3-8-2010 9:18pm
(Update) The GPS Tracker has him out of Rainy Pass about 5 miles towards Rohn. [It has been wrong before!]
The front runners are into Rohn, Averaging 4 hours for the journey.
Pete has his work cut out for him tonight. The famous Dalzelle Gorge-
-From Wikipedia
From Rainy Pass, the route continues up the mountain, past the tree line to the divide of the Alaska Range, and then passes down into the Alaska Interior. The elevation of the pass is 3,200 feet (980 m), and some nearby peaks exceed 5,000 feet (1,500 m). The valley up the mountains is exposed to blizzards. In 1974, there were several cases of frostbite when the temperature dropped to ?50 °F (?45.6 °C), and the 50-mile-per-hour (80 km/h) winds caused the wind chill to drop to ?130 °F (?90.0 °C). The wind also erases the trail and markers, making the path hard to follow. In 1976, retired colonel Norman Vaughan, who drove a dog team in Richard E. Byrd’s 1928 expedition to the South Pole and competed in the only Olympic sled dog race, became lost for five days after leaving Rainy Pass and nearly died.The trail down Dalzell Gorge from the divide is regarded as the worst stretch of the trail. Steep and straight, it drops 1,000 feet (300 m) in elevation in just 5 miles (8.0 km), and there is little traction so the teams are hard to control. Mushers have to ride the brake most of the way down and use a snow hook for traction. In 1988, rookie Peryll Kyzer fell through an ice bridge into a creek and spent the night wet. The route then follows Tatina River, which is also hazardous: in 1986 Butcher’s lead dogs fell through the ice but landed on a second layer of ice instead of falling into the river. In 1997, Ramey Smyth lost the end of his pinkie when it hit an overhanging branch while negotiating the gorge.
I just got off the phone with Myron Angstman, an Iditarod veteran. He told me that the tricky part is about 5-6 miles at a pretty good grade downhill. “It all depends on how the trail is put in,” he said. Sometimes the snow can be crusty on top and musher can end up dropping through the crust into powder. He related how one time he dropped a couple of feet through to about 6 inches of water underneath while the dogs were raring to go down that hill. Apparently it is pretty narrow and there really are only a couple of ways through it. He also said that it can be a bit of a traffic jam as teams go through.
Rainy Pass to Rohn Description
Dalzell Gorge Entrance
