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| Onto McGrath | Thu, Mar. 12th, 2009 | |
With two more Hardcore Team members left behind, Heather and 11 dogs left the Nikolai checkpoint at 10:22 PM AKDT (2:22 AM EDT 3-12) for the 54 mile run to McGrath. No word yet on which Hardcore members were dropped or the reason they could not continue.
The run to McGrath should take the Hardcore Team between 6.5 and 8 hours. A lot of mushers don’t stay long in McGrath and instead take the short 3 hour run to Takotna. Others however use McGrath as the place to take their mandatory 24 hour rest. It appears there are about a dozen mushers taking their 24 at McGrath this year while nearly 31 are at Takotna.
When Heather and the Team arrive in McGrath they will be within 40 miles of race leader and 4 time Iditarod champion Martin Buser. However Buser is in the midst of his 24 hour break in Ophir and will be leaving there later this evening.
The Hardcore Team is still slightly ahead of last years 14 day race finish pace.
Heather and the Hardcore Team left Nikolai on a village street. Heather probably had help leading her team to the correct road. In less than half a mile she turned left off the road onto the South Fork of the Kuskokwim River, which she’ll follow for another mile or so before heading up the bank and into the swamps. Heather will need to follow the Iditarod trail stake markers carefully to avoid turning down side trails on the river. It is also possible to miss a turn and go back up the South Fork for a half mile and go out the identically marked trail back to Rohn.
Once on the overland section, the trail is generally straight and fast, running mostly across lakes with occasional cuts through the trees. This is also the main snowmachine trail between Nikolai and McGrath and it is usually easy to follow. Since she is traveling at night Heather should be able to see the light at the Air Force radar station atop Tatalina Mountain, 15 miles southwest of McGrath, generally straight ahead of her. The biggest lake she’ll cross is Guitar Lake, about nine or ten miles out of Nikolai. It’s almost two miles wide and is about halfway to Big River, which is the end of the overland section.
When the Hardcore Team reaches Big River, they’ll be halfway to McGrath, about 23 miles to go. Heather should watch for a rough drop onto the river. The trail turns right (west) down the river, coming to the Kuskokwim in 4 miles; the river trail is usually hard and fast. For the rest of the way into McGrath she will see the Kuskokwim Mountains (actually big hills) rising on your right. The river flows generally along the southeast edge of the hills on the way to McGrath.
Just after you get onto the Kuskokwim you might see the old Big River Roadhouse, one of the original stops on the Iditarod, up on the right bank proceed down the Kuskokwim for about three miles before heading up the left bank to cut across a big double oxbow that swings to the north. This cross-country shortcut runs about seven miles through woods and up back sloughs before coming back out on the river. Once she’s back on the river, she’ll see some big cliffs ahead on the left bank.
After another seven miles running down the river, the trail will climb sharply up the right bank to a cabin. The Hardcore Team is now 13 miles from McGrath and at the upper end of Stewart Bend, a huge oxbow looping to the south cut across the bend by running along a back slough for a bit and then lurching almost vertically up and over a hundred-foot wooded ridge (very steep up, not quite so bad coming down the other side). Then they will come out on a curving slough that will arc you back to the left (south) for a mile or so, where they will rejoin the main river.
After the Stewart Bend cutoff, the trail runs southwest along the river for another three miles, then jumps up the left bank again, this time for a four-mile shortcut across another big oxbow sweeping off to the north. This shortcut runs across swamps and sloughs and across beaver dams and up narrow twisting trenchlike creek channels and through the woods. It has some very interesting stretches.
When the Team re-enters the river, they’ll be one big bend and about five miles away from McGrath. Heather should now be able see a red light on a radio tower. This means she still has one more big swing to the north before she makes the final run south toward McGrath. By now she’s probably bored out of her mind and are hoping she never see another big river bend—sorry, but she still has 150 miles on the Yukon after she gets to Anvik,
When the river starts to bend back to the northwest, McGrath should appear on the left bank. The trail will be well marked to swing her across the river to the checkpoint, which is right on top of the 20-foot-high bank. The parking area can get a bit crowded, so Heather will need to let the checkers know immediately whether she’s planning to take her 24-hour layover here so they can park you out of the busy “transient” area.
