Just about an hour ago (at 7:32am Alaska time) Lance Mackey completed a long 112 mile trek from Cripple to make him the first musher to reach the Yukon, and the village of Ruby. As I reported last night the first musher to this checkpoint (and Anvik on the southern route) wins $5000 and a gourmet meal prepared over a campstove by the Executive Chef of the Millennium Hotel. I’m sure that after such a long trek, going an average of 10mph he is going to enjoy this meal….and I’m sure his wife will enjoy the dinner when they get to do it all again later on in Anchorage after the race.
Lance might be looking over his shoulder though, because Hans Gatt left Cripple just about 2.5 hours after he did, and there is a crew of Jeff King, Rick Swenson, Kjetil Backen, Aaron Burmiester, and Mitch Seavey who all left within 6 hours of Mackey. Some of these mushers like King, Backen, and Seavey had MUCH longer rests in Cripple than Mackey did, so look for them to possibly move on, while Lance will most likely take his Yukon River 8-hour layover in Ruby.
We had a request earlier to talk about some of the mushers who have scratched from the race, I’m working on a piece that I’ll try and get up early this afternoon…. in the last 24 hours there have been some serious contenders drop from this years race due to sickness within their teams.
What is the coldest it has been during this years race? Have there been any storms? Looking at the tekp. at the top of the page it is 32 is this comfortable for the dogs? or is it too hot? the weather in our state is low 20s today with snow since this morning and still into the evening and lots of wind maybe alaska is having better weather then us right now even thou we don’t have as much snow on the ground?! Some of the classes in our school drew names and that is the person they are following. My son got #47 Heather they are all sending out positive thoughts to the racers to help their person . Thanks Good luck to all the racers and their dogs.
Left by Tracy on March 7th, 2008