End Game
Update: via IditaBlog I clocked Lance Mackey (47) under the arch at Nome at 2:39PM CDT. It would have been sooner, but he stopped on the ice just outside of town to give all the dogs a good rubbing and scratching.
1 Lance Mackey (47) – left Safety at 11:48AM CDT, 22 miles from the finish.
2 Sebastian Schnuelle (34) – left White Mountain at 11:56AM CDT.
3 John Baker (44) – left White Mountain at 12:24PM CDT.
4 Aaron Burmeister (56) – arrived at White Mountain at 1:26PM CDT [8-hour mandatory stop].
5 Mitch Seavey (21) – arrived at White Mountain at 1:30PM CDT [8-hour mandatory stop].
6 Dallas Seavey (62) – left Elim at 6:19AM CDT.
7 Cim Smyth (37) – left Elim at 7:03AM CDT.
8 Jessie Royer (17) – left Elim at 7:38AM CDT.
9 Ramey Smyth (16) – left Elim at 7:40AM CDT.
10 Ed Iten (4) – arrived at Elim at 11:29AM CDT.
Jeff Holt (68), whose dog, Victor,died earlier in the race, has scratched outside of Grayling.
The ADN has a piece on musher Lou Packer (43): Ordeal leaves musher grieving. Dr. Packer had two dogs, Dizzy and Grasshopper, die in the ordeal outside of Iditarod.
4 comments
Congratulations, Lance! What an amazing team he has, and I heard that four of his dogs are rookies, too.
I didn’t get to follow the race as closely this year as I would have liked. We got a contract on our house (yippee), and are right in the middle of moving (not so yippee), so I’ve only had a few minutes a day to check in.
But I did have a chance to read your link on Dr. Packer. Good grief, what a tragedy. Reading this article made the hair stand up on my neck. I guess Dr. Packer and his wife think the GPS system was well worth whatever was spent for it. Without being able to see how slowly he was going, they might have waited just a little longer to search for him with the result being losing more dogs at the very least, but in the worst case it could have been the loss of a musher, too.
What peculiar weather this year… from being too warm for the dogs to being too cold to survive. If you count the wind chill factor, it was a stomach lurching slide of 70+ degrees.
Once again, thanks for your posts on this. It’s always an excellent synopsis of each day of the race. Not only do you update the standings of everyone but also add those little daily stories of interest. That’s at the heart of what makes the Iditarod more than just a set of statistics of who’s winning and who’s not.
I just noticed Jessie Royer came in 8th at 5:07 a.m.! One of the ladies in the top 10 – that’s great. Even more so in this brutal weather. Of course, it’s amazing to me that anyone ever makes it. For sure, I couldn’t do it. These are some of the toughest athletes on the face of the earth. Period.
The real athletes are Maple and Larry on Lance’s team and Finn on Sab’s team. If the leaders don’t want to move, you end up like Dr. Packer.
I’m surprised they didn’t have an emergency signal as part of the GPS tracker they are using. Maybe next year.
Oh, the GPS trackers are part of the marketing scheme of the trail committee. They charge a fee to be able to follow the teams.
Oh yeah, I agree. The dogs are the main athletes here. At one of Mackey’s check points, he remarked on the run as being one of the most difficult of his career, but they said his dogs arrived with tails wagging and looking fairly energetic. Amazing animals.
On the GPS, having an emergency signal probably wasn’t on their list of marketing needs.
The trail committee can’t make up their mind on what to modernize. You are only allowed one sled on the Quest, but the Iditarod allows 3 without penalty.
The Quest allows you to use a regular GPS, but doesn’t have a tracker, while the Iditarod has the tracker, but you can’t have a regular GPS.
Global climate change has made the races bigger gambles than ever. Last year it was overheating, but this year it was an Arctic gale.