Mushing On
From the Anchorage Daily News: Buser, King are up front, but far from confident.
The problem is the stiff headwinds as you head up the Yukon River which are producing windchills of -30°, and blowing gritty snow into the faces of mushers and dogs.
Kevin Klott is the reporter on the scene for ADN and he has a nice feature piece on Rachael Scdoris:
Legally-blind musher Rachael Scdoris hired Tim Osmar of Kasilof to be her visual trail interpreter to reach Nome in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race last year. But this year the Oregon musher is using her thumb to travel the 1,100-mile trail.
[snip]
Scordis didn’t enter the Iditarod this year so she could focus on college. She’s attending a community college in Bend, Ore.
[snip]
She was the first legally blind musher to finish the Iditarod and plans to run it again.
Aliy Zirkle is the leading woman in the race at 16th, and Sigrid Ekran of Norway is first among the rookie mushers at 18th.
3 comments
All I can think of, when I hear about that race, is that I’m sure glad I’m not out there, competing! Brrrrrrrrrrr rrrrr rrrrrr!
It was hard enough walking to the El this winter when windchills hit the minus 20’s. I can’t imagine being out in that weather for long stretches of time, regardless how many layers of high-tech clothing they’re wearing.
Fortunately I don’t have to imagine as the first thing that happened to me after being shipped to Fairbanks in 1967, forty years ago this month, I went to Arctic Survival School, camping out with the air temperature at -40° the entire week. There was no “high-tech” gear, there was wool and goose down. It was not fun, and we weren’t moving great distances. If it had been warmer, we could have used to the snow to built shelters and insulate them. It is 32° in a well built snow cave and single candle will take the air temperature up to 40.
The humidity is near 4% because of the cold, so you dehydrate as quickly as you would in the desert, except that the water leaves on your breath.
You learn to live in those conditions, or you don’t.