Ophir - Iditarod - Shageluk

[Alphashe]

He's going through! The team looks good.

[flowerpower]

Martin is about 10 miles from Id. and hasn't 24ed yet. Looks like he rested about 5 hours halfway to Iditarod. Will he 24 in Id or press on?

[flowerpower]

Then its back to Royer at 406, Kaiser at 398, Mitch stopped for almost an hour at 397, then Diehl, Reddington, and Hall. Followed by Beals who has been stopped for about an hour, back to Failor who is stopped for about 30 min. Marrs, Fiedler and Holmes on the move, and Paige resting at 379 for 3.5 hours.

[flowerpower]

From Danny Seavey: "We were circling out there...there was no trail and markers everywhere."

Aliy Zirkle was first into the Iditarod checkpoint, but had a very difficult run. Not only was she breaking trail, but also had to deal with a poorly marked trail. Worst of all, the dogs know when the musher doesn't know where they're going, and they lose confidence quickly. I've seen teams do crazy things when they think the musher is no longer trustworthy. Fortunately, Aliy had a lot of years of trust with those guys, and they seemed just fine, but she lost a lot of time. Assuming she takes her 24, she can leave at 1:46am Friday.

Iditarod is a great checkpoint for analysis because they generally all stop there. It's a baseline where all the different schedule merge. Girdwood 2 Nome Nick Petit and Joar Leifseth Ulsom will be be the first two to leave, and by a good margin. They're clearly in command at this point, and racing each other. Nick hasn't stopped since Ophir, appears to be going non-stop to Iditarod. Joar came from Takotna, stopped for 3 hours, but left right when Nick came past his camp. Joar is technically slightly ahead, but Nick's actually moving faster for the first time this race. They're both moving a shade over 8mph, compared to Aliy and Martin going 6mph last night.

Jessie Royer took a full 4 hour camp at Don's cabin, she's not racing the front two yet, but has a firm grasp on 3rd at the moment.

Martin Buser is in the mix out there too, and it's kind of fun to see. He's a full day behind (hasn't taken 24), but clearly doesn't care. He actually spent the night at Don's cabin, 1:50am to 8:40am, got a good nights sleep, ate breakfast, and is undoubtedly having a better time than any of them.

Mitch Seavey has jumped into 4th (6th with Aliy and Martin in front). He only stopped for 2 hours outside Ophir, and I expect him to camp again before Iditarod. He told me he's planning to add some more rest into the schedule, doubling down on the 'this is going to get hard further along' schedule.

After that, Pete Kaiser, Richie Diehl, Matt Hall, Matthew Failor, Ryan Redington, Travis Beals and Paige Drobny are all within a snack break of each other, and should make for some fun racing. The smaller overall field size certainly hasn't affected the competitive side of things.

Team size is about to get interesting. So far mushers haven't changed their strategy for the smaller team sizes (14 dog limit instead of 16). But Joar, Martin, Mitch and others left Ophir with only 12 dogs.

Sending two home by Ophir (mi.352) is no big deal. Being down to 12 is. Joar didn't get down to 12 until Koyuk (mi. 827) last year. In fact, it was his team size that enabled him to push up the coast and win. Joar got to Koyuk with 13 and Nome with 8, following Dallas' 'go with the best and roll' strategy.

By now, most mushers are sleep deprived. By tomorrow or the next day, their ability to think is seriously impaired. Autopilot takes over. I've They've done this 20 times, they know how the team should look at this point, and react accordingly. I'm curious to see how they handle the dog numbers. Instinct may tell them that they need to back off, 11 or 12 is too small a team on the river. Or it may tell them I've only sent 2 or 3 home, keep rolling, and they could finish with very small teams. Mitch and I had a discussion about this exactly before the start, we'll see if he remembers.

Danny

[mira]

Joar into Iditarod with one dog in sled, that might be the reason for his slower speed lately. I guess Nic won't go that far before he rest, werent it a couple of mushers who rested the next creek on trail from iditarod last year? Just because Iditarod was so busy?

Flowerpower, thanks for posting Dannys comments, they are nice reading.

[Alphashe]

Joar had Olive in the sled into cp. She was the leader with Russeren most of the coast and into Nome last year.

[mira]

Joar had Olive in the sled into cp. She was the leader with Russeren most of the coast and into Nome last year.

Auch, that sound like bad news.

[tanglefoot]

Great run down from Danny as always.

It’s going to be a close one if the river and yukon don’t throw up any curve balls.

Love Martin being up there with the gang even if he is really a day behind, i am sure he is having a tonne of fun and good to see lance rolling along still also enjoying the trail, he seemed super up beat and old lance in the ktuu interview.

[Breeze]

so, there sits Aliy in Iditarod, with six and a half more hours in her 24, while Nic rolls through that checkpoint and his 24 is done.

I'm pretty sure she didn't expect that to happen, because I'm positive she did not expect to take over 17 hours from Ophir to ID.

there is still plenty of race left. We'll see what else happens that might be unexpected.

[flowerpower]

Nic went through Iditarod and camped a mile down the road. Joar and Martin both stopped in Id right now, and Jesse R is about 10 miles out.