...and the lead is being fought out between Jeff King, Doug Swingley and Dee Dee Jonrowe. This report suggests that Jonrowe's dog team may currently be the freshest. King and Swingley have been playing a game of tactical cat-and-mouse over the last 3-4 days, with Swingley steadily cutting into King's lead. However, they have been running on a trail that has only been travelled by snowmobiles, and that will be harder on the dogs. Meanwhile Jonrowe has been keeping to her own plan, resting more frequently than King or Swingley but then running very quickly when on the trail. This has allowed her to stay in touch and also run on a trail that has already been travelled by 2 teams.
These three mushers have held a significant lead over the rest of the field, but Aliy Zirkle has now caught up to them, mainly by skipping any significant rest period at Kaltag. Jonrowe rested for 7 hours at Kaltag; Zirkle stayed for just 13 minutes. If anybody is to emerge from the pack they will need to make a significant tactical move, like Zirkle just did, in order to gain enough time. This has been done in previous years at this point in the race. One tactic that has been tried is running a team pretty much constantly for an extremely long period of up to 14 hours, blasting through 2 or more checkpoints. This might work if the team has enough energy, but it is a high-risk move; if the team does not have enough in the tank, it can backfire and leave a musher with an exhausted team.
The weather will play a significant part in the next 2-3 days. A 20-35 mph wind is blowing in this area, and the trail has a lot of loose snow that the dog teams have to fight through. At this point in the race, leaders and contenders alike will start to find out how much their dog teams have left. Sometimes teams fall off the pace because of exhaustion. Sometimes they even quit on the musher (Jonrowe had an entire team shut down on her in one Iditarod).
My remaining wildcard is Bjornar Andersen, currently outside the top 10. The big question; is he saving some dramatic tactical move for the next 2-3 days? If not, he is not a contender.