McGrath has become a favorite for 24-hour stops in the past few years since the checkpoint has been moved to a house away from the airport. It can still get hectic if you’re in the front of the pack because this 500-person town is a major hub and the media stages out of here for the middle part of the race. However, McGrath has several advantages for a 24-hour layover. One of the nicest is a diesel-fired steam kettle outside the checkpoint that provides all the near-boiling water you could ever want. There are a couple of well-stocked stores where you can grab stuff you may have forgotten (or get some hardware and duct tape to fix your sled, if you didn’t have a replacement sled shipped here). The people of McGrath help to staff the checkpoint and there is usually a full-time cook in the kitchen who will whip up whatever you want before you crash in the sleeping room. There is also a coin-operated shower in the laundromat in the municipal building if your dogs are starting to think you’re one of them.
Historical Note
The original Iditarod continued more or less directly from the Salmon River crossing to Big River Roadhouse. For the short stretch down Big River to the Kuskokwim, you’re almost on the old-time trail. From the roadhouse, the original trail stayed overland on the north side of the river and bypassed McGrath, which was then located on the north side of the river—it only moved to its present location when the Army Air Force built an air base there in 1940. The old trail eventually ended up in Takotna. If you get to McGrath and want to learn more, the Bureau of Land Management has an office in McGrath just a couple of buildings down from the checkpoint. They’ve got lots of information on the trail.
The McGrath checkpoint in recent years has been in a house a couple of blocks east of the airport, right on the river. It has become a popular place for mushers to take their mandatory 24-hour layovers because of the excellent facilities there, including a 24-hour kitchen for mushers and staff. Many mushers also ship replacement sleds here because McGrath is served by a major air freight airline and the cost is very cheap. The swapped-out sleds also can easily be shipped back from McGrath.
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| Hardcore Team Arrives in Nikolai | Wed, Mar. 11th, 2009 | |
It took 18 hours and 21 minutes but Heather and the 13 member Hardcore Team finally made it to Nikolai at 2:13 PM AKDT (6:13 EDT) this afternoon. Heather is being shown in 56th place and is still running slightly ahead of last years pace. Including Heather, there are 10 mushers at this checkpoint.
Heather and the Hardcore Team have now completed 347 miles and have 784 more miles to get to Nome. Heather is about 97 miles behind the race leader Martin Buser and 72 miles behind the main pack in Takotna.
We have finally received some information regarding two of dogs dropped from the race. Those dogs are Deke with possible pneumonia and Tweaty with a sore wrist. Both dogs seem to be doing good. The Hardcore Team spoke with the vet, and he thinks that they both are in good shape and spirits!
Nikolai, which boasts a population of 125, is the first of many Native villages along the Iditarod Trail. There is a village store at the far end of town across from the airstrip and limited lodging is available through advanced booking. The checkpoint is located in the Community Hall.
The next leg is a 54 mile run to McGrath. This is a fairly easy (but sometimes deceptive) stretch which always seems to be longer than it is, mainly because it is often so boring and there are so many seemingly identical lakes and river bends. The trail cuts cross-country southwest from Nikolai toward McGrath, running along a series of lakes and swamps interspersed with wooded stretches to Big River. It then runs west down Big River for a few miles to the Kuskokwim River, then down the Kuskokwim to McGrath, with several shortcuts across the bigger oxbow bends.
This run normally takes six to eight hours. In her two previous runs through this stretch Heather has made the run in 6 plus hours in 2007 and a little over 8 hours last year.
It is usually a good stretch to do at night when the dogs will go faster. The trail from Nikolai to McGrath crosses many open lakes and swamps for the first 20 miles. When the wind is blowing, these areas can quickly drift in.
