Its 8.15am in Alaska.
Almost simultaneously at 2am-ish Allen and his team, and Karolyn and her team left Slaven’s and Circle respectively. I was flicking between trackers and saw both trackers come awake at around the same time. The trackers go to sleep when they haven’t been moved in a while and they grey-out. If they sense movement they switch themselves back on and just a shake of a sled while mushers are packing can do it. Once they awoke I obsessively switched between super zoomed-in screens for another half hour to see who would leave first.
Black Team
Allen rested his team about 6.5 hours at Slaven’s and they are currently making their way towards Trout Creek. At the time of writing they are about 23 miles from the hospitality stop and running in 4th position.
Red and Black Team
At 2.05am Karolyn left Circle checkpoint ready for the slog back along Birch Creek to the finish.
As the handler crew were starting clean-up of the campspot the checkpoint volunteers told them she was coming back! Very quickly into the run Karolyn noticed Faff had a head-bob caused by a bit of a limp on her left front. Karolyn’s main goal for the race is to ensure it is a positive experience for all the dogs, particularly the youngsters, so with that in mind Karolyn turned the team around and came back to leave Faff with the handler crew.
It’s a big deal to turn a team around and return, so well done Karolyn for recognising something was wrong so quickly. It’s would have been a long way for Faff to ride in the sled bag had she carried on.
So, they effectively left the checkpoint twice!
At the time of writing the team is resting about 36 miles from the finish. It will be daylight there soon which always has a positive effect when you are sleep deprived.
Armchair Musher Andy Pace has written about his experience on Birch Creek. It’s a great read.
Congratulations to Dave Turner and Jeremy Traska who had a close race for the win. After 300 miles there was only 18 minutes between them in the end.
Wow! The YQ300 had some upfront competition. Exciting!
Awwww, Faff, so sorry you had to pull out. Better safe than sorry, though. Good job Karolyn!
Good to know on the grey-out trackers. When I saw that I always assumed they were resting a while so didn’t check back for a while.
Go YQ300 Team. It’s almost over.
GO SPK go! Great to see Karolyn out there with the 300 Team . Safe travels for all!
Good for you Karolyn! Just the right thing to do and hope Faff is well soon! On the ball for sure. I see you are about 12 miles from the finish. CONGRATS and a job well done!!