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| 48 in Nome, 10 more on the Way | Mar-18-2007 | |
As of 8:30 AM AKDT Sunday morning, 48 mushers have reached Nome. They include the big names like this years champion Lance Mackey; four time winner Jeff King and Martin Buser; two time champ Robert Sorlie from Hurdal, Norway just to name a few.
But the 48 also include 9 rookies, some competing in the Iditarod for the first time, like Heather.
Sigrid Ekran, born 1980, grew up in Norway, where she first started dogsledding. She came to Fairbanks, Alaska in the summer of 2003 as an exchange student in wildlife biology. For the past two years she has been working on a Masters Degree in Northern Studies at UAF and running dogs in her spare time. She finished best among this years rookies, 21st, and, as a result, is this years Rookie of the Year. She told us the trail was tough, which was evidenced by her black eye she got when a tree branch knocked her off her sled.
"You should have seen me a few days ago," she told us. "It was much worse then." Sigird and other rookie mushers like Silvia Willis, who finished 27th, say it is hard for them to put this race into propsective like verterans.
"This is the only one I know," said Willis. "Some say this was one of the toughest years but I have nothing to compare it to."
All of the rookies we talked to said they will do the race again, at least one more time. Gerry Willomitzer, who lives in Canada told us "I have to do it at least one more time to see the northern route."
I wonder after more than two weeks on the trail in sub zero temperatures, wind chills of 40 below and more if Heather will feel the same. I bet the answer will be a resounding "YES!"
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| Halverson Arrives in Shaktooli | Mar-17-2007 | |
Heather's mushing companion for the past week and North Dakota native Ellen Halverson arrived in Shaktoolik at 8:46 PM AKDT (00:46 AM EDT on 3-18) after an 8 hour and 2 minute run from Unalakleet. No word on the arrival of Don Smidt, who left Unalakleet more than 2 hours ahead of Heather and Ellen.
Ellen's run times have slowed over the past few segments as has Smidt's while Heather's team appears to be mushing at a steady pace.
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| Koyuk is Next | Mar-17-2007 | |
Six hours and 22 minutes after she left Unalakleet, Heather arrived in Shaktoolik at 7 PM AKDT (11 PM EDT). Next, after a short rest, it will be onto Koyuk (Coy-uk), a run of 6 to 7 hours. Heather has now completed 902 miles with about 229 remaining.
On a historical note, the original Iditarod Trail didn’t go to Koyuk. It went by Shaktoolik and continued south of Elim to Golovin, skirting much closer to the open water than the race trail does today. During the 1925 Serum Run, Leonhard Seppala drove his dogs (behind his leader, Togo) nonstop from Nome toward Unalakleet and Kaltag, thinking he was going to pick up the serum somewhere on the Yukon River.
He unexpectedly met Henry Ivanoff carrying the vaccine on the ice just offshore of Shaktoolik. Seppala loaded up the serum and immediately started back without even resting his dogs. He went almost directly across the mouth of Norton Bay to Golovin, where he passed the life-saving package to Gunnar Kaasen and his legendary leader, Balto.
Seppala’s route from Shaktoolik to Golovin was extremely dangerous and difficult, made worse by high winds and 40-below temperatures and the ever-present threat of open water and moving ice. Seppala was already widely regarded as the territory’s best musher, and his part of the serum run was certainly the hardest of any of the 20 mushers who participated. Togo worked so hard on the Serum Run he injured himself and never raced again.
Ellen Halverson and Don Smidt had not arrived as of the time of this post.
Based on her current run times and aftger talking with many veteran mushers in Nome, we are estimating Heather's arrival in Nome to be around 6 AM AKDT (10 AM EDT) on Tuesday, March 20th. As she gets closer to Nome, we'll update our estimate.
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| Shaktoolik Bound | Mar-17-2007 | |
Heather and Ellen left out of Unalakleet early this afternoon for the next checkpoint at Shaktoolik. Heather left at 12:38 AKDT and Ellen at 12:44 (4:38 and 4:44 EDT). Musher mate Don Smidt left an hour earlier at 11:30. However, Don has been runing slower than Heather and Ellen out on the trail so they should catch up to him along the way.
The actual distance on this leg is usually about 37 or 38 miles. (As with some other legs, the official distance sometimes reflects the longest possible routing, or old routings.) The race follows the main snowmachine trail to Shaktoolik; it is normally well traveled and well marked. The first 25 miles cross a mix of woods, taiga, open areas, and exposed ridge tops; the last 12 miles are completely in the open on the barren coastline. This leg usually takes about six hours, but can be much longer if the weather is bad, which is not an issue today.
The trail leaves Unalakleet northbound and runs just in from the beach, turning inland after five miles to pass behind rocky 850-foot-high Blueberry Point. It comes almost back to the shore at the fishing camp of Egavik before climbing up the Blueberry Hills, reaching the thousand-foot summit at the 18-mile point. At the top the trail turns west and makes a three-mile drop back to the beach, then follows a slough and the dune line northwestward for the last 12 miles out to Shaktoolik. The primary concern on this leg is the weather. Shaktoolik is windy even in good weather, but under some conditions the winds can blow from the north at more than hurricane force, with temperatures well below zero and chill factors worse than minus one hundred. If the winds are howling, the trail from Unalakleet to the top of the Blueberry Hills will be relatively sheltered (except on the ridge tops), but the last 12 miles out to Shaktoolik can be extremely difficult with drifts and ground blizzards. Weather reports from the area suggest the wind is 10 to 15 mph this afternoon, which locals say isn't too bad.
Cold water is available from the village power plant and pump station next door. The dogs will usually be parked on the south side of the armory, which is the only place they can be sheltered from the north wind. Most people don’t plan to spend much time at Shaktoolik, because if the gales come up you can easily spend a whole day or longer here. The next leg is 60 miles of complete bleakness across the sea ice of Norton Bay, and the sooner Heather and her friends get it behind them the better they’ll be.
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| Iditarod Photos! | Mar-17-2007 | | | |
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