ID: Tuesday – Towards White Mountain

It’s 5:30pm. Feeling: thankful for good wifi!

At the time of writing Aliy and team are just 15 miles from White Mountain. Keep an eye on the Insider live feed in case it is up and working for their arrival. I can’t even imagine how many times I have hit the refresh button today.

The run to White Mountain has a number of challenges – but by this stage they sure know what hard is! There are a few big hills to climb – including one that is named “Little McKinley” at 1000 feet, so a team of 11 should be a definite advantage. We watched the team over every foot of that climb and they kept chugging along. That’s one thing this team does really well – chug along when things are tough.

I asked Allen about this section of trail:

One of the most challenging parts of the race can be the trip through the village of Golovin. It is not a checkpoint but the trail goes right through the main street of the village and those in the community are huge supporters of the race. Unfortunately, dogs can sometimes make the assumption that they could stop there and many teams have faltered there in the past. Despite this, Aliy loves to stop there for a few minutes to greet the locals. She feels it is the least she can do for a community that supports the race every year.

Read about Aliy’s visit to Golovin in August 2017 here.

Once in White Mountain every team takes a mandatory eight hour rest. Aliy will feed the team a couple of times during that time, massage feet and muscles, and ensure they rest for as much of that eight hours as possible. She will need some rest herself before they embark on the final 77 mile leg to Nome – with Matt Hall snapping at her heels she will need to be ski-poling and running up the hills!

Aliy and team are running in 4th position. Some really dramatic things would need to happen to some really good people if she was to make it into the top three but, as we all know, anything can happen. Two Rivers neighbour Matt is not that far behind in 5th with Travis and Paige leapfrogging for 6th. That will be an interesting match to watch. It’s certainly not over yet!

The weather here in Nome is not fantastic. Visibility has been poor, it is lightly snowing but at this stage there not too much of a breeze. Our accommodations are about a mile out of town and yesterday we could see town and the ocean but today for a time we really couldn’t see anything at all. It’s been around 15-20F for much of the day. The crew has been catching the highlights of Nome today: visiting the annual craft fair in the church, supporting some local retail businesses and drinking good coffee. We might go musk-ox exploring later! Being so far north and it being daylight savings time we have daylight until around 9pm so lots of day to fill in. Nome has had a LOT of snow this year, you will have seen many reports. I took some pics from around our neighbourhood and their crazy high snow berms.

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