Mike Jr. into Koyuk in 10th!

Mike Williams Jr. is roaring up the trail. Last night his dogs looked great in Unalakleet.

In at 13:51 with 12 dogs just a couple of minutes before Dee Dee Jonrowe.

What a Great Race Mike is having! Go Mike Williams!

Pete is having a hard time time gaining on Ramey Smythe at this stretch, though both mushers are gaining on Aaron Burmeister whose team is just crawling at about 5mph.

Pete and Rayme seem evenly matched, so we will just have to wait and see…

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A Great Day for a Race

What a great day for Dog Sled Mushing! The competition and stories are amazing and the weather can’t be beat! Koyuk Weather is 0F and calm winds. Golovin is reporting -6 and 6mph.

Go Team Kaiser!

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Pete and the Team Out of Koyuk

Pete and the Team are on the Move. GPS has them moving at 1:00pm which would give them about 4 hours 30 minutes rest and keeps with his meticulous rest schedule. Baker has not left the Checkpoint at this time. Mitch Seavey is out as well, but he reports to ADN.com that his dogs are not feeling as well as he would like.

Ramey Smythe is about 7 miles or almost an hour in front of Pete.

Go Team Kaiser!

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Smythe Rolls the Dice

GPS shows Ramey Smythe out of Koyuk on the trail. Pete and the Team remain in Koyuk at this time. It looks like Smythe took a 4 hour break and moved out.

We will see how this works out. Ramey has a pretty strong team and the Smythe boys are notorious for pushing hard on this section of the trail with very fast times.

 

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A few Koyuk Stats

Here’s some stats over the Shaktoolik to Koyuk trail:

Pete’s Official Time IN was 8:22 for a trail time of 6:35 (Fastest so far)

Explanation:

First Column Musher Time In . Time Back is Pete’s Time Differential into the Checkpoint.
DIFF is amount of time lost or gained from last checkpoint differential.

Koyuk IN Kaiser IN Musher Time Back DIFF L-G
3:17 8:22 Dallas Seavey 5:05 0:40 LOSS
4:53 8:22 Aliy Zirkle 3:29 0:13 GAIN
6:43 8:22 Aaron Burmeister 1:39 2:19 GAIN
7:48 8:22 John Baker 0:34 1:02 GAIN
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Into Koyuk in 5th

GPS Tracker is a bit old, but I have no doubt that Team Kaiser is in Koyuk. His time should be the fastest over the stretch by about 20 minutes from my calculation.

Pete has to be feeling pretty good right now, as his goal was a top 5 finish and that is within his grasp at this point. The other feeling of elation comes from this being the highest position that he and the Team have ever competed. For 300 miles Pete and the Team have just run a consistent push to arrive at this point. There is much work to be done, but now the intensity is ratcheted up a notch as Team Kaiser becomes part of the Top 5.

During the trek from Shaktoolik,  Pete and the Team passed Mitch Seavey and made a bit of time on Ramey Smyth who left just 5 minutes after him in Shaktoolik.  The two mushers are pretty evenly matched, so Ramey will be a team to watch as we move towards White Mountain.

The Jack Rabbit appears still to be Dallas Seavey. He is making the right moves and his times are quick. He has over 5 hours on Pete and at this point is the Team to beat. He is still resting in Koyuk, so my thought is that teams will push to White Mountain and the 8 hour layover. That will make today an exciting non-stop day of mushing. In some ways this will be a race within a race as mushers know it is really their last chance to gain ground on whomever they are chasing.

Pete had all of his competitors stacked up in Koyuk during the Paul Johnson Memorial 450 and had to really work to stay ahead all of the way.

Go Team Kaiser!

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Good Morning Race Fans – Koyuk in Sight

Good Morning Race Fans! After a Sunday that seemed non-stop, who knows what today will bring!

Pete and the Team are now 7 miles out of Koyuk. They left Shaktoolik after an almost 3 hour break at 1:47am this morning, he had to drop 2 dogs at the checkpoint, so he is now running with 11. That pretty much seems to be the norm as most mushers are running 10-12 dogs at this point in the lead group.

Mitch Seavey left 90 minutes before, but Pete has pulled up and is about a mile behind him. Positions have moved around a bit during the night as Ray Redington Jr., who had been trailing Pete by about 40 minutes, took a longer break and is now quite a ways back. Ramey Smyth took much less rest and seems to be the fast team at this hour.

The fastest time so far from Shaktoolik to Koyuk is Aliy Zirkle at 7 hours and 38 minutes, but I suspect both Pete and Ramey will best that time.

Pete seems to be poised to move up one position into 5th as he moves up on Mitch Seavey, but we have quite a ways to go.

Today is probably going to shape up like this:

Arrive in Koyuk and take a layover. In fact I might suspect that teams would take a long enough layover to push onto White Mountain where a mandatory 8 hour layover awaits. Of course, at this point in the race, each musher is watching the other and no one will let anyone get too far away. So if one musher moves early to do short layovers up to White Mountain, all of them probably will.

In any case, by this evening we will really be seeing the end of the race in sight and what an exciting ending it is shaping up to be.

Stay Tuned! Go Team Kaiser!

Weather this morning:

Koyuk at this Hour: -9 and Winds are Calm.

Forecast is for Temperatures around 3 above and North winds to 10 miles per hour.

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