EAGLE, Alaska - And the race is on!

After arriving into the Eagle checkpoint late last night just 20 minutes apart, Yukon Quest frontrunner Lance Mackey and rookie Ken Anderson left the checkpoint this morning with only a minute between them.

Mackey pulled out with the remaining 13 dogs he had come to the checkpoint with at 7:10 a.m. (Alaska time).

Anderson took off at 7:11 a.m. with the 13 dogs he had arrived at the checkpoint with last night.

The Fairbanks-based mushers arrived at around midnight, with Mackey being the first musher to pull into Eagle at 11:52 last night and Anderson arriving, to everyone's surprise, at 12:12 this morning.

With the four-hour mandatory layover, to allow vets time to examine the dogs that come in, Mackey could have left the checkpoint at 3:52 a.m.

Anderson would have had to wait until at least 6:12 a.m. to serve the additional two-hour penalty he was assessed for not signing out of the Chena Hot Springs checkpoint.

"It kind of looks like a race between him and I, right now" Anderson said inside the Eagle checkpoint, noting he would now have to decide how hard he would want to run.

Neither of the two mushers realized how close they were, they both told reporters in separate scrums last night.

At one point, he could see runner tracks, but couldn't tell if there were dog tracks.

"At first I thought I was in the lead," he said of the area.

While Anderson didn't initially believe the Quest to be "the toughest sled-dog race in the world", as many have deemed it, after the run from Slaven's Cabin, he changed his tune as his team tackled jumble ice crevices and so on.

For lack of a better word, it was "ridiculous," said Mackey, who found himself ahead of the trail breakers out on snow machines breaking trail Tuesday.

He wondered why the trail breakers weren't out there a couple of days ahead of time.

Some of the trail breakers told reporters yesterday the trail is the worst they've seen and have been trying to keep up with it.

They continued to pierce the trail last night, were headed to Dawson City, 195 kilometres from Eagle, this morning and were expected to be caught up.

"It was absolutely demanding," Mackey said of the stretch of jumble ice, noting it was likely about 16 kilometres but that it seemed to go on forever. "It's frustrating."

The trek saw him "bumped, dragged" and just about everything else as he also contended with a broken rail system he had done a make-shift repair job on with some duct tape and wire.

Anderson also had some injuries of his own after wiping out a couple of times.

"I fell on my butt. My ass is sore," he said inside the checkpoint.

While the dogs had some sore wrists and the like, neither musher had to drop any team members before leaving this morning.

There was some concern by both mushers that the jumble ice could take its toll down the road, as some injuries may not show up until later.

Mackey said while he's keeping an eye on everyone, he hasn't had to change any plans for the race.

"These are just little bunny runs," he said.

When he finally made it out of the jumble ice, he hit powder, "which is like playing in a huge sand box." Powder snow can go through the dogs' booties and get into the dogs' feet.

Being the first into Eagle and knowing other teams behind him were having issues, Mackey said the four ounces of gold awarded to the first musher into Dawson are on his mind now.

"I like gold," he said with a grin.

Anderson initially said he wasn't thinking about earning that Dawson gold, but couldn't deny it: "OK, maybe," he said.

He suspected he and Mackey would likely leave the Eagle checkpoint around the same time.

"But you never know with Lance," Anderson said.

Anderson has competed against Mackey at the Iditarod in past years and will again this year. The two are also neighbours in Fairbanks, though Mackey said he hasn't seen Anderson out on the local trails a lot this year.

Despite Tuesday's rough conditions, Anderson said he's enjoying seeing his dogs gel together as a team and visiting new areas.

"I'm having fun. This is beautiful country," he said.

Mackey and Anderson were also enjoying the warmer weather that has come across the North after enduring temperatures that plummeted to -60 F.

Mushers Brent Sass, Michelle Phillips, Hugh Neff and Dave Dalton also arrived at the Eagle checkpoint overnight and could all leave at various times through the morning following the mandatory four-hour rest.

Dalton had the latest allowable time to take off, at 10:12 a.m.