Iditarod

 

All 33 dog-sled teams have now passed through the first Iditarod checkpoint at Nenana. Jason Mackey was the first to arrive at Nenana, followed two minutes later by his niece, rookie musher Brenda Mackey. Both are descendants of 1978 Iditarod champion and mushing legend Dick Mackey. Jason pulled out of the checkpoint almost immediately (10 minutes) and is currently in the lead; Brenda spent some three hours and 40 minutes resting and caring for her dogs before leaving Nenana and is currently 14th.

The 2023 champion Ryan Reddington is in 3rd place behind Bailey Vitello. Jesse Holmes is currently 6th, Mitch Seavey is 12th, and Mille Porsid is 17th. Rookies Dane Baker (31st ) and Calvin Daugherty (33rd) each had to drop one dog from their teams at Nenana; all other teams still have their full, 16-dog teams.

After the Nenana checkpoint, the race will continue along the Tanana River, a braided, glacier-fed stream as much as a mile wide and 70 to 80 feet deep, to the next checkpoint at Manley, 85 miles past Nenana and 137 miles from the starting point. Manley is the last checkpoint along the Tanana River before its junction with the Yukon and is located about two miles north of the town of Manley Hot Springs (population 169).

Update: At 6:33 am Alaska Time, Jason Mackey was the first musher to arrive at Manley. He completed the 85-miles trek from Nenana in 13 hours and 58 minutes. 

Several geothermal mineral springs were discovered along the Tenana in 1902, and in 1907 a miner named Frank Manley built the Hot Springs Resort Hotel there. The resort was a four-story building with 45 guest rooms, steam heat, electric lights, hot baths, a bar, a restaurant, a billiard room, a bowling alley, a barber shop, and an Olympic-size indoor swimming pool which used heated water from the springs. The original hotel burned to the ground in 1913, but Manley Hot Springs Resort currently operates a restaurant, bar and lodging in three cabins there. Interesting note: the town of Manley Hot Springs was the site of an apparently random murder spree in 1984 by a drifter that left nine people dead.