To Rohn, or not to Rohn

It’s the second day of Iditarod 2010 and although things are starting to sort themselves out, we have a long way to go until any type of trends can be accurately observed. What we do know is that mid-morning today we saw Paul Gebhardt become the first of several teams to check into Rainy Pass and begin a several hour rest. At the same time a number of mushers including Sebastian Schnuelle and John Baker opted to rest outside the checkpoint before flying through in the mid-afternoon. Its still anyone’s race at this point and it’ll be interesting to see what happens are teams continue to choose different run/rest strategies and the race spreads out.

Resting will be a key part of the day for most mushers because once leaving Rainy Pass the Dalzell Gorge stands between them and Rohn. The Gorge area contains some of the most infamous and treacherous trail in the entire Iditarod. Writer Craig Medred was on that section of the trail a week ago when he was covering the “Iditarod Invitational Ultra-Marathon” and said of the area between Rainy Pass and Rohn:

“At what point is a trail so bad it no longer qualifies as a trail.” And “Why all this talk about the Farewell Burn. Mushers will be lucky to make it here to Rohn.” He followed up those statements a few days later in Anchorage as he tweeted “hope ITC has Iditarod Trail in better shape… Dalzell Gorge scary last time.”

A lot of the strategy in today’s rests could be when to even tackle the Gorge. If the ice bridges that cross open water are weak in the Gorge you want to be one of the first to get across. The stories coming out of Rohn are always interesting, we’ll make sure we pass along any good ones.