Teams Resting on Puntilla Lake Before Climbing to the Summit of Rainy Pass (Photo Credit Dave Poyzer)
You are a serious Iditarod fan if the locations in your weather app include Skwentna and Nikolai amongst others like Ruby, Kaltag and Unalakleet. It’s the first thing I check in the morning and often the last thing I check at night.
Early Tuesday morning there are twenty-eight teams out of Rohn heading to Nikolai. Seven teams are resting in Rohn. Five are on the move climbing Rainy Pass and descending the gorge on their way to Rohn and nine are resting on Puntilla Lake anticipating standing at the summit of Rainy Pass at 3,200 feet an enjoying the scenery. The majority of the competitors have gone from one side of the range to the other with a few to make the transition very soon.
The forecast for Nikolai includes a chance of snow. Temperatures will climb into the lower 30’s and winds will be from the northwest at 10 mph. Pretty pleasant by human standards if not a little warm by sled dog standards. Mushers will take advantage of running in the cooler parts of the day and night and let the athletes lounge on straw in the warmer parts of the day. For those teams still on the eastern side of the range the weather is much the same.
What’s in store for the mushers as they head to Nikolai from Rohn? There are plenty of challenges depending on how generous mother nature is with snow. Out of Rohn the teams often find a trail that is little more than gravel and ice then they encounter the Buffalo Tunnels, followed by some serious ice even before reaching the notorious Farewell Burn. In an article for the Anchorage Daily News published in 2010, John Schandelmeier describes this portion of the trail very well.
Schendelmeier says that snow is often sparse through the Buffalo tunnels. The trail appears to be a tunnel thanks to the tall spruce trees lining the trail. The tunnel effect is further accented by the depth of the trails the buffalo routinely use. In some places, the trail is only as wide as a sled with patches of ice, frozen tussocks and stumps. None of this creates problems for the agile dogs but it’s a different story for sleds and sometimes mushers. Then comes the Post Glacier, an area of muskeg benches that freeze becoming a challenge that’s nicely described as smooth and steep. Next up the Farewell Burn. The actual burn area resulted from a fire back in 1984. There has been work done by the BLM to clear a wide trail and later more work was initiated by Iditarod to improve the trail by removing stumps and other litter created by the fire. Mossy hummocks are typical in the burn so in a low snow year, it’s like a wash board road on a much larger scale. Then add howling winds and blowing snow into the mix and you’ve got a section of the trail that mushers are very happy to put in the rearview mirror. Thanks John for your apt description.
Mushers doing the 2021 Gold Trail Loop said they actually enjoyed the Burn. There was ample snow to even out the tussocks and hummocks, the sky was clear, the wind noticeably absent and the view of Denali was spectacular. I’m quite excited to watch Insider interviews of mushers coming into the Athabascan village of Nikolai to hear their stories about the trail between Rohn and Nikolai. Some mushers are of the mind that if you make it Nikolai in one piece, you’ll very likely make it Nome. So let’s keep an eye on how teams come out of the gorge – who scratches at Rohn and how teams fare in the tunnels and on the Burn – who scratches at Nikolai.
Many thanks to trail photo guy, Dave Poyzer. His images are worth 1,000 words and show more of the trail and more of the race than words can ever describe. I will be sharing Poyzer Pics with you as they become available.
