CB300: Onwards to Meiers Lake

After 3.5 hours rest the team disappeared down the trail at 4:36pm, headed towards the Meiers Lake Roadhouse checkpoint. All 12 dogs left with Allen.

The trail to Meiers Lake is punctuated by a rather large hill – affectionately nicknamed “The Hump”. As you see from the elevation map on the tracker – it’s a pretty big hump!

According to the trail notes on CB300 website: “From the Chistochina checkpoint, the race course follows the paved bicycle path to it’s intersection with Sinona Creek, then along the creek bed under the highway bridge and further along while paralleling the highway to the Chistochina River trailhead.

The race trail then turns northward again at the Chistochina River trailhead and follows this traditional use trail ever northwestward.  The race trail crosses Excelsior Creek about 37 miles from the Chistochina checkpoint, then up and over the “Hump” (elevation 4,085 feet) 41½ miles out of Chistochina checkpoint, followed by a crossing of the upper Gakona River about 45 miles above the Chistochina checkpoint.

Once across the upper Gakona River, the trail heads due west until it’s intersection with the Alyeska pipeline corridor.  From here, the trail follows the pipeline south for 16 miles until a point where the race course leaves the pipeline to follow an access road west approx 1½ miles toward the second checkpoint at Meier’s Lake Roadhouse.  From the upper Gakona River crossing to Meier’s Lake checkpoint is approx 22 miles.  Total distance from Chistochina checkpoint to Meier’s Lake checkpoint is 68 miles.“

Below is the current top 15 “leaderboard” after just one checkpoint – the Black Team had the fourth fastest runtime into Chisto (disclaimer: according to my maths).