The twins hit the official trail little more than 24 hours ago, and they have already covered some 153 miles with their successful arrival in Rainy Pass at 2:00pm AK time this afternoon. They were reported in 33rd and 34th place and are each running 15 dogs. They dropped one dog each in the prior checkpoint of Finger Lake.
I am neither concerned nor surprised by the fact that they have dropped one dog at this point. This first section of trail has been hard, fast, and warm which can easily cause problems with dehydration and overheating as well as shoulder or wrist problems. With regard to the latter, think about the anatomy of a dog... their legs are designed to go forward and backward. Icy conditions can sometimes cause one of their legs to shoot out sideways, and dogs just aren't designed to do the splits. That kind of move can strain shoulder muscles, and I know the twins would much rather leave a dog safely behind at a checkpoint than risk pressing on, especially given some of the highly technical portions of trail coming up.
Although I was traveling during much of the race to this point and not glued to the GPS tracker, I have a pretty good idea of what the race was like for them so far. After pulling out of Willow, they likely tried to keep a slower pace as the afternoon sun finally turned to dusk and they worked to cover the 42 miles to Yentna Station checkpoint. Their sleds were fully loaded pulling out of Willow, so there were no drop bags waiting for them in Yentna. They spent about 5 minutes grabbing straw and Heet (the flammable liquid in the yellow bottles that they carry with them to fuel their portable cookers for boiling water and thawing food on the trail). I also suspect they stopped to camp for a few hours outside of Yentna.
The next checkpoint of Skwentna was also a brief, 5 minute stop... just long enough to load up on lots of dog food from drop bags and hit the trail again. While the next checkpoint of Finger Lake is a sanctioned dog drop, it is not a drop bag location, so the twins would have loaded up in Skwentna to make sure they had adequate provisions to cover the 70 miles before the next drop bag checkpoint.
Sounds intense, right? And with precious little snow on the trail this year to facilitate braking, I can imagine it was one hairy ride. We can breath a sigh of relief knowing that is now behind the twins.
As to weather so far, the Iditarod Weather Center reports continued warm, mild temps in the low-to-mid 30s, but with an increasing chance of very welcome snow.
The 2 current leaders in the race have recently pulled out of Rohn, and another 7 teams are into Rohn. We have also seen our first team scratch from the race. Veteran Cindy Gallea pulled out in Skwentna, although I do not yet see why. Regardless, we wish her and her dogs a very safe journey back to their home kennel.
Kristy feeds her dogs in Finger Lake. Photo by Bob Hallinen, ADN.com.