ID: Red Team in Takotna, Black towards McGrath

It’s 9am Wednesday morning

RED TEAM UPDATE

Aliy and her team mates pulled into Takotna early this morning at 1:46am. They took 2 hours 53 mins to cover the 18 miles from McGrath.

In the brief Insider interview she was asked what the challenges out there were: she replied there was “some water out there, slow trail, lazy Aliy” and that she is not functioning completely well right now. It must be frustrating for all the mushers at this point as they slog through mushy, punchy snow. Once Aliy gets some rest herself she will be feeling much better!

Aliy arrived into the checkpoint with Spark and Dutch in lead, Commando and Chipper in swing, Kodiak and Champ, Junior and Cayenne, Rodney and Five, Driver and Nomex, Clyde is running on his own with Violet and Scooby in wheel so you can see she has mixed things up a bit in the front end. We also see her sled is lit up with her green Head-lites collars, a safety feature she added after the 2016 Iditarod.

Currently they have been there for nearly seven hours, which indicates to us that she has probably opted to take her 24 hour rest there. A musher can “declare” their 24 hour stop but they can amend their plan and leave earlier than that if they decide to. Stopping here will also give them a great night-time exit time.

It is during the 24 hour break that mushers see our their start differential time. This is how the field gets back on even keel after the staggered start so don’t be alarmed when mushers don’t pull their hook at exactly 24 hours. Aliy will need to stay an extra 74 minutes i.e. they will rest 25 hours, 14 minutes.

BLACK TEAM UPDATE

The GPS tracker shows Allen and his team out of Nikolai after about six hours rest and are 10 miles out of McGrath right now.

The current standings are not updated as yet to confirm his exit time or how many team mates he has with him. In previous years it has not been mandatory for mushers to sign out of checkpoints in this race, and I presume that is the same this year, so it is possible the exit time is not recorded. We may need to wait to see his check-in information at McGrath before we see the number of dogs he has with him.

I captured this interesting screen shot from the tracker about 25 miles ago showing the lakes and ponds in the area they were travelling in before they hit the Kuskokwim River trail.

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Another thing that is different between the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest is that, because there are no handlers following the teams, the mushers can pack “return bags” for any non-perishable supplies they want returned, for example used booties, dog jackets, human clothing etc. You can see in this screen shot Aliy going through her resupply bags and putting used or un-needed equipment into her addressed return bags.