Trail Snippets

[elsietee]

Per FB re Otto Balogh:

"Unfortunately Otto got a serious sickness, with high fever. This started 12 days ago. 1 hour long cold chills, pulse 112/min. He was unable to recover until the ceremonial start - he had to perform that under this sickness."

[Moose]

Oh, gosh. Wishing him well.

[tanglefoot]

dee dee's fingers

http://www.ktuu.com/content/news/How-De ... 89653.html

[elsietee]

Dallas Seavey in Nenana (from http://iditarod.com/musher/march-6-7pm- ... a-rowboat/)

...

Dallas Seavey arrived in Nenana at a lethargic 9.86 miles an hour and was reported to have arrived with 16 dogs. However, the stats fail to reveal that he actually was only driving 12 dogs while, comfortably curled up in his specially designed boxes of his carbon fiber reinforced sled bag were four resting dogs.

On arrival to Nenana, Dallas quickly launched into a 15 minute drill. He checked his dogs, looked at the booties, released two dogs from the tow line who obediently stood calmly by the team, moved like a dervish to the sled, unhooked the stoppers to the kennel door from which two resting huskies emerged. An exchange was made, two fresh dogs were hooked into the team with one assuming the single lead. Then again, two more dogs were unclipped, two emerged from another kennel door, and before the crowd really comprehended the new order, Dallas was ready to leave with thirteen dog team with three dogs now resting comfortably. Deep breath, and now he retrieved fresh bags of what appeared to be frozen snack bags for the dogs and installed them and some fresh booties and harness into well designed compartments that fit to the size of his gear bags.

Laughing, breathing hard, he looked up at this handlers standing by and asked how fast he did it? “14 minutes!” we hear. Certainly, most mushers are taking on average fifteen minutes to reorganize their loads at checkpoints.

So, obviously, Dallas is working with some kind of calculus that leads him to believe that his slower speed—-basically a very safe trot that reduces the risk of injury—the rested dogs, and his physical efforts will gradually afford him an advantage in a few days....

... I am told by reliable sources that the boxes could actually house five dogs.

[elsietee]

From http://iditarod.com/eye-on-the-trail-te ... fairbanks/ :

I was most anxious to ask Paige Drobny how many of her Quest dogs were on kennel partner and husband Cody Strathe’s team. The answer was eleven. I had the same question for Katherine Keith. She also has 11 quest dogs on her current Iditarod team. She said she traded John Baker another of her Quest dogs for a trusted leader.

[flowerpower]

Oh no, here's hoping Aliy's team recovers quickly!

Joe Runyan @ iditarod.com: (note; this is just a snippet from a larger article available free at the site): "Allen Moore, the Yukon Quest Champion, appears at his team. He is running the second team from he and Aliy Zirkle's kennel and offers wonderful insight into the mechanics of the race at the front. His partner Aliz Zirkle is of course prime time front runner and a huge fan favorite. He reports that her team has a little intestinal bug and she is working to stay in the front of the pack while allowing her team a lot of rest to recover. “I had the same problem in the Yukon Quest and I think the dogs will bounce back in a couple of days.”
Allen ran the Yukon Quest in February. I know he is very analytical and ask him about the calculus of alternately hauling dogs as does Dallas Seavey. He offers that he and Aliy consider the strategy, but it requires discipline and physical effort by the musher. Allen thoughtfully offers that hauling and resting dogs seems to work very well on good trails and maybe not so well on soft trails where the effort may not equal the advantage.
Aliy is consistently to the front, but Allen remarks that her team loses steam in the final push to the finish relative to Dallas SEavey. This is a part of the race that they have worked on in training. OK, so stay alert Aliy fans. She is anonymous at the moment, still to the front, but coasting for a while untill her dogs recover a case of the trail crud.
Final thoughts
The background of heartfelt howls continues uninterrupted in the background. Middle of the pack is ready to move again in the warming sun."

[elsietee]

Hah! I was just going to post the above - interesting, eh?

Instead, these are bits I picked up from Joe Runyan:

Jessica Royer...told me she just wasn’t sleeping well. Part of the problem may have been the discomfort from three frost bit finger tips that “just really hurt.” She goes onto tell me she cant believe it happened but she wasn’t paying attention and in a flash she nipped them this evening while feeding the dogs.

Monica Zappa ...Inside, [she] was determining the time for her second wake-up call. She’s eligible to leave after 8 hours (13:44). Zappa decided on 12:30 allowing more than an hour to prepare the team for heading on to Ruby. She’s pretty efficient with booting. One of the major accomplishments for Monica is that she’s pared down the gear she brings. In her first races, her sled bag would be almost busting at the seams and it would appear that the zippers would never close around all the gear she brought along. Her years of experience have paid off in knowing what to bring and what to leave at home.

Seth Barnes... has worked for Mitch Seavey and speaks authoratatively about the teams. “Oh yeah, it’s a better team than Dallas.” One logs comments like that in the back of the mind....


Geir is running a younger team for Dallas Seavey. In an effort to confirm the dialogue with Seth, the trainer with Mitch Seavey, I ask a pointed question. “Do you think Mitch’s team is better than Dallas?” Oh , well, big surprise, we get a contrary opinion. Geir has been running dogs for more than twenty years, “Well, I don’t know. Dallas says it’s a better team than last year.” He shrugs his shoulders with typical Norwegian understatement, “I think they’re good,” which means he thinks the team is really good.

[txbennett]

The snippets are great. Thanks for keeping us "outsiders" informed. If you can, tracker snippets of information would be a treat for us too, particularly on the longer runs between check points, liked to Ruby.

Thanks again.

[elsietee]

Ask, and ye shall receive...

First is a "location" shot - to show where the teams are in relation to the overall trail:

[elsietee]

Then here's a zoom of the entire field: