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Six teams are making their way to the Cripple checkpoint on the Iditarod Trail. Cripple is the halfway mark in the race, and the musher who arrives there first gets $3,000 in gold nuggets as a prize. So far, Brent Sass is in the lead.

As the mushers in this group try to get farther ahead before taking their required 24-hour layovers, most of the front-runners are already taking their required rest. Two are in Ophir, but most are resting in Takotna, with Pete Kaiser among them. 

Two women are breaking trail in the 2020 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race as the front-runners head up the Innoko river from Ophir to the halfway mark at the Cripple checkpoint. Page Drobny and Michelle Phillips followed Brent Sass, the reigning Yukon Quest Champion, into Ophir on the morning of March 11. While the champ rested, they kept on driving towards Cripple, 73 miles further down the trail. The two now have a trio of champions on their tail: Sass, and former Iditarod champions Mitch Seavey and Lance Mackey. All three teams are running about an hour behind the two women.

It was a little before midnight when Jessie Royer and Richie Diehl arrived at the Takotna checkpoint on the Iditarod trail and decided to rest. The group of 14 teams that followed them into Takotna also decided to stay put. That group included Bethel’s Pete Kaiser, who led the seventh team into the checkpoint. 

On March 10, the Nikolai checkpoint on the Iditarod Trail was filling up with sled dog teams until Brent Sass checked in at 1:38 p.m. Instead of resting his dogs in town with the other front-runners, Sass mushed through, heading out on the trail towards McGrath. A little over an hour later, Richie Diehl and Jessie Royer gave chase, followed by Wade Marrs, Aaron Burmeister, and others. A total of nine teams had left Nikolai by around 4 p.m., but Bethel’s Pete Kaiser was not among these early departures. He got back on the trail at around 4:20 p.m.

Richie Diehl was the first musher into Nikolai, coming into the checkpoint at 10:33 a.m. on March 10. He was followed into Nikolai by Jessie Royer, Travis Beals, and Wade Marrs. Reigning Iditarod champion Pete Kaiser is four teams farther back in the parade. Bringing up the rear of that group is Jessica Klejka, one of the more recent mushers to tackle the trail from Rohn to Nikolai. She left the Rohn checkpoint with a full team a little before 10 a.m. after getting six hours of rest. There are 22 teams behind her on the Iditarod trail.

It’s been a tough night on the Iditarod. As dawn approached on March 10, more than half the sled dog teams in this year’s race were on the section of trail between Rohn and Nikolai. Those 26 teams, including Yukon-Kuskokwim mushers Pete Kaiser and Richie Diehl, have made it through some of the more challenging sections of trail. That includes the infamous Dalzell Gorge, a place that has flipped many a musher’s sled in the past. Of the teams though the Alaska Range this morning, 13 are resting, some in the Farewell Burn. 

Defending Iditarod champion Pete Kaiser was the first to arrive at Rainy Pass today, coming in at 11:35 a.m. on March 9. Travis Beals and Lance Mackey were about 12 minutes behind him. The fourth musher in was Richie Diehl, about an hour and a half later. Others straggled into the checkpoint throughout the afternoon. One of those, Aaron Burmeister, the musher who grew up in Nome and now lives in Fairbanks, left the Finger Lake checkpoint at around noon today. His was the 14th team into Rainy Pass this afternoon.