Several mushers left the start wearing nothing more than a hoodie and carhart pants. No one looked terribly bundled up, and all shared hopes that with the wind the dogs would stay cool. At temperatures somewhere around 38F before windchill, it was not the norm for the toughest 300 miles in Alaska.
Talk of weather was most likely the top subject Saturday morning. Reports are calling for snow over night into Sunday as well as wind, with snow turning to rain in the heat of the day. The trail is reportedly slow due to the snow the area got over the last few days, and so teams have had to strategize how best to deal with warmer than usual temps as well as ever changing trail conditions.
If anything, those that plan to run the Iditarod in March will have a great training run out of this race.
Currently twelve teams (ten officially) sit in Lake Louise with the first eight coming in just minutes apart from each other. At seventy-five miles into this year's race, it's still too soon to tell who will come out the winner, but there are few surprises as to who are in front at this point.
Perhaps the lone surprise is that Aidan Kosciolek and Kelsey Winters are the first two in. Aidan is running a team out of Ryan Redington's kennel and Kelsey is running out of Jessie's team. Kelsey had a 16 minute lead on Jessie coming into Lake Louise, but until time differentials are made up during the mandatory rest in one of the checkpoints no run is really equal to the next or an easy comparison. Kelsey started 10 minutes ahead of Jessie back in Glennallen.
The official top ten are as follows (in order of arrival):
Aidan Kosciolek
Kelsey Winters
Jessie Holmes
Lauro Eklund
Jonah Bacon
Travis Vanderhoof
Cody Strathe
Dave Turner
Joey Sabin
Dylan Robbins
Each team will have their own strategy of when to take their time differential rest (six hours plus differential). From Lake Louise it's fiftyfive miles to the very remote (and sketchy service area) checkpoint of Sourdough. Look for teams to start heading out around 12:30am or 1am (at least, that's the semi-educated guess).
Did you find the top ten at all surprising? Who are you hoping will keep their lead? Comment below with your day one thoughts.
And, as always, you can Buy me a slice of pizza to help keep the blog up and running. It's always appreciated but never expected.
