![](https://iditarod.com/wp-content/themes/iditarod/images/icon-instagram.png"){kind=icon}
Gypsy
Dear Friends, We have had 16 mushers reach Nome! Jeff Deeter, Kelly Maixner, Aliy Zirkle, and Tom Frode Johansen are currently racing toward the burled arch from White Mountain and Safety. As I write, five more mushers have or soon will reach White Mountain, so that’s an eight hour wait before they leave for …
Dear Friends, We have a new Iditarod champion this morning! Thomas Waerner of Norway finished in Nome after 9 days, 10 hours, 37 minutes, and 47 seconds! Congratulations to K2 and Bark, his leaders, who led him all the way! It should be an exciting day in Nome. There is a long line of close …
Dear Friends, White Mountain is a checkpoint where mushers and their teams are required to take a mandatory 8 hour rest. This gets the teams prepared for the final 77 mile push toward Nome! Teams park and the dogs rest on the frozen Fish River that runs alongside the village. A hole is chopped …
Dear Friends, If you are keeping up with the race, you will see that the front teams are now running along the Bering Sea Coast and Norton Sound. See the map below. Between Unalakleet and Nome, they are often running on frozen bodies of water, not land. Thomas Waerner of Norway is in the …
Dear Friends, Some of the mushers or “drivers” of the dog teams are driving puppy teams in the race. Rookies sometimes take puppy teams belonging to a veteran musher for their first race. This year, Tim Pappas is running Martin Buser’s A team, and veteran Martin Buser is running a team he said will be …
Dear Friends, In order to keep track of the dog teams, musher sled bags have booties pinned onto them! Inside the booties are GPS tracking devices. There are two placed on each musher’s sled. They not only record the location of each musher’s sled, but they also record the speed with which they are traveling, …
Dear Friends, Some of the mushers are now leaving Ruby, the checkpoint where they will then start running on the mighty Yukon River. The only problem with running on the huge river, which is frozen over, is that it can get boring for the dogs. Did you know dogs can get bored? On the mile-wide …
Dear Friends, As the race goes on, some of the mushers share their trail stories. Ryan Redington, a veteran musher, shared about some setbacks he has had. A setback is something that holds you back or slows your progress. Ryan told of being sick in the Nikolai checkpoint. That’s no fun when you have …
Dear Friends, Have you noticed what the sled dogs are wearing? Sometimes they are stylin’ in the race! Sled dogs have accessories that are practical for running across Alaska. Colorful booties on their feet keep wet snow from packing up between their toe pads. With designer harnesses or just plain, the dogs look official and …
Dear Friends, I hope you have been watching the race standings and seeing at which checkpoint mushers are taking their 24 hour rest! Some people worry that it’s hard to make the dogs run. Mushers know it’s not a problem to get Alaskan huskies to run; the difficult part is to get them to …