March 8 unk 4:39PM Aliy first to the Bering Sea Coast! Aliy Zirkle into Unalakleet and the first musher to the Bering Sea Coast. A crowd from the village claps and hollers as eleven in harness and Aliy travel at a very fast trot on the glare ice of the Unalakleet River to arrive on …
MaRCH8-2PM–unk—-Aliy leads on trail to Unk Bruce Lee, Insider Analyst and my good friend, and I arrive Unalakleet (hereafter the call name UNK) after flying from Kaltag. We land in Unk and transfer to the checkpoint to further confuse ourselves with information seen on the tracker. After much discussion, we decide we missed Aliy from …
March 8 Kaltag 9am—Five on trail UNK—Who can prevail We are sitting in Kaltag, preparing to move our Insider operation to Unalakleet. I tried to gather subjective opinions to provide the reader an overview of the race. Presently, we have five competitors on the trail to Unalakleet, all with the potential to win. Aaron Burmeister, …
Why is all the action at 2AM? Martin Buser, who has all the best reasons in the world to be drowsy at 2am, arrives first into Kaltag with alacrity.
March 7 Galena—-4:30PM
We are just minutes away from a departure to Kaltag, but hopefully enough time to describe the checkpoint. Bright sun bathes resting dogs. Side by side, Iditarod champs Dallas Seavey, Jeff king, Mitch Seavey teams rest on their straw beds. Veterinarians make regular rounds from the dogs, back to the checkpoint, and back again as …
Bruce Lee, Insider Analyst, and I have just flown the 50 miles trail from Ruby to Galena on the Yukon River. We saw Jeff King, Sonny Lindner, Mitch Seavey, Robert Sorlie, Hugh Neff, Nicholas Petit, and Paul Gebhardt.
Anybody with a computer and the great tools at the Insider can see that it was shooting stars last night on the Yukon. From the wilderness, Aliy Zirkle exploded out of hiding and hit the Yukon bound for Galena. No doubt, she is going to take her mandatory eight hour break in Galena and look …
March 6 Ruby—Sorlie arrives the Yukon Since we don’t have the internet at the checkpoint we discover our primitive roots. We have to rely on snowmachiner reports to advise us of an incoming musher rather than refer to the very practical InsiderGPS tracker. It’s painful to be pretending 1970 when I know the Insider GPS …
March 6 Ruby—-Buser into Ruby at 6:44pm The temp drops with the setting sun and wind here in Ruby. A mob of fans gathers to watch Martin wind down a road in the creek bottom below to arrive Ruby, then climb up a long hill to the community hall. Here he is greeted and checked …
March 6 Ruby—1:20PM—Race Changes to Yukon We have now moved to Ruby, a village perched on a steep hillside on the south bank of the Yukon. I have enclosed a photo from the checkpoint, high above the south bank, out onto one of the great rivers of the world. On even years the Iditarod is …