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| The Long Run to Nikolai | Wed, Mar. 11th, 2009 | |
After leaving one of their team members behind and resting for slightly more than 8 hours, Heather and remaining 13 members of the Hardcore Team left Rohn at 7:52 PM AKDT (11:52 PM EDT) last night for the long 75 mile run to Nikokai. Most mushers appear to be taking from 12 to 18 hours to make this run. In previous years Heather did this segment between 17 and 18 hours.
Compared to previous years, Heather is still nearly two hours ahead of the pace set in 2008 when she finished in 14 days.
Some veterans say the real distance from Rohn to Nikolai is probably closer to 80 miles. It’s still quite a pull, but not as bad as it could be. (The published figure probably comes from the old trail routing over to Farewell Station and then to Nikolai.) On the other hand, there are some truly bad spots on this stretch, mostly within the first 20 miles. Expect Heather and the Team to take a total of 12 to 18 hours for this leg; she’ll want to rest the dogs for several hours somewhere, or else take a lot of shorter breaks.
This run breaks into three natural sections: 20 miles along the south side of the South Fork of the Kuskokwim from Rohn to Farewell Lakes and up onto the Farewell Burn, 35 miles across the Burn itself to Sullivan Creek, and then 20 miles north from Sullivan Creek past Salmon River to Nikolai.
At the finish line during her rookie run Heather was asked what her favorite part of the trail was and she said it was the Burn.
The first 20 miles out of Rohn has some of the consistently worst trail on the whole race. Some say you should allow yourself at least three hours of good daylight when you leave Rohn—you’ll definitely want to see what you’re getting into. Heather didn’t do that as it was already dark when she left.
From Rohn, the trail immediately breaks out onto the windblown gravel and sandbars of the South Fork of the Kuskokwim River have about a mile of really lousy going over bare spots, through driftwood tangles, across large stretches of slippery ice, and maybe even through some overflow and shallow open water.
This area is a natural wind tunnel and is a perennial Excedrin headache for the Iditarod Air Force pilots. The wind is often blowing hard out on the open riverbed, 40 miles per hour or more; it always blows from the east, or down the river. Heather might have some trouble keeping the team going in the correct direction on the ice if the wind is strong enough. She’ll need to be prepared to grab her leaders and help them if the wind is really strong.
Five miles out of Rohn on an otherwise straight trail, the Team will make a sudden swing to the right and then slowly start bending back around to the left. The entire side of the mountain overlooking the south side of the valley collapsed in the winter of 1997-8 and obliterated about half a mile of the trail, burying it under 30 to 50 feet of mud, rocks, and entire uprooted trees. The bypass trail may be a bit rough in places, but it shouldn’t be any trouble.
About ten miles out the Hardcore Team will come to the Post River. This is a major river flowing in from the south and you’ll have a hundred yards or more of gently sloping ice to cross, probably without much snow cover. It may have a light covering of water in places, making it Really Slick. On the far side she’ll have a quick left turn back up the bank and into the trees again; slow the dogs down as you leave the ice and don’t miss the turn up the steep bank.
Half a mile later she’ll come to what most people call the Post River Glacier, but which is really a separate, smaller stream. This little stretch is about a quarter-mile of pure nightmare even under good conditions, followed by some merely terrible trail for another quarter-mile or so.
Then she’ll come to the crest of a hill and will see a hundred-yard expanse of ice in the canyon below, with a side ravine feeding in from the other side. The side ravine will look like a sloping cascade of ice perhaps 30 yards wide with rocky sides. The hill down to the ice is short but steep. At the bottom the Team will make a sharp right turn.
The trail turns uphill on the ice for about fifty yards, bending right around a sharp rock outcropping (keep your sled clear of this) and continues up to the end of the ravine through a field of rocks the size of softballs (usually with no snow cover) then come into a short open tundra area that is often bare of snow before regaining the trees and a semblance of normalcy.
