YQ: Monday Night Update

It’s 12.30am Tuesday in Alaska.

Firstly – here’s an audio wrap up from Aliy about the happenings of today.

Black Team

Right now four teams have stopped at Slaven’s Roadhouse and are enjoying the hospitality. If you haven’t yet – check out their Facebook page. As it is not an official checkpoint we don’t have arrival times but a replay of the tracker shows Michelle arrived first with Brent next and Cody and Allen look to have been switching 3rd and 4th positions for the whole leg. Whether that is an actual reflection of what happened or just tracker update anomalies but Cody left after Allen and arrived ahead so overall was quicker.

These four mushers know each other well and will be enjoying the competition.

The next leg towards Trout Creek and then onto Eagle is around 90 miles in total. After leaving the Roadhouse the team will pop back down onto the Yukon River and follow it all the way to Eagle, criss-crossing the river and portaging over some braided areas as they go. Once in Eagle all teams have a mandatory six hour stop.

I can’t update you much on the Black Team for a while, I’ll just be watching the tracker like y’all.

Red and Black Team

Karolyn and her team are rocking it! They arrived into Circle at 8:25pm and will stay around five hours before embarking on their final leg – back down Birch Creek to Central. Ryan reported that although she was “more than ready to be off that river” she pretty happy right now she’s definitely got spirits up. She and the dogs will sleep hard and fast.

Circle City was full to brimming and parking spots for dog teams and sleeping mushers were scarce. The lovely volunteers were very kind and made sure our team found a good spot to rest.

Karolyn will get up around 1.5 hours before leaving time so she can feed the dogs and grab a bite to eat herself. Then she’ll repack her sled, ensuring all her mandatory gear is still in there (cold weather sleeping bag, hand ax, snowshoes, vet book, a cooker and fuel for said cooker plus food and booties for the dogs). She will then dress the dogs with fresh booties and leggings if needed, and refit their coats that can get skew-whiff while they sleep. Once all that is done she will pull the hook and leave the last checkpoint for one more run before the finish.

Lisa sent through a couple of quick videos of the team from earlier in the race – arriving into Mile 101 and leaving Central. Her line up arriving to 101 was Mismo and Junior in lead, Sanka and Kodiak in swing, Cloud running on her own, Peach and Gold, Bronze and Faff, and Cayenne and Iron in wheel.

Leaving Central Karolyn shuffled the team a little with Mismo and Junior still in lead, Sanka and Kodi in swing then it looks like she’s moved Peach up with Cloud, Gold and Faff, Bronze on her own with Cayenne and Iron in wheel. It can liven things up a bit in the team to change positions as suddenly the dogs have someone different to run with. It can change the dynamic of the team.

As there is no internet at Central we won’t get pics through of their finish until the crew are back at the kennel but we’ll catch up and wrap up as soon as we can. Keep an eye on the Yukon Quest Facebook page where they are publishing fantastic pics from their visual content team.

GO TEAM!

Handler Crews

Ryan, John and Lisa are in Circle with Karolyn. They’ll get them onto the trail safely before cleaning up the camp spot and driving back down to Central. Padee is now back in Fairbanks, hopefully catching up with some sleep, especially after the extra few hours on the trip home (as Aliy mentioned in the voice catch-up)

Right about now, Aliy and Bridgett will have left the kennel and are making their way to Dawson. Aliy and Wendy packed the truck with all the equipment to build dog camp while Bridgett checked in with her family. They won’t see their mama for a few days so it’s important to check in. Both got some overdue sleep. By dog team this leg is 300 miles. By dog truck this leg is over 900 miles. See that lovely 9 hour, 7 minute route on the map below? Yeah, that road is closed in the winter so the handler crews drive nearly to Whitehorse, turn left up the Klondike Highway and keep going till they hit Dawson City.

Aliy and Bridgett should be at Fast Eddy’s in Tok right on time for breakfast! Perfect!

Once in Dawson they will set up dog camp before Allen and the team arrive. I’ll tell you all about dog camp later.

By the way – is it just me or do you all have a hundred tabs open in your browser? Two trackers, two current standings, two sets of rules, race map, distance map, trail notes…