Ruby - Kaltag (Yukon river)

[SuldalsXpressen]

Nulato:

Jessie Royer is in. She made a ok run from Galena, not a fast one.
Richie Diehl is next in.
Thomas Wærner has passed both Pete Kaiser and Brent Sass and is looking very good.

Of these 5, only Wærner has done his mand 8. I would say that puts him in the lead even including the rest he also needs when others are doing their mand 8.

Eskil

[SuldalsXpressen]

4, almost 5 teams in.
What sticks out is the speed. Thomas Wærner is by far the fastest (mayby tied with Brent Sass), but his speed is only 5.55mph. This is somewhat slow going. Difficult trail? Slushy?

Eskil

[flowerpower]

Warm weather with snow, I think. According to weatherunderground.

[mira]

Brent has left Nulato

[SuldalsXpressen]

Wærner just left. About 4 hours after Jessie . With about 4 hours of rest.

[elsietee]

How is Thomas and Jessie neck-n-neck? Thomas is about three hours behind Jessie on the trail, but she hasn´t done her mand 8... That makes Thomas 5 hours ahead, right? Aaron is the one closest to Thomas. Wade mars about 3 hours behind, right?

Because when I wrote that, Jessie had rested 5 hours in Ruby, while Thomas rested 8 - so when she left, he automatically gained 3 hours. Which meant that, when she took her 8, he'd draw level with her again, based on the times right then.

Of course, since I wrote that, he's been blasting down the trail, picking up 30-45 minutes or so on her every run, so he's likely ahead by now. My rough calculations last night had him gaining 4 hours on her between Ruby and Kaltag - just based on speed alone.

OK - crunching some numbers - looking at Jessie and Thomas because they are resting in the check points:

Ruby rest:
Jessie 4h 58m
Thomas 8 h

Ruby > Galena run:
Jessie 6h 42m
Thomas 6h 2m

Galena rest:
Jessie 4h 33m
Thomas 3h 41m

Galena > Nulato run:
Jessie 7h 10m
Thomas 6h 40m

Nulato rest:
Jessie 3h 23m
Thomas 4h 8m

He then left Nulato 2h 20 mins behind Jessie. Thomas is currently 20 miles behind Jessie...at ~6.5 mph (averaging), that puts him still ~3 hours behind her - but with a 3 hour gain due to him having taken his 8... so still neck and neck?.

As far as Brent, I think conditions aren't working in his favour. All the mushers post-Nulato are now moving ~6.5mph. Since leaving Ruby, Brent ran 9 hours, camped for 5 hours, and has now been running 6 hours. It looks like he has been stopping to snack every 2.5 hours or so, but just stopped for a longer break - just under 3 hours. But he's still 35+ from Kaltag, so around another 5.5 hours on trail before he can take his 24. When I was running numbers last night, I had him into Kaltag ~noon-1 pm, so the conditions have definitely deteriorated. (I seem to remember him pulling a similar move the year everything went horribly wrong for him - he ended up out on the river in the hot-part of the day and his run took way longer than it should have - resulting in him coming into Nulato (?) really slow).

Not taking their 8 earlier on the river, may really hurt those mushers. (Jessie, Brent, and Pete are currently committed to taking it in Kaltag. Many others are stopped in Nulato, but it's too soon to see if they're going to stay the full 8).

[elsietee]

And here's what the field looks like:

[elsietee]

Mushers in Nulato (and add Wade to that list - he just arrived there):

[COHusky]

thank you elsietee

[elsietee]

Videos:

Thomas in Nulato: Soft trail, punchy trail. Trail breakers doing an amazing job. Has everything he needs in the sled, so now he can stop where he wants - doesn't matter if it's a checkpoint or somewhere on the trail. Feels he's in a good position because now he can start adding some rest (instead of cutting rest to try and catch up), so he can add 30 mins to an hour at every stop - and keep an eye on those teams behind him.

He dropped one dog there (and had another he wanted the vet to look at). Dogs pulled the hook while he was signing in.

Jessie: "Nulato 2.0" - laughs. "Bet you guys are happy?". Checker says "...I don't know what it was like normally, so I'm not missing anything" (think they're referring to checkers having to hang out in a tent, instead of a nice warm building in the village). They tell her where the straw is, and point out where the water is "half-way up that hill". Jessie is dubious (will it be easier just to melt snow, than trek up there?). It's blowing a little bit.y

Asked about her run coming in. She said she guesses it went pretty good, but she slept through half of it <laughs>. Wind blown, soft snow. The snow is really dry, so the sled isn't gliding on it, so they're going pretty slow. Hopefully everyone behind her is also not moving very fast.

Talks about how normally when you run the race, you're completely removed from the rest of the world - you're just concentrating on your 14 dogs. So to have this much outside influence is really unusual.

The removal of Shaktoolik as a checkpoint [it's now just a bag drop - no race personnel] means it has messed up a lot of ppl's strategies - they've been setting up their runs based on having amenities at Shak. If you could pick one checkpoint that is critical - it's Shak - because that's such a harsh environment up there. If it was blue sky and good weather, then not a big deal. But when the weather's bad and it's storming and blowing - which apparently it is up there - then it's a crucial safety checkpoint. So a lot of mushers are worried about the safety aspect. It''s a really long run across what's probably the harshest section of trail. Dogs are eating great - 13 dogs just at 35 lbs of food so they might be waddling out of here, but at this point they need all the calories they can get. So hopefully they'll just keep eating on down the trail like that. Race is going pretty good - going slow, but that's the snow because the sled doesn't want to slide. It always feels like you're going slower than everyone else, but hopefully they're going just as slow. They can't be going much faster - you just have to keep reminding yourself of that.

...more coming from Richie....