Regarding Hugh Neff's scratch Josh's blog had this to say;
"Hugh’s partner, Tamra was on his support team and wanted to set the story straight as to exactly why their team isn’t racing anymore.
She said first off that it wasn’t because of a tough trail, Hugh signed up for this race because he was looking forward to a tough trail, and was in 4th place when he scratched. We had reported later that it was issues with his support team, and she was more than happy to elaborate on what those problems were. She said the trail between Telephone and Haven on the way north was tough, just like everyone was expecting…what they weren’t expecting was that because of the lack of snow, it would be tougher on snowmachines than it was on the dog teams, most mushers beat their support teams into Haven. Tamra, along with a hired local musher got into some trouble on their snow machines on the trail, and after a period of time had passed, they were diverting teams up a steep hill through these stuck machines. The hired local musher all of a sudden then decided that he was going to help another musher’s crew, got his machine going, and left Tamra in the middle of nowhere. She was finally able to get free and took her machine (without supplies) to met Neff in Haven. When Neff learned of the loss of one of his crew members, he didn’t see how he would be able to compete. He is now running his dogs back on the trail into Nome and we will attempt to speak with him once he returns."
http://www.alaskasweepstakesblog.com
Poor Hugh what a lousy thing for that handler to do!
