ID: Sunday – Day One

It’s 9.30pm local time. Feeling: Relief to have them on the trail.

Currently, Aliy and her team have stopped to camp at mile 74 on the Yentna River, about nine miles short of Skwentna. They blew through Yentna checkpoint this afternoon at 6.36pm. Aliy will rest her team a few hours here and they will start to settle into their race routine – a far cry from the Ceremonial Start and Restart fun/chaos of the last couple of days.

Earlier this morning, when we arrived at Willow the temperature was around freezing or just above, with big fat flakes of snow plopping around us – enough to make everything pretty but just a little bit damp. The forecast for the race is for warm weather and more snow with the odd storm thrown in as a possibility. Fresh snow will slow down the race as the trails won’t be hard-packed racetracks.

The staging area today was in the Willow Community Centre carpark – we would normally park down on Willow Lake but for various climate related reasons it was unsafe to do so this year so we were up off the lake. The start chute was set up on the ramp, sloping down towards the lake and there were thousands of spectators lining the route for at least a couple of miles.

Right away we let the dogs out of the truck for a watery, meaty snack to hydrate before their journey then popped them back in for a couple of hours to nap. I peeked in on Rodney during that time and he was sound asleep. Aliy, in the meantime, packed her sled and made sure she had everything she and the dogs might need until their first resupply point. She also took time to get focussed and into her own race-mode.

About one hour before ‘go time’ we got everyone up, harnessed and bootied them then tried to keep an aura of calm around the truck. Once the other teams started to leave though that went out the window a little, especially for Decaf and Rodney – it was just too exciting.

The whole crew of Zirkle/Moores navigated the team to the line slowly and safely and after final high-fives and hugs we send them on their way. We were very pleased to get the team on the trail and onwards towards Nome. All the dogs and Aliy were pleased to get going also. Now it is just Aliy and her team mates for the next week.

Here are some pics and a video of the team leaving the line – we have more pictures and video to sort through and I’ll share them with you over the next few days.

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Photos by Barbara Swenson, Karolyn and Moira