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Diehl and Kaiser are halfway to Nome on the Iditarod trail

Jimbo, a dog from the team of Richie Diehl, has been missing in Anchorage since the morning of March 10, 2022.
Jimbo, a dog from the team of Richie Diehl, has been missing in Anchorage since the morning of March 10, 2022.
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Courtesy of the Iditarod Trail Committee
Jimbo, a dog from the team of Richie Diehl, has been missing in Anchorage since the morning of March 10, 2022.

It's day six of the 2022 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Aniak’s Richie Diehl has passed the race’s halfway point, and Bethel’s Pete Kaiser isn’t far behind.

Richie Diehl is resting in the Ruby checkpoint on the Yukon River with 11 dogs. He was the fifth musher to arrive at 9:46 a.m. Ruby is where he told Alaska Public Media that he plans to take his required 8-hour layover. Recent snow has slowed the trail. Diehl described a long, chilly run getting into the checkpoint.

“We were dealing with the wind and snow ever since Ophir, and the wind kept howling through most the night, so it made it interesting,” he said.

So far, he says that his team is in fine condition.

“Kind of a slow trail here and there, so kind of hard to judge them, but they were still doing well,” Diehl said.

Like all the front-running mushers, Diehl hasn’t slept much since the race began. He said that his brain was slow in processing, and the last time he slept was the day prior for about an hour about 17 miles outside the Cripple checkpoint. He’ll be able to get a few hours sleep during his 8-hour rest. Then, he’s looking forward to racing west along the Yukon flats to the coast.

“Seems like we’ve been dealing with the moguls from the start, and it’ll be nice to be along the river,” Diehl said.

During that run, he'll be keeping an eye on the four mushers ahead of him.

“At some point you have to start making a decision if you want to move up further," Diehl said. "So I don’t know, we’ll keep playing it and watching to see what happens here.”

He said there’s still half the race to go, and his team is still getting into its rhythm.

Diehl has dropped three dogs along the trail. Those dogs have been sent to Anchorage. On the morning of March 10, race officials announced that one of Diehl’s dogs had escaped from the dog lot at the Lakefront Anchorage Hotel. The dog’s name is Jimbo, and the race is asking the public’s help in finding him. Jimbo escaped during an hourly veterinary check.

Our other Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta musher, Kaiser, is just a couple miles outside the Ruby checkpoint, according to the Iditarod GPS tracker. He has 13 dogs in harness and is ranked in 13th position along the trail.

Diehl and Kaiser have held these approximate positions throughout most of the race so far. The two front-runners have also remained consistent: Brent Sass in first position and Dallas Seavey in second. Both are heading towards the Galena checkpoint, the next stop after Ruby.

Anna Rose MacArthur served as KYUK's News Director from 2015-2022.