The 2009 Iditarod is getting curiouser and curiouser, and there suddenly is no certainty about who will win, or who’s vying for second or third. High wind and cold temperatures hammered front-running dog teams today, causing most of the top 10 to shut down much longer than they normally would. And in stranger places.

Four teams that had been in the hunt for second place — Jeff King, Mitch Seavey, Aaron Burmeister and, up from behind, Hans Gatt — holed up at a shelter cabin right on the edge of Norton Sound. It’s right next to a large rocky outcropping, which is about the only landmark for miles and miles. The cabin is a small plywood shack and if my memory is correct, it is located precisely where Libby Riddles huddled in her sled during a nasty white-out in 1985 on her way to becoming the first woman to win the Iditarod.

Up the trail, Lance Mackey, the race leader, took a painfully long 7 hours to get to Koyuk, and told checkers there it was a demoralizing slog for his dogs. They had to plow through drifts and, after that tired them, dodge around others. Sebastian Schnuelle took almost an hour longer than Mackey, and reportedly said it was the hardest run of his career. John Baker was next, and was still on the trail as I wrote, but was taking even longer to get across the bay. By comparison, it can take under six hours to get to Koyuk in a normal year. Sometimes six and a half.

Meanwhile, reports have circulated about serious frost-bite on Hugh Neff’s face. I don’t know if they are true, but the tracker showed Neff’s team going out from Shaktoolik, then heading backwards to the checkpoint. That’s not good news.

These guys are heading into winds gusting to 35 mph in temperatures in the 10 to 20 below zero range. The weather is such an obvious factor that the only people actually moving on the trail north of Unalakleet as I write are Martin Buser, Ed Iten and Mackey. The others are pulled over, waiting. Or moving backwards. It appears Jeff King and Hans Gatt were headed back toward Shaktoolik Monday night.

Yes, this race is still nearly in the bag for Mackey, but it suddenly is a lot closer, more dicey, less certain. Mackey waited a whopping 9 hours before departing Koyuk, a full three hours after Schnuelle arrived. If Schnuelle has the team to risk it, he could pull his hook and be off after a five hour rest, a scant two hours behind Mackey. (Update: Obviously he did not cut rest. That tells you just how tough that run over Norton Bay truly was.) Meanwhile, John Baker is just trucking along. He’s got more time to make up, but if Mackey runs into issues on the difficult run over to Elim, he’s close enough.

The run to Elim is generally easy, but can be nasty in just these conditions. Mushers hang along the shore for a while, then cross over a short section of hills before dropping down to the coast again where they go from east to west across the mouth of a wide bay to reach Elim. Wind can howl out of the north, pushing them sldeways towards the sound. There can be massive drifts of crusty snow, or the slow wearing down of the dogs’ stamina by trying to slice into the wind when they’d rather just run with it to their backs. Mushers may have to keep verbally nudging their dogs gee (to the right) to follow trail markers.

John Baker has always wanted a good, old-fashioned storm on the coast, something his dogs are used to. This could be his storm.

Schnuelle told me before the race that if he had a dozen strong dogs leaving Kaltag, he would probably run long and skip a checkpoint. He lived up to his pledge. Schnuelle said that last year he had his mind made up to blow through Shaktoolik, but when he arrived, he saw a few top name mushers standing there watching him, and his resolve vanished. He found himself telling checkers he wanted to park his team. This year, he said, he wasn’t going to make the same mistake if the team looked good. Video on the Insider shows his team leaving Shaktoolik looking  remarkably crisp.

Further back in the standings, it is obvious that there is a convoy of mushers still on the trail from Eagle Island to Kaltag, facing the same brutal headwinds. There is little shelter from the wind on the river. Camping out there is not easy in this weather, but I think a few mushers opted for it.

And the very back of the pack, the last three teams of Lou Packer, Blake Matray and Kim Darst still are not reported to have arrived at Shageluk at 10 p.m Alaska time, even though they left Iditarod at least 20 hours earlier. There are some high, bald hills out there, which can be ugly in high winds. Hopefully, those three are OK. (Update: check the Iditarod’s press release on these three. Some bad news regarding two of Packer’s dogs.)