IditaProject Forum

Willow to Yentna Station ....................................................................................................42 miles
The trail begins on Willow Lake, travels across frozen lakes and swamps before the trail winds through a birch forest before dropping onto the Big Susitna River via Corral Hill. Most of the trail is flat. Once theteamsdropontotheBig SusitnaRivertheytravelviarivertotheYentnaStationCheckpoint,whichis located on the Yentna River.
Yentna Station to Skwentna................................................................................................30 miles
The mushers run the Yentna all the way to the confluence with the Skwentna River and the town of Skwentna, three miles from the mouth. These slow moving glacial rivers normally provide very good trails. They are all from one fourth to more than a mile wide and freeze thick enough to provide a good trail until late into the winter. Hazards are sometimes plentiful with rough ice to manhandle a sled over and around. Overflow, water running on top of the ice, can be a very real problem in some conditions.

These first checkpoints are inundated with lots of mushers coming in all together. Hence, they are very busy and it can take awhile for their stats to appear.

Ray Redington, Jr passed Mitch Seavey on the way to Yenta

Joar dropped 2 dogs in Yentna! Yikes

Oh.. that's early. Hope it isn't a bug in the team..

Linwood Fiedler and Nicolas Petit has left Skwentna, six mushers are currentli in Skwentna.

Linwood and Nicolas into FL.

This is quite normal for Nicolas. Peter Kaiser has stopped at mile 110, perhaps just snacking.

Nope, Peter has stayed for 1.5 hours.. Peter didn't stop in Yentna or Skwentna so I guess he take a long rest, goes through Finger Lake to Rainy Pass.

Iditarod 46: Live race blog March 4 - 3:30 a.m.
http://www.ktva.com/story/37596792/idit ... -race-blog
Five things you may have missed overnight from Skwentna:
1. Ray Redington Jr. and Mats Pettersson led the pack into Skwentna, bumper to bumper as they pulled in.
2. Scott Janssen surprised even himself by pulling into Skwentna in fifth place. He said he has enough supplies to push through to Rainy Pass, if trail conditions allow. He feels he has a top 20 team this year. He also reiterated that this is likely his last race.
3. DeeDee Jonrowe had a tough time at the checkpoint. She said a couple of her dogs were in heat. They were "being mean," and snapping at each other.
4. Mitch Seavey pulled in with four dogs in a sled. He dropped one dog before leaving Skwentna.
5. Trail conditions from Willow to Skwentna were smooth, according to most mushers. Temperatures are expected to warm up as mushers head through the Alaska Range.

Re: Mitch dogs-in-the-bag. I saw a photo yesterday of Mitch bagging at least one dog before he'd even gotten all the way out of Willow. Tag line didn't indicate how many he put in it.

libby the lab wrote:Joar dropped 2 dogs in Yentna! Yikes

Who said that? He had 16 in to FL

Good.

There is quite often some minor errors in the stats from the first checkpoints.

We also got the first scratch in Skwentna, Zoya DeNure scratched due to personal

Anchorage, Alaska –– Iditarod musher Zoya DeNure (bib #47) of Delta Junction, Alaska,
scratched at 7:49 a.m. this morning at the Skwentna checkpoint.
DeNure made the decision to scratch due to personal health reasons.
DeNure had 15 dogs in harness at the time she made the decision to scratch

I think the results people for those first few checkpoints were still getting their sea legs - I noticed all kinds of strange things last night - Wade Marrs reported as staying an hour at Yentna (I was thinking "did he get a penalty?" - but when I looked at the tracker, he was out in front; Nic Petit went through Skwentna in second place, but no one appeared to notice....

I feel bad for Zoya - it's one thing to want something and keep trying at it and failing, but another to do it in the public spotlight. And it would probably help if husband John Schandelmeier hadn't written the scathing article about mushers giving up the year it was really cold on YQ.