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Hardcore Huskies Newsletter 08 Race Edition.pdf [ Archive ] |
| Heather Holds the Red Lantern | Mar-07-2007 | |
With rookie Tom Roig dropping out of the race at Rainy Pass, Heather is now listed as the "Red Lantern" musher.
Awarding a red lantern for the last place finisher in a sled dog race has become an Alaskan tradition. It started as a joke and has become a symbol of stick-to-itiveness in the mushing world.
The longest time for a Red Lantern was 32 days, 15 hours, nine minutes and one second by John Schultz in 1973. The quickest Red Lantern musher was David Straub with a time of 14 days, 5 hours, 38 minutes and 12 seconds.
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| Heather Still at Rainy Pass | Mar-07-2007 | |
Heather and 13 other musher teams remained at Rainy Pass this morning. The National Weather Service issued a wind chill advisory for the area until 9 AM AST time this morning.
According the advisory "GUSTY NORTH WINDS UP TO 30 MPH WILL PRODUCE WIND CHILL READINGS
OF 35 TO 50 BELOW ZERO THROUGH MID MORNING."
A WIND CHILL ADVISORY means that very cold air and strong winds will combine to generate low wind chills. This will result and frost bite and lead to hypothermia if precautions are not taken.
Mushers are required to carry survival gear, including a sleeping bag rated for artic conditions. Mushers often sleep with a dog in cold weather in order to help them keep warm.
Iditarod rules require mushers to take at least one 24 hour break at some point during the race at their option. Although somewhat early in the race, Heather and other mushers may be taking this break at Rainy Pass.
Remeber to check the KXMB website for video updates. CLICK HERE
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| Heather Arrives at Rainy Pass | Mar-06-2007 | |
Heather is on top of the world! Well, sort of. She and her dogs arrived at the Rainy Pass checkpoint at 12:10 PM AST this afternoon (4:10 EST).
The checkpoint is on the Puntilla Lake in the heart of the Alaskan Range. From here the trail crosses Rainy Pass itself, the highest elevation throughout the race at 3,771 feet.
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| On the Trail to Rainy Pass | Mar-06-2007 | |
At 7:30 AM AST (11:30 AM EST) Heather and 13 dogs left Finger Lake headed for the summit of the Alaskan Range at Rainy Pass. Heather had to drop 3 dogs in Finger Lake.
Reasons for dropping dogs are numerous. Attitude problems, fatigue, illness, immaturity, injury, being “in heat,” lack of speed and musher strategy, are the more common ones.
Heather will now be on what most called a tough run with some short stretches of extraordinarily difficult trail. There are often all kinds of things poking up out of the trail.
After leaving Finger Lake, the trail climbs steeply over a ridge to Red Lake, runs along it for a mile or two, swings up a ravine, and then follows a series of climbing wooded shelves interspersed with open swamps. About ten miles from Finger Lake, the trail drops down a series of wooded benches toward Happy River, then onto the river itself via the dreaded Happy River steps. Then it’s down the river to its mouth, up the Skwentna River for a few hundred yards, and back up a steep ravine to the plateau on the south side of the Happy. The trail will cross Shirley Lake, then Long Lake (11 miles from Rainy Pass Lodge) and then run along the steeply sloping mountainside above the south side of the Happy River valley to the checkpoint. There are two nasty stretches of sidehill trail in the last eight miles.
This is the stretch of trail that ended the race for two veteran mushers who sustained hand and rib injuries. Four time Iditarod Champion Doug Swingley may have suffered some broken ribs when he was thrown from his sled on a glaciated part of the trail near Puntilla and Dee Dee Jonrowe scratched due to injuries she incurred after taking a fall just a few miles before she reached the Rainy Pass Checkpoint.
When Heather arrives at Rainy Pass she will have completed about 225 miles with about 907 yet to go.
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| Follow Heather on KX TV | Mar-06-2007 | |
The KXMB TV in Bismarck, North Dakota is following Bismarck Native Heather Siirtola in the Alaska Iditarod race of 2007. You can see their video news reports by CLICKING HERE
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