3:30 p.m. Update:
Nicolas Petit was the first musher to check in to McGrath, with an official check-in time of 3:17 p.m.
Nicolas Petit was the first musher to check in to McGrath, with an official check-in time of 3:17 p.m.
The contending musher still had 14 dogs in his team, and left the previous checkpoint of Nikolai almost an hour and a half before last year's champion, Joar Leifseth Ulsom.
Petit becomes the inaugural winner of the Alaska Air Transit Spirit of Iditarod Award -- for which he will receive a handmade pair of beaver mitts and handmade musher hat -- both made by McGrath residents.
4 comments:
Wow. Sounds like it is a bit of race right now.
TB - you're right. The race is always tight during the first few days. Later in the week, as the mushers stagger their 6- and 8-hour layovers with their mandated 24-hour stops, the distances between the teams grow greater. But even at the end, the top 2 or 3 teams may only be fractions of an hour apart.
Do you even have snow this year?? we have some 24" on the ground plus another 24" over the next week.
Rob, there's plenty of snow. Since Alaska is over 587,000 sq. miles, light snow in one place has little to do with snowfall in others. The biggest challenge this year is warmer temps than usual, making the deep snow soft.
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