Sass is on the Yukon

Brent Sass pulled into Ruby, the first stop on the Yukon River, at 5:57 this morning. Brent did not stay long. The Wild and Free team took off down the river just five minutes later and has picked up speed as they are now on Alaska's "super highway". At this point only one other team has made it into the checkpoint of Ruby, but no one has truly given chase to the musher from Eureka.

At this point it looks like Brent Sass has a solid win on his hands, they've gotten through the hard part of the trail and now are on what is typically the best groomed section of the entire race. That being said, there's still another third of the race to go after the River, and we've seen teams have issues after dominating early.

Behind Sass are Hugh Neff, the only other team currently in Ruby, Dallas Seavey, who reported in Cripple that his dogs weren't eating like he'd like, Jessie Holmes who made his move to get into the chase pack yesterday, and Richie Diehl the only musher from the Alaskan coast in the mix. Each team has their own strategy, and it will really start to play out today. The race is on. Many of those that were confident they could catch the leader a day or two ago are now less confident. Sass says he's playing it conservative, and he's running like he's trained all season. 

Expect the lead teams to pick up speed today as they hit the fast trails along the Yukon. At some point they will all have to decide where they will take their mandatory 8 hour rest.