Pat Moon Out of the Race
The Anchorage Daily News is reporting that rookie musher Pat Moon (17) of Chicago had to be medevaced to Anchorage after crashing on the trail from Rainy Pass to Rohn in the notorious Dalzell Gorge.
The Iditarod site is reporting that Sam Deltour (66), a med student from Belgium when he isn’t running dogs, came upon Moon and provided assistance.
Moon’s team was uninjured and was also airlifted out.
This is an example of what happens when there isn’t enough snow on the trail for the sled to “bite” the trail and steer. Because you are going down, you need to be able to slow the team down, which also requires snow.
The official reporting will carry him at Rainy Pass, which is the last check point he made. Moon had delayed getting chemotherapy for a chronic condition to be in shape for the race.
2 comments
This is just too bad! He seems like such a great guy. I heard his lead dog died in August (I think), and he was planning on carrying his collar across the finish line in Nome.
After reading your post, I googled to see how he’s doing. On the bright side, it looks like he got out of this with basically a broken nose and cracked wrist. Which of course, isn’t great, but could have been lots worse. He seems to be mostly disappointed that he let down his dogs! For anyone interested, there’s a short video of an interview they did with him in his hospital bed along with a good article here: http://www.alaskadispatch.com/projects/iditarod-2010/4378-reflecting-on-a-race-over-too-soon
That area is just bad news. I just posted that Karin Hendrickson also had her sled eaten by the trail.
I think the temperature was getting to the dogs. Lance Mackey is down to 13 dogs, and there have been a lot of dogs dropped in the last day.
From the weather sticker I see the temperature has gotten down the a more normal -35° so puppies will be happier if the wind doesn’t come up.