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By Gwen Goldman
I’ve been waiting to write this update until Ken made it through Nulato. It was pretty clear that he was planning on camping on the river somewhere and then heading to Kaltag to take his 6-hour layover.
However, with his GPS Tracker on the fritz again, it was hard to tell exactly where he was. It currently shows him camped out behind a nice bend in the Yukon River at mile 534, almost 30 miles before Nulato. This must have been where he camped. The glitches with his GPS Tracker only started happening after McGrath where he switched sleds.
My theory is that the way Ken has his gear packed in this new sled in some way that is blocking the signal. For example, he might have his metal cooker sitting on top of it. That means when he unpacks his sled (like on his campout at mile 534), all of a sudden we see a signal and know where he is. If I am right, we have to wait until Kaltag to see it working properly again.
I am half tempted to call the checker there and ask him to give Ken a message to reorganize his sled so we can keep an eye on him, but I’m not sure he would find this too humorous at this stage in the game.
Anyhow, visible or not, he is doing well and running a very smart race. He still has 15 dogs, and left Nulato less than 2 hours out of 3rd place. Of course, he is the only musher in the top 10 who still needs to take an 8 hour mandatory on the Yukon, so he will loose some time parked in Kaltag.
I expect him to get in sometime after 4 a.m. It is a long leg over to Unalakleet and is quite hilly, so it may be a real slog given the conditions the teams have seen on the Yukon. It could easily be a 10-12 hour run, so taking an 8 hour break in Kaltag might work out very well for Ken.
I found out that the dog Ken dropped was Jordan, a young 2-year old sponsored by The Bloomin’ Crew from Landisville, PA. I know the students there were hoping to see Jordan finish, but he has a long career still ahead of him. There doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with him beyond a few splits on his feet.
Lance Mackey may be in the lead overall, but it sure looks to me like Jeff King is in the driver’s seat this year. It’s interesting to see their roles reversed, with Lance playing the role of the rabbit this year. I have no doubt Jeff is enjoying the chase.
I have an ulterior motive for seeing Lance and Ken do well. While I think the Iditarod is the premier race in our sport, I personally have a real affinity for the Yukon Quest, which I view as a tougher race overall. I am on the Board of Directors for the Quest, and I would like to see more Iditarod racers give it a try.
If Ken and Lance do well, after how hard they raced in the Quest (for those of you that were not following it, Ken finished just 15 minutes behind Lance after 1100 miles of racing), then it shows mushers can compete in both.
In some ways, it might actually benefit the dogs as they certainly become very race-hard, but this is very new ground to be treading. Fifteen of Ken’s 16 dogs raced the Quest in his team or Julie Estey’s; Lance has 9 or 10 Quest dogs in his team. It’s a real testament to the athletic ability of the dogs that they can run both in the same year just days apart.
I look forward to getting Ken’s impressions on whether he feels it was a benefit to him or not after the race ends. But what I can see on the computer – that he will have 15 dogs in Kaltag – speaks volumes to me. There has been years has arrived in Kaltag with half that number. I think it can be attributed to the base they have on them from the Quest.
Thanks to Ray and Ruthanne Funck from Funck’s Family Restaurant in Annville, PA for sponsoring a dog for the second time in the 2008 Iditarod. The Funck’s have also travelled all the way back to Alaska for the second year to watch the start and travel up the trail to Rainy Pass. The Funcks are sponsoring Grizzly, who has completed five straight Iditarods and this year’s Yukon Quest (pretty amazing) and is still going strong.
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