Interesting things:
- Travis Beals isn't feeling well - but still has a full team of 16.
- Jessie Holmes took a weird stop (possibly unplanned) in McGrath. Wade is asking - were the trail conditions bad so he changed his schedule? or did he make the call because he was pushing too hard? or had already pushed too hard? They want to watch carefully what he does once he comes off his break. Will he start pushing right away (if it was a trail issue), or take it easy, rest long in Cripple again and start racing after Ruby (if he overdid it)?
- They said to watch Matt Hall - who was in 14th at Kaltag last year... and finished 4th. He has a good dog team. (right now Matt is showing 6th, but is maybe closer to 4th in real life).
- They say there's a big hill between McGrath and Tak - and apparently Paige D made a great run on that section. They say that's a good place to make time if your team is fresh (and lose tons of time if your team is tired and it's a slog).
- There is a white-out leaving Ruby (from the ID Trail invitational), will it affect the mushers? Will they have to break trail, so it'll be better to be further back?
- First year they're back using 16 dogs again. Anna Berington dropped three and is down to 10 dogs. If this had been a 14 dog year, she'd be way down in dogs.
- NO SCRATCHES YET THIS YEAR!