CB300: Into Meiers Lake Checkpoint

Both teams are now into Meiers Lake Roadhouse Checkpoint!

Allen and the Black Team rested at Chistochina for four hours and made the run over with a full team of 12 team mates to Meiers Lake in 7 hours, 50 mins. They were first into the checkpoint at 2:57am and are making great time!

Allen said he had to stop several times to find the trail due to the snow falling. Wes said the dogs look great!!

Aliy and the Red Team also rested for four hours at Chisto. Her 12-strong team took 8 hours, 34 mins to run the 68 miles to Meiers Lake and arrived at 4:16am. With so many youngsters and inexperience on her team she will be extremely pleased with their run time.

You can see by the zoom in of the checkpoint that there is a road crossing; teams have to cross over the Richardson Highway to get to the Meiers Lake Roadhouse.

There are a few road crossings in this race and they are well manned, well managed and well marked for both mushers and motorists.

Volunteers stationed at the road crossings ensure it is safe for the teams to cross before allowing them to proceed. Thanks!

The handler team arrived early and managed to catch a little sleep in Hollywood before greeting both teams, pointing out where their drop bags and straw was stored, helping park the team on the lake and explaining where the water and hospitality area is.

The run over from Chistochina is one of the more challenging legs of the race. You can see from the elevation map (at the bottom of the tracker) that the teams had some climbing to do! The big peak is called “The Hump” with an elevation of 4,085 feet. There is also a large peak right after the checkpoint so dogs and mushers will need a good rest here.

The table below shows the first eight into the checkpoint ordered by their cumulative run times. Remember that the total run time is the figure that matters most in this race, and the GPS trackers don’t really give us a true account of who is in front until everyone has seen out all their mandatory rest time and time differential. I will update the table as more mushers arrive into the checkpoint. (Note: these are my 4:30am calculations so don’t quote me on them!)

Because we likely won’t get to see video for a while due to remote checkpoints coming up, here is a quick video of both teams on their final training runs on Thursday afternoon.