Once their are back in the trees the trail will begin to climb slowly up to a saddle on the south side of Egypt Mountain. This area is called the Buffalo Chutes because the local herd of several hundred wild bison wanders through here and grazes in some of the small pothole marshes and lakes in the woods. Heather may or may not see the buffalo; they have not been known to bother anyone.
For the next ten miles through the Buffalo Chutes she will probably see stretches of bare dirt, rock, and ice, some very narrow trails through the woods, and a couple of areas of frozen overflow that can be bad enough to obliterate the trail.
One of the potentially worst stretches of overflow is after Egypt Mountain, only a couple of miles before the lake. The trail will enter an area of several acres of swamp and trees that may be flooded with ice. The trail exits up the hill to the left, although in some years it is entirely possible to miss it and continue on down the icy swamp, ultimately coming to the South Fork of the Kuskokwim River. In 1997 six teams were tangled up in this mess for an hour and a later musher missed the turn completely, got lost, and ultimately took almost two days to get to Nikolai. Let’s hope Heather doesn’t miss the turn!
The first large lake you reach will be Farewell Lake. For the next five miles the Team will run from lake to lake with some excursions through the forest.
After Farewell Lake, Heather will see one more “Dangerous Trail Conditions” sign just before a short, steep downhill onto another lake. Also somewhere after Farewell Lake, just after she crosses a creek in an open area, she’ll duck back into a treeline and pass the old Pioneer Roadhouse, one of the original stops on the old Iditarod. It’s a good place to take a break and explore for a few minutes; ruins of a couple of the old cabins are still there.
If my memory serves me right this is where one of the mushers held up in 2007 for many hours until they were rescued and then scratched.
After leaving the lakes, the trail will start to work up a series of low wooded hills and ridges. Heather will crest one last forested ridge and suddenly be in the Farewell Burn. This was the site of Alaska’s largest forest fire, a million and a half acres in the summer of 1978 be running through it for the next 40 miles.
The trail through the Burn was almost impassable for several years after the fire, with snags and all manner of obstructions, but it has been cleaned up by the Bureau of Land Management and isn’t usually much of a problem. The visibility from the tops of these ridges is forever because there are no trees; at night you can sometimes see the lights of other mushers for 20 miles in either direction. At night you can also see a single light on top of a mountain far to the west. This is the light at the military radar site on top of Tatalina Mountain, 15 miles southwest of McGrath pass right under it on your way from McGrath to Takotna in a couple of days.
During the day mushers can easily see the hills west of McGrath, and Mounts McKinley and Foraker looming above the Alaska Range far to the northeast. (At sunset or dawn the view from the Burn can be positively breathtaking as the sun ignites the lofty summits of Denali and Foraker above the dark landscape below.)
When the Hardcore Team comes down into a sheltered gulch with a tent camp on your left (people may be there on snowmachines) she will be 41 miles from Nikolai. This is called the Buffalo Camp (for obvious reasons). Mushers are usually welcome to stop here for awhile if they wish; the owner lives in Nikolai and is a friend of the race.
If the wind isn’t blowing and there has been sufficient snow, this level stretch of the trail is a speedway and you can make superb time all the way to Nikolai. However, if the wind is blowing (from the north, like it was in 1997) the trail will probably be drifted in as soon as you drop off of the ridges.
Once you reach Nikolai, Heather and the Hardcore Team is through a lot of the bad trail on the race (although anything can happen on down the line, and often does). The Hardcore team will be bedded down in the area surrounding the school and village public works building. Cold water will be available in the village public works building, and maybe in the school or in the washateria in the municipal building. In some years hot water may also be available. A snack bar is sometimes set up in the school gym and there’s a small restaurant upstairs in the game room of the municipal building. Heather will be able to catch a nap upstairs in the village public works building and dry her soaked gear in the boiler room. As a rule, if mushers make it to Nikolai, they’re through the toughest trail and you—and more importantly your dogs—have managed to make the mental transition to the long-haul trail mode. Many veterans say if you can get to Nikolai with your team and your wits intact, you’ve got a good chance to finish the race.
