IditaProject Forum

Listening to Wade and Sophie - very interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR4_RmFosck

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!
  

And this from the Josh Robbins' camp on FB:

Josh has been hunkered down in McGrath for hours now. It appears he might be taking his 24 hour layover in McGrath and not Takotna as planned due to the heavy snowfall and poor visibility. It’s dumping snow right now and you can barely see past the sled. It’s somewhat of a bummer because he packed more food and gear in his Takotna bags, but he’s doing just fine where he’s at now. He’s not alone and is among a handful of other mushers. Mother Nature calls the shots and keeps us all guessing. We’ll see when the weather clears up enough for the teams to get rolling again.

So this might explain Jessie Holmes staying there instead of going on?

Thank you elsietee!

This interview with Jessie Holmes was on KTUU yesterday 3/6: https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2024/ ... rst-leave/

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Iditarod veteran Jessie Holmes and 13 dogs trotted off the Kuskokwim River and into the McGrath checkpoint shortly after 7 p.m. Tuesday.
Holmes, a familiar face in the Iditarod — and outside of the race as a television personality — arrived coming in off a 48-mile run after resting just outside of Nikolai.

While he was the first to arrive, he was not the first to leave. Holmes stayed for 3 hours and 23 minutes as he laid straw and fed his athletes.
“My strategy was to camp out there and go to Ophir, but the trail and weather didn’t allow for that,” Holmes said as he walked to get water for his team. “It may look good that I’m first here on paper, that I’m first here, but really I’m giving up the position I’m in resting here to get over to Ophir when everyone else is getting to Takotna. That’s why people sent out multiple 24′s [hour layovers], if I had a 24 at Takotna I would have went on up there and had a nice 30-minute lead, but that’s racing.

“I don’t have the team to win this race I’ve realized. I’m just trying to do what will set them up the best. I dropped a couple dogs that were my veterans and that leaves me with only five dogs that have been to the finish line and a bunch of young dogs. So my expectations are becoming realistic and do what’s right by them and hopefully will have some racing to do on the last few days.”

Mille update:

"It has been a challenging start to Iditarod 52 for Mille. Although the dogs are doing absolutely great, Mille herself is not so. With a troublesome pancreatitis, she has suffered two mild attacks whilst on the trail.
When leaving McGrath, Mille & Co was all set up to go to Cripple behind Dallas, but she could no longer manage to stand on the runners due to severe pain and had to stop at Takotna, after just 18 miles.
Mille has since been taken to a clinic where she has been treated to get the inflammation under control. She is now feeling a lot better, but we will have to wait until her 24 hrs mandatory is up to see if the Race Marshall clears her to continue in the race.
Mille wants to let all her supporters and sponsors know that she is so sorry that this has happened – she really thought her health was in the clear and felt good when the team went to start. The dogs have performed fantastic – it’s a truly phenomenal team"

yikes pancreatitis can be very painful!

Aw Mille, so sorry to read about this, hope you are feeling much better by now. Good luck to you.

ElsieT, I read yesterday that Mille is dealing with pancreatitis. She was seen by medical personal who gave her something to address it and was soon back on the trail. Ouch.

I did not subscribe to II this year. My own personal little statement to multiple years of disappointing coverage. Having said that, I am missing the tracker and certain interviews. Am hemming and hawing whether to subscribe now, nearly halfway into the race. Will someone please remind me of this next year.

I did hear somewhere (Wade and Sophie? Brendan?) that they thought the coverage was even better this year than past years, so there's that...

The dividing line between veterans and rookies is quite sharp.