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Iditarod fans will be talking about the Epic run by Martin Buser from basically the Starting Line into Nikolai. Hopefully his strategy will pay out for him.
The story for our Fans, though, is the story of Mike Williams Jr. and the fine run HE is having. Mike Jr. and his Team left in 7th position from Willow and has bee running pretty much in the top 10 for the whole stretch of the race up until now. Presently GPS tracker has him in 7th just a few mile outside of Nikolai.
Mike’s Team started the race with 15 dogs in harness and he has dropped 3 to be down to 12 dogs at this point, but I looked through the histories and though this is a low number, it has been done several times. He will have to be conservative, but he is definitely in a good position.
The trail from Rohn to Nikolai has been described as the worst in years with nothing but glare ice and no snow. Guess what Mike has been training on??? Pete and Richie just couldn’t take it and repositioned to Nenana for better training while Mike just kept training on this type of glare ice, no snow, exposed tundra condition. For his dogs, this might just be a run out of Akiak to the Yukon and back.
Way to go Mike- Good Luck!
Where is the rest of the Trio??
Pete’s Tracker is not working at present, but Richie is camped out at the Farewell lakes just before the “burn.” I am sure that Pete is there as well as that is the last ping from his tracker. This spot is popular for mushers as it gets them 20 miles down the trail from Rohn. Trail reports had this first 20-30 out of Rohn as terrible at best with exposed tree roots, rocks, ice, tundra– the whole gambit. It will be good to take a break and head out in the daylight when they can hopefully see where they are going. Glare ice trail is hard enough to follow in daylight. Night is a bear.