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| Hardcore Team Completes Cross of Alaskan Range | Tue, Mar. 10th, 2009 | |
Heather and the 14 member Hardcore Team finally arrived in Rohn at 11:46 AM AKDT (3:46 PM EDT) this afternoon. The Team made the 48 mile run from Rainy pass in 5 hours and 12 minutes. Last year it took Heather 7 hours and 7 minutes while in 2007 the hardcore Team did this leg in 6 hours 3 minutes.
Rohn’s population is 0. This area is tied with Rainy Pass as having the most spectacular scenery. The gateway to the interior, Rohn Roadhouse marks the transition point where the mushers start to venture into the flatlands of the interior, along with dropping temperatures. Situated near the confluence of the South Fork of the Kuskokwim and Tatina Rivers, the area served as one of the original Iditarod Trail Roadhouses for the dog teams carrying mail, etc. The actual roadhouse is gone, so the checkpoint is a cabin built in the 1930s.
NOTE: Most press people refer to this as the Rohn River checkpoint, but there is no Rohn River. It`s Rohn Roadhouse. Mushers often decide to take their 24-hour layover here before heading across the bleak but treacherous Farewell Burn area. There are no facilities for visitors to the checkpoint.
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| 48 Miles To Rohn! | Tue, Mar. 10th, 2009 | |
The 14 member Hardcore Team along with Heather their musher rested for 7 hours 39 minutes before leaving Rainy Pass at 6:34 AM AKDT (10:34 EDT) this morning for the 48 mile run to Rohn. Heather still is missing her GPS which she lost about 10 miles out of Finger Lake.
This leg to Rohn is not as long as the official mileage indicates. It is really only about 32 miles, and should take four and a half to six hours. It has some very tough trail, including the notorious Dalzell Gorge. It took Heather about 5.5 hours last year with 13 dogs to make this run. She did it in a little over 6 hours in 2007 with 12 dogs.
As the Hardcore Team leaves Puntilla Lake the trail climbs immediately up out of the tree line and dives down into one ravine very quickly and makes a steep climb back up onto the tundra. From here to the mouth of Rainy Pass itself Heather and the Team will be running westward up a low ridge in the middle of the two-mile- wide valley. The view can be spectacular, but the trail is often blown in or just not visible and the snow is never very deep.
Out in the open expanse Heather will be looking for Iditarod trail stakes or, more importantly, six-foot-high wooden tripods spaced every few hundred yards. If the wind is blowing, you can be in a ground blizzard that can obscure the ground but may leave you perfect visibility from the back of the sled. She may not be able to see her dog’s part of the time, even though she may see the mountains and the trail tripods with no trouble.
After ten miles Heather will leave the open main valley (which is properly called Ptarmigan Pass) and work toward a smaller valley opening to the right. This is the actual entrance to Rainy Pass cross the upper reaches of Happy River and there is often some minor overflow here.
Then Heather will begin to work northwest and north up the narrow Pass Creek valley leading to Rainy Pass, weaving across the frozen creek and in and out of clumps of willow bushes, steadily climbing. The only trail markers here are regular trail stakes. She will need to watch for some steep rocky sidehill pitches that may not have much snow cover. There may be a few caribou on the sides of the valley; if the dogs notice them, she’ll go a little faster. When they reach a small alpine lake (Rainy Pass Lake) she’ll be a mile and a half from the summit. From the lake they’ll start a steep climb up to the summit, which is the highest point on the trail at 3,160 feet above sea level.
