Yukon Quest 2013 – Day 4
Allen passed Hugh at the Scoggie Creek Dog Drop to take the lead. Unfortunately his GPS unit is down so the Live Tracking isn’t working at the moment.
Ed Abrahamson (22) become the first team to scratch at Carmacks. He wasn’t making any time and the trail conditions aren’t what you want for a come back. There is a lot of speculation that Lance may scratch at Dawson because he has had to drop 5 dogs already, and he isn’t happy with the condition of his team. He has been rebuilding as the teams that won multiple Quests and Iditarods have retired from competition.
Standings at 11PM CST:
At Dawson
1 Hugh Neff (4)
2 Allen Moore (11)
3 Jake Berkowitz (20)
Beyond Pelly Crossing
4 Kelley Griffin (8)
5 Brent Sass (18)
6 Susan Rogan (10)R
7 Abbie West (17)
8 Normand Casavant (7)
9 Markus Ingebretsen (2)R
10 David Dalton (21)
11 Ed Hopkins (25)
12 Dan Kaduce (15)
13 Crispin Studer (26)
14 Cody Strathe (5)R
15 Scott Smith (23)R
16 Lance Mackey (6)
17 Denis Tremblay (13)R
18 Brian Wilmshurst (1)
19 Darrin Lee (24)R
20 Matthew Failor (14)R
21 Rob Cooke (3)R
22 Misha Pedersen (16)
23 Dyan Bergen (19)R
24 Randy MacKenzie (9)R
25 Christina Traverse (12)R
These are the official standings. That means they are official, not that they are correct. Things jump around a lot as people decide to update the standings. This problem is especially bad in the back of the pack, as no one bothers to update those standings when the lead is changing.
The Mushers in bold are former winners of the Yukon Quest, the numbers in parentheses are their Bib numbers, and the small “R” indicates a rookie.
Note: This post will be updated during the day, and the map changed on all posts to reflect the current situation.
All posts on the Yukon Quest can be seen by selecting “Yukon Quest” from the Category box on the right sidebar.
2 comments
Hey, Bryan! Looks like it’s COLD in Alaska!
What do you suppose happened to Mackey’s dogs? I’m wondering if it was injury or some illness that’s running through the group.
It’s probably heat related, because his place is outside of Fairbanks and they have had a fairly normal sub-zero winter this year. The race started in the 20s and stayed there for the first two days.
After the drive from Fairbanks to Whitehorse in the truck, the puppies were ready to run, and it is hard to hold back young dogs. He is missing almost all of the senior dogs that kept the team focused and responsive. He had problems last year, too. Rebuilding from scratch isn’t easy when you are used to having a team that could anticipate your moves and respond immediately.
There were a lot of individual dogs dropped early, and I am assuming that it was the result of the heat. The dogs don’t want to eat like they should, and their energy falls off quickly.
It us finally getting cold, so things should improve. The leaders have been running at night and resting during the day to reduce the heat problems.