| We see that some of the teams have chosen to rest in Rohn and others have gone on through. These are two common strategies for running this next section of the trail. Some mushers chose to rest their dogs at the checkpoint where they have all the amenities provided at a check point, their food drop bags and straw for the dogs. Other mushers choose to break up the longer run to Nikolai by adding a few more miles from Rainy Pass, going out into the burn area and resting at the place of their choice away from the activities of the checkpoint. One of the largest advantages in going through Rohn and resting farther out along the trail.is that there is less snow on the trail just north of the Alaska range and this section is quite often notoriously rough, with tussocks, glaciered areas, bare ground, and stumps to negotiate. Less rested dogs will travel at a calmer speed, making this section of trail less hazardous.
The trail breakers reported that even with this new snowfall, the first 40 miles out of Rohn has little snow. Then the teams will start encountering this fresh 6 to 10 inches of snow as they get closer to Nikolai. They say the snow is a light powder and shouldn’t be a major issue for the teams but we likely will see a decrease in speed as the teams head on to McGrath. |
