Day 6, Update #1

Sass first to Ruby, claims 5-course gourmet meal as first musher to Yukon River

Eureka’s Brent Sass arrived in Ruby at 5:57 a.m. Friday morning with 13 dogs in harness to claim the “Lakefront Anchorage First Musher to the Yukon Award”, according to a release from Iditarod officials.

It took Sass over 13 hours to make the 70-mile stretch from Cripple to Ruby, but was rewarded with a five-course gourmet meal prepared by Lakefront Anchorage executive chef Mark Castillo, according to the release.

The meal consists of pan-seared blackened shrimp served with mango chutney and cucumber for an appetizer, a reindeer minestrone soup with crostini bread, an iceberg wedge lettuce salad with bacon, apple, blue cheese crumbles and dried cranberries, an eight-ounce seared beef tenderloin wrapped in bacon with sides of asparagus, baby carrots, fingerling potatoes and a red wine mushroom sauce, and to top it all off, a dessert consisting of a trio cheesecake bar with strawberry sauce.

The meal is topped off with an “after dinner mint” of $3,500 in one-dollar bills, along with a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne, according to Iditarod officials.

Sass, however, did not enjoy the meal in Ruby, as he whisked through the checkpoint in five minutes, leaving at 6:02 a.m. Iditarod officials say the meal will be re-presented at a later time. The Ruby checkpoint is closest to the true halfway marker of the near-1,000 mile race; 495 miles from Anchorage and 480 from Nome.

Like most of the top runners in the race, Sass has taken his mandatory 24-hour layover and is in position to make a solid run at victory. In five previous starts in the Last Great Race, Sass has two top-five results, including a career-best of third last year.

The rest of the top five followed Sass into Ruby, with Hugh Neff arriving at 8:16 a.m., Dallas Seavey at 9:01 a.m., Jessie Holmes at 9:36 a.m. and Richie Diehl at 9:46 a.m. Of the top five, only Seavey has continued on in chase of Sass, spending only seven minutes in Ruby to take over the second-place spot.