It’s day three of the 2022 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. KYUK is tracking the two local mushers from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta competing in this year’s race: Aniak’s Richie Diehl and Bethel’s Pete Kaiser.
Both mushers have passed through the Alaska Range and are resting at the Nikolai checkpoint at mile 263 on the nearly 1,000-mile trail. Diehl was the fifth musher to arrive in the checkpoint at 8:29 a.m.
Kaiser arrived at Nikolai at 11:11 a.m. in 14th position. There are 49 mushers competing in the race. Diehl has dropped one dog, and is now running a 13-dog team. Kaiser still has the 14 dogs he started with. The mushers will next head to McGrath.
The first team to leave Nikolai for McGrath was last year's third place finisher, Brent Sass. He left with 13 dogs at 9:12 a.m. after spending eight minutes in the checkpoint. The race's reigning champion, Dallas Seavey, followed Sass out of the checkpoint 12 minutes later. According to the Iditarod GPS tracker, it appears that both mushers have stopped to rest their teams outside of the checkpoint. It’s a strategy that mushers use to give their teams time to rest away from other dogs, and it can conceal their position from other mushers on the trail.
