Through North Pole Dog Drop
Both Aliy and Allen have passed through the North Pole Dog Drop, 33 miles down the trail from Fairbanks. I didn’t get an exact time that they went through, however it was right around 8:40pm. All of the teams passed through the checkpoint within a 20 minute window. Although Allen left 14 minutes after Aliy from the start line, he had passed her before reaching the dog drop. They were running together with Allen slightly in the lead. The temperature at the checkpoint was -35 degrees below zero. It will likely get colder than that during the night. Neither had to drop any dogs.
The next Checkpoint is Chena Hot Springs, about 66 miles. Aliy and Allen will be running on very familiar trails during this section of the race. They will pass within a mile of the kennel. The first year Aliy ran the Yukon Quest (1998), the trail passed so close that the dogs could see their dog houses.
The teams:
Aliy is running with ChaCha, Butterscotch, Oddball, Skittles, Teddy, Mouse, Pingo, Dill, Spot, JJ, Spicy and Stormy.
Allen has Girlfriend, her pups Hoss, KitKat, Reeses and Snickers as well as Petunia, Betsy, Larry, Homey, Sparky, Manny and Betty.
Musher Bib #3 has withdrawn from the race at North Pole, but I don’t know who that musher is. It is either Alyssa Quaile or Jocelyne LeBlanc. She sited the cold weather as her reason for scratching. I hope to have a list of the musher’s numbers soon. The Quest 300 website has not been updated yet.
The Nelson Family was kind enough to volunteer to be SP Kennel’s handlers for the race. Mark, Lance, Bob and Jane will also be keeping us up to date with what is going on along the trail. We sent them out with a satellite phone so we should be able to keep everyone up to date with the Quest 300.
