IditaProject Forum

Ryan stopped for a spell about 10 miles past Rohn to snack his dogs. His speed seems to have dropped since the Pass.

Martin blew through Rohn... and then promptly stopped about a mile down the trail.

Richie, having rested before the Pass, is now headed after Ryan at 11 mph.

Lots of musher resting on trail. Dallas and Ryan is together, still 20 miles to go to Nikolai.

Nicolas has been resting for 1.5 hour or so, 33 miles before Nikolai. Lots of others musher resting or snacking.

Here is a screen dump, the main pack is still quite pack.

Greg Heister reports it to be about 20-25 above in Nik and snowing. Forecast is for it to continue doing so for the rest of the day, slowing things down a little. Certainly most mushers seem to be travelling a <8 mph.

Both Ryan and Aaron declared their 8 and 24 hour rests - just in case. Aaron said he wanted to see what the weather did.

Logistics Check

(apologies for any misspelling of names)

Greg , Christian Schlicht(sp?), and Dave Poiser came over from Finger Lake Monday night and spent the night in Nik (together with their two pilots Dave and Chris) in a wall tent with a heater in it.

Liz Raines, Jordan Kasky, and Josiah Jones are still at RP (as of 4:30 am Tuesday morning).

Bruce Lee and Kevin Bodie spent the night in Rohn.

The hope was, at first light to get Kevin and Bruce up to Nikolai, but with the snow that looks highly doubtful. Hopefully the snow will taper off and they'll be able to get folks moved.

They hope to get Liz and crew over to McGrath to be there for the first teams coming in. Then the plan was to get Bruce and Kevin Bodie to Nik, then Greg and crew would jump over to Ophir. However, if they can't fly, they'll have to deploy their snowmachine teams - Sasha Grohen and Ian Planchen (?) - to go to McGrath and cover it for them.

Should have a live cam, either way, in McGrath - Ken Fenkhauser is in Anc and on a scheduled flight to there to get the live cam set up and running.

Quick vid of Aaron coming into Rohn yesterday afternoon - he was really happy with his team and said they were beautiful.

Was wondering if they would mention aliy

tanglefoot wrote:Was wondering if they would mention aliy

I think they generally shy away from medical emergencies until they have played out. Since the official notice didn't specify what the issue was, and since it's a private matter, it's up to Aliy + family to say more. Right now, from their blog, SPKennel doesn't know more either.

Possibly Bruce will mention it (if he ever gets to Nik), since he was in Rohn so would know more details if appropriate to pass on.

I mentioned this to FDF earlier, but if you watch the interview with Matt Failor it will warm your heart. She doesn't appear on the screen, but the interviewer is none other than Liz Raines, Matt's recent bride. Watch the love and emotion shown on his face. <Sigh>

And what Moose didn't mention is we met them at the trade fair in NH in 2019 (?) and they are such nice people, both of them.

Mille in Nik:

I'm very happy. I was happier - had a mishap in the gorge and the team got split off from each other, so I had to spend 45 minutes putting them back together. Phoenix is my super-leader - she's had to do a bit of work since RP. [Re. where to 24?] My plan had been to go to Iditarod, but I probably shouldn't say that because now I'm jinxed, so we'll see what happens.

(thinking Joar took his 24 at Iditarod the year he won, so maybe following that strategy?)

Greg asks about the trail - says he's been hearing reports of it being tough:

Yes, the Burn was what I'd always been told it could be. Last year there was tons of snow. This year there were areas of absolutely no snow, just dirt. But we're mostly going uphill, so it isn't so bad - the dogs have to work harder to pull on dirt, but I'm really more terrified about going back on it, because then we'll be going downhill and that will be interesting. There's some nice big rocks. I don't know the trail that well, but I've been looking back over my shoulder to try and gauge how does it look when we're going the other way, especially whenever I think about it and there may be something that's tricky... and on this section, I just pretty much stopped doing that <laughs>...I'm thinking 'this is going to be slightly hellish'. I really, really hope we just get rerouted to the coast. No, it'll be interesting, but it'll be good. Unfortunately I've had to drop a couple of my powerhouses, and maybe that's a good thing on the return.

Martin in Nik:

I was having a good run for a while - I was trying... trying to turn back the clock, the clock of ages ,<laughs>. But something's going on with my team. I'm really rarely perplexed, but I'm perplexed with what's going on - or not going on. They're putting out about 60% of what they should be - something's amiss. That means you take the foot off the pedal, give them plenty of rest, and hope to rectify the situation.... because we have to come over the same hills we just came down over - and it'll require some power.