader. He is also a little bit crazy and loves women.... He is a Casanova.” At 7, Moby Dick is an experienced leader who sets the team’s pace. “He goes not too fast. He had control of the team. We’re really good together. If I start to go too fast he looks at me like, hey mom, take it easy. Not so fast, come on.”

More “Meet the Sled Dogs” at adn.com/sleddogs

From Kyle Hopkins in Anchorage --

Dan Seavey is 74 years old on the Iditarod trail. But as you can see in this video, it's his puppy team, not the musher, who are sleepy in Skwentna. We asked who has the faster team, Seavey's son Mitch or his grandson, Dallas.

Matt Failor in Skwentna.

Iditarod rookie Matt Failor was the last musher to leave the Skwentna checkpoint on Monday morning. Failor, from Mansfield, Ohio, explains why it's all part of the plan and why doesn't expect to stay in last place for long. Failor is running young dogs from Martin Buser's kennel.

Vet check of Hugh Neff's dogs this morning. (Sebastian Schnuelle photo)

From Beth Bragg in Anchorage –
Hugh Neff and a team of 16 dogs, many of them coming off a Yukon Quest victory last month, led the way into Rohn on Monday night, arriving at 7:02 p.m.

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From Kyle Hopkins in Anchorage --

Iditarod mushers are as addicted to Facebook as the rest of us.

From Ken Anderson to Aliy Zirkle, here's a list of links to help you follow 20 current racers. Most are fan pages. In a few cases, I've linked to a musher's profile page if the page is clearly meant to communicate with fans.

You'll find Facebook is a great way to get to know the mushers and, during the race, read updates and analysis about their progress from support teams back home. (Dog sled drivers love Facebook so much that I usually turn to it first -- as opposed to phone calls -- when trying to reach them for off-season interviews.)

20 Iditarod mushers on Facebook:

-- Ken Anderson, 39
Fairbanks

-- John Baker, 49
Kotzebue

.

Musher: Jodi Bailey of Chatanika
Position: Leader

“She is a 9-year-old female who I am incredibly emotionally attached to. Last year as a rookie I attempted both Iditarod and Yukon Quest. Lobben was leader all the way. Lobben was my go-to girl. She finished in lead of all those races... We’ve been through quite a lot together....But I like to joke, Lobben is 100 percent awesome leader, 200 percent liability. Somewhere along the line someone sat her down and schooled her up on Descartes and the French philosopher’s theory of free will. So periodically for no apparent reason other than to prove to me that she has an independent streak and is a thinker, she’ll do something crazy. You’ll call for the gee and she’ll look right at you and go the other direction."

Postscript: Bailey decided to not include Lobben in this year's Iditarod team because of a sore shoulder. This was to have been the 9-year-old's last Iditarod.

More "Meet the Sled Dogs" here.

From Kyle Hopkins in Anchorage --

An outtake from our weekend reporting. Here's defending champion and record-breaker John Baker, of Kotzebue, talking about his 2012 Iditarod team.

Pat Moon navigates the 4th Avenue and Cordova Street turn. (Bob Hallinen/ADN)

From Kyle Hopkins and Casey Grove in Anchorage --

Three years ago, doctors told Chicago native Pat Moon he had cancer.

Two years ago, Moon found himself more than 3,000 miles from home, lying unconscious along the Iditarod Trail. He'd smashed into a tree in the Dalzell Gorge, an injury that forced an early end to the rookie musher's bucket-list ambition to run a dog team to Nome.

On Saturday, Moon was back.

He's still sick. In addition to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, he was diagnosed long ago with Ulcerative colitis, a disease that targets the intestines and kidneys. And after a winter training in the Western Alaska village of Unalakleet, he's still a rookie looking to finish the Iditarod.

"I've never felt better," said Moon, who as been living in a storage room of the village post office, running dogs raised on seal and salmon. "Alaska has been good to me."

The next 10 days will test that goodwill, as Moon and 65 other racers begin the 975-mile marathon across the state on Sunday afternoon from Willow.

The field gathered Saturday in downtown Anchorage for the Iditarod ceremonial start, a kind of off-the-clock "trailgate" party for fans and mushers alike.

From Kyle Hopkins in Anchorage --

Didn't see this coming. Iditarod officials say the race will indeed include the infamous Happy River Steps.

"We heard from our trailbreakers that the winter trail was no longer the better option based upon the amount of snow and wind in that particular section of trail over the last day,” race marshal Mark Nordman said in a prepared statement.