From the top it’s sharply downhill into the Pass Fork Valley on a long snowfield. Shortly after entering the timberline the trail will become narrow and twisting, running mainly along the creek, sometimes in narrow rocky ravines. Heather will need to keep her speed down as much as feasible. There are some sharp turns and rocky patches that can surprise you. Watch for holes in the ice on the creek. After a couple of hard-fought miles the trail will open up a bit, but Heather will still be going in and out of willow bushes. At one point the trail will make a sharp diversion uphill and run along the high right bank of the creek before dropping back down. Most mushers are probably going to spill the sled more than once on the stretch down Pass Fork, so Heather will need to hold on tight. This part of the trail is often in pretty bad shape, with pits and ruts and bumps.
Five miles after the summit the Hardcore Team will come into the wooded valley of Dalzell Creek for a couple of miles of fairly easy running. Then they’ll swing across to the south side of the valley and make a sharp climb up to a forested shelf that runs along the valley side. The trail gets very narrow and winding with big trees on either side. Heather will easily see that the terrain is beginning to drop off sharply on your right.
After half a mile Heather will see a “Watch Your Ass” sign; immediately beyond is a steep 200-foot hill down into Dalzell Gorge. Depending on conditions, the Gorge can be nothing more than a very scenic exercise in sled driving, or it can be your worst nightmare come true.
Once Heather and the Team are down into the canyon, the trail will start jumping from side to side, crossing the creek (which always has open, running water) on sometimes-narrow ice and snow bridges, some of which may be collapsed. Even under good conditions, she will need to keep up enough speed to cross these bridges cleanly—if her dogs cut you across them or slow down at the wrong time Heather can find herself in big trouble quickly, sliding down ice ledges into the water. (The water isn’t much more than a foot or two deep in most places, but it’s usually at the bottom of a nightmare of sloping ice.) At some points the canyon is barely wide enough for the trail and the creek. There are also lots of very big trees down in the gorge; the trail wraps tightly around a few of them.
The Gorge is only about two miles long (it seems like twenty) and then you’re suddenly out of it and onto the Tatina River. From the end of the Gorge it’s only five miles down the river to the checkpoint at Rohn Roadhouse. There is always some minor overflow (and sometimes not-so-minor overflow) and shallow open water along the river on the way to Rohn. The river surface can be very icy and slippery and there may be some rough ice. Heather needs to just keep the dogs moving come up off the river ice onto the left bank and into the trees about a mile before the checkpoint. The trail will shortly turn down the right side of the runway; the checkpoint cabin is back in the trees at the far (south) end of the runway. Rohn is a good place to get some quality rest for you and your dogs. The checkpoint area is sheltered from the wind in big spruce trees.
Water is available a quarter mile away after climbing down a 25-foot bank to the South Fork of the Kuskokwim; most mushers just melt snow. The checkpoint cabin dates back to the 1930s; the old roadhouse vanished long ago. It is usually very crowded but you can find a place to curl up on the floor or on one of the bunks. Plan to leave Rohn with at least two or three hours of good daylight—you’ll need it for the next 20 miles of bad road down to Farewell Lakes.
Historical Note: In a few of the early years, the Iditarod didn’t use Rainy Pass. Instead, the trail made a long, 70-mile run past the mouth of Rainy Pass and south down Ptarmigan Pass to Hells Gate, a dramatic but reasonably wide and level-floored canyon through the spine of the Alaska Range cut by the South Fork of the Kuskokwim River. The trail then followed the river north back to Rohn. This route is still an option if Rainy Pass is unusable for some reason. The Iron Dog snowmachine race from Anchorage to Nome two weeks before the Iditarod always follows the Iditarod northern route, and tries to use the Hells Gate detour rather than risk the run down the Dalzell Gorge.
Dog teams can use trails that high-speed snowmachines cannot, and can even use some trails with very steep hills or drops or narrow side clearances that no snowmachine can traverse. Of course, Iditarod teams must follow the trailbreakers, who use powerful long-track snowmachines to set the trail, so the real dogs don’t get much chance to thumb their noses at the iron dogs on the race.
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