YQ: Hills – Morning Day Two

It’s 7.45am Alaska time

Black Team

As I write this Allen and team are resting at Mile 101 checkpoint. They checked in at 5:53am.

The team stayed in Two Rivers checkpoint for four hours. Allen got an hour of sleep in that time with the rest spent caring for the dogs, making them a meal, repacking his sled and fixing a broken runner footpad. The latter is not something you would hope to have to do but… anything can happen. Aliy reported that Allen and the dogs look great and he told Aliy that he was “ready to climb that mountain!”

All 15 athletes left Two Rivers at 19 past midnight and climbed up and over Rosebud. It was a cold night! You can’t tell from watching the bouncing black dogs on the tracker – the stories behind the GPS position are what makes the race. I managed to capture a screen shot of when the team summited:

The team checked into Mile 101 checkpoint after 5 hours, 34 minutes on the trail. They’ll stay a while before hitting the trail towards Central. Mile 101 is the first checkpoint that mushers can choose to take a four hour mandatory stop – their first must be either here or at Central and the teams’ start differential is added to their mandatory rest at the first stop (this is to balance out the staggered start – Allen and team stay an extra 33 minutes).

After Mile 101 comes the infamous Eagle Summit. This hill is a challenge for teams in either direction. In this direction the climb isn’t as steep as coming from Central but the descent is extreme, with a dogleg to the right on the way down. Read more about this section of trail in the trail notes. The handler crew of Bridgett and Padee were battling road logistics issues last night. Report from Bridgett as they were on the way to Mile 101 at around 12.30am: “Road to 101 is open. The road from 101 into Central is currently closed because of blowing snow in the road is blown in. They should hopefully have plows out by 8 AM. But who knows? He may make it there before we do!” That has happened more than once – handler crews get stuck on one side of the summit as dogs teams run on through and get to Central checkpoint before the trucks. The volunteer crew up there will greet and help park the teams if the handlers can’t get there in time and mushers will know the conditions they are running through well enough to know that perhaps the trucks can’t get there.

Red and Black Team

Karolyn and her team had an 2.5 hour rest at mile 44 of the trail before pulling in to Two Rivers checkpoint at 3:15am time. Her handler crew of Aliy, Ryan, her family and Lisa were able to watch them go past Pleasant Valley Store before they too made their way to the checkpoint to wait for them.

As I write the team is still resting in the checkpoint before leaving for ‘the climb’. It will be daylight in a couple of hours, not sure that is a good or a bad thing when faced with such a challenge!

I don’t expect to hear from the handler crews for a while as cell coverage up the Steese Highway is pretty much non-existant and Mile 101 checkpoint is fairly old-school in that there is no public wi-fi for them to use. We have the trackers, current standings and the Facebook pages to help piece together the story until we hear the details.

By the way – have you read Andy Pace’s column “Why Run”? You must.