By KYLE HOPKINS
Anchorage Daily News

After an unprecedented four-straight Iditarod wins, Fairbanks musher Lance Mackey fell to 16th in the 2011 race. He vowed he'd be back.

But is Mackey, who is running this year alongside 25-year-old apprentice Braxton Peterson, happier as a father figure than a perennial Iditarod contender?

Can he win again? Does he want to?

The musher, 41, talked about his racing past and his health, his changing priorities and his sometimes messy personal life in recent Daily News interviews:

Do you have a championship-caliber team this year?
Absolutely. I didn’t come here to go camping. I definitely want to win the Iditarod as bad or worse than I ever have.

People think that I’m on a downhill spiral because past champions have done similar things. Had great rides and then fell off the face of the earth, basically. Last year I came in 16th after four wins.

Maybe that’s part of the reason Jeff King came out of retirement, huh?

Lance Mackey leans into the corner at 4th Avenue and Cordova Street today during the race start. (Bob Hallinen / Anchorage Daily News)

Dan Seavey gets his team together.
Dan Seavey, age 74, is one of three generations of Seaveys driving teams in this year's Iditarod. "I'm not too proud to admit I'm proud," he said. Dan's son, Mitch Seavey, and grandson, Dallas Seavey, are also racing this year.

Ryne Olson leads her team to the start line.

Iditarod race rookie Ryne Olson talks about what it took to get to the Iditarod start line.

Jeff King begins the ceremonial start.
After a brief "retirement," four-time champion Jeff King returns to Iditarod. He talks about what he did and what brought him back.

From Kyle Hopkins in Anchorage --

Zoya DeNure's lead dog "Demon," a reformed biter that we recently profiled in our "Meet the Sled Dogs" series, was injured Friday in a moose attack, the Gakona musher says. DeNure's racing sled was also damaged in the melee.

Here's what happened, in her words:

(Audio by Marc Lester/Anchorage Daily News)

DeNure also described the encounter in a series of Facebook posts, reprinted here with permission:

7 p.m., Friday
"Calling out for all prayers! My team just got tangled with a moose or Tozier track! Demon was kicked in the head, sounds like he's hurting pretty bad. My race sled got hammered, too! Demon is on his way to see the vet team right now!"

8 p.m., Friday
"Demon has been seen by ITC vets, he's sore on his side and shoulder, apparent bruising and area is swollen-- he's not out just yet. We'll apply cold and hot compress all night. If he can't run, we'll know soon enough and we'll have a great race for him this year. Keep the good positive thoughts coming-- thank you."

11 p.m., Friday
"The moose stepped through my new sled bag- made a huge hole! (Husband) John here sewing it up with needle and thread."

12:15 a.m., today
"We are doing great- everything is fine. We're excited to get the race underway. Demon is responding well to hot n cold compress, sled bag fixed and sled is in good shape. See ya at the starting line."

Demon & DeNure in happier times:

Twin sisters Anna (left) and Kristy Berington of Kasilof will both drive dog teams during the 2012 Iditarod. (MARC LESTER / Anchorage Daily News)

By KYLE HOPKINS
Anchorage Daily News

Here’s how to tell them apart.

Red hat and red-and-black sled? That’s Anna, the rookie. In the blue hat, with the blue-and-black sled, is Kristy, a two-time Iditarod finisher.

“Our mom didn’t even know she was having twins until Anna was born,” said Kristy Berington, who is five minutes older than her sister and fellow sled dog racer. “She never even got an ultrasound and our heartbeats were completely identical.”

Iditarod trail checkpoints are often something of a family reunion. Three generations of Seaveys are running this year. So are the brothers Smyth and the Redington boys. Father-and-son Busers.

But as the 975-mile trek begins this weekend, Kristy and Anna Berington are the first twins to compete in the Iditarod’s 40-year history, according to a race spokeswoman. The mushers suspect they are also the first sisters in the Iditarod and race officials can find no evidence to the contrary.

Tall and blond, the 28-year-olds are head-turners at every race they enter. This, in a sport where three out of four 2012 Iditarod racers are men.

As a result, some onlookers were quick to dismiss Kristy when she began racing, Anna said.

“A lot of people kind of get the feeling that she’s just a pretty face. That she doesn’t know what she’s doing, that kind of thing,” Anna said. “But she’s definitely proven that she is a dog musher.”