Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Nikolai is about to get busy

The front teams are making their way into Nikolai as the sun comes up (though it's overcast in much of the State today, including on the Iditarod trail). First three teams of Burmeister, Redington, and Diehl are already in and bedded down their dogs for a nice rest while at least three more teams should be coming in within the hour.

The biggest concern by race fans has been where is Brent Sass? Sass' tracker hasn't updated in almost twelve hours and shows him still near Rohn, however chatter overheard on the Iditarod Insider live view of the checkpoint of Nikolai has volunteers discussing the next order of teams coming in and Brent Sass is somewhere in the mix. They theorize it will be Dallas Seavey next in, followed by Brent Sass, and Michelle Phillips. Hopefully they will be able to reset the musher's tracker in Nikolai.

Trackers not working is pretty normal especially when they are running in areas where the signal is not good. If they can't get a connection for too long, they go into sleep mode. Then there's also factors like where it is positioned in/on the sled bag, if it was damaged coming down the trail, if it was lost, or if it's too cold.... or if someone forgot to change/charge the batteries before race day. A quick swap out or reset button push is typically all that is needed to get it going again, but that is not the musher's job - as they don't know if it's working or not.

Once that trio gets into the checkpoint there will be a short wait for Travis Beals to come in followed by Jessie Holmes and Mitch Seavey. Rounding out the top ten should be either Hugh Neff or Paige Drobny.

Nikolai is about to get very busy. If you are an Insider video subscriber get to the live feed!

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. They will catnap when the dogs rest. As for real sleep they may get a few hours during their 24 hour mandatory layover. And again at their mandatory 8 in White Mountain, but the real sleep won't happen until Nome.

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