Last night Dallas Seavey was the first musher to reach Cripple, the official halfway point of the Iditarod, in this year’s race:
Sitting atop the leader board for the moment is Dallas Seavey, the highly regarded 22-year-old who finished a spectacular sixth last year.
Seavey may not win the 1,000-mile race to Nome, but he got a little wealthier Thursday morning when he bagged $3,000 in gold nuggets for being first to reach the halfway point of Cripple. Seavey arrived at the abandoned mining camp at 1:26 a.m., winning the GCI Dorothy Page Halfway Award.
He edged Kotzebue’s John Baker by just 11 minutes.
Baker had been the leader but he missed the trail and had to double back to Cripple.
The race is still to be one. Nearly any of the mushers in the top 20 or so, still quite closely clustered, could break out and win.
