Mid afternoon on Monday finds the teams moving along the trail and volunteers moving along the trail as well. The Iditarod Air Force is busy, busy, busy flying people who have been delivered to McGrath by commercial flight to other checkpoints along the trail.  Folks who have landed in McGrath via Alaska Air Transport are on the ground for only a short time before boarding with the IAF to be dropped up trail in Takotna or Iditarod and down trail in Nikolai and Rohn.  I’m in McGrath and will watch the tracker and standings to stay with what’s happening in the race.  In a little more than 24 hours, the Alaska Air Transport Spirit of Iditarod Award will be presented to the first musher to McGrath.

The final teams are approaching Finger Lake.  Kristin Bacon, Anja Radano and Victoria Hardwick are only a few miles short of Finger Lake.  They’ll join 16 other teams including Ed Hopkins, Martin Apayauq Reitan, and Lance Mackey in Finger.  Upon arriving and cooking and caring for their dogs, mushers are invited into the kitchen of Winter Lake Lodge for a high-powered protein meal.  World-renowned chefs, Kirsten Dixon and Mandy Dixon, from Winter Lake Lodge go to great lengths to provide the mushers with a meal that will fuel them on their way down the trail.

Mandy Dixon explains the meal that mushers look forward to. It’s a high protein meal that’s tailored to the time of day and musher’s preference.  Black beans, basmati rice and reindeer sausage are wrapped in a freshly made corn tortilla that’s topped with two fried eggs or sliced chicken breast.  Add some freshly made Pico De Gallo and it’s a meal most mushers won’t pass up.  With Mandy’s specialty being pastries, she adds her unique touch with apple spice crumb muffins.  Of course there’s FRESHLY squeezed orange juice, coffee and hot tea.

The Dixon family, Kirsten and Carl and adult daughters Mandy and Carly, enjoy having the mushers in the lodge kitchen.  They say it gives them a chance to hear stories from the trail and the stories that brought them too Iditarod.      

As the teams depart Finger and head toward Rainy Pass, They’ve got some fabulous scenery and sled driving challenges in the next 30 miles.  A short distance after leaving the Lodge, they’ll face a dramatic drop down to the Red River.  Later in the run they’ll tackle the Happy River Steps, endure two nasty stretches of side hill trail and finally spill out onto Puntilla Lake, commonly known as the Rainy Pass Checkpoint. 

Mushers rest and regroup before climbing into the Alaska Range to a height of 3,200 feet then descending to the interior, zigzagging back and forth on ice bridges over Dalzell Creek.  Mushers run on the Tatina River for the last five miles to Rohn Checkpoint.  A BLM safety cabin serves as the hub of the Rohn Checkpoint. The cabin is located near the remains of an old roadhouse that served mail carriers along the Iditarod® Historic Trail 

Currently Nicolas Petit, Peter Kaiser and Joar Leifseth Ulsom are out of Rainy Pass. Petit is leading Kaiser and Ulsom by about an hour but still has about 25 miles to go before making Rohn.  Petit and Kaiser didn’t rest in Rainy.  Joar rested for a little more than 3 hours.  There are twenty teams bedded down out in front of Rainy Pass Lodge on Puntilla Lake. Surrounded by mountains on all sides, it’s the most serene of checkpoints.  The serenity comes between two of the most technical portions of the trail – the Steps and the Gorge.

Rohn Checkpoint will swing into high gear later this evening and overnight.  Nicolas Petit should be the first musher to arrive followed by Kaiser and Ulsom. Once the large number of mushers currently resting on Puntilla Lake make their move to conquer Rainy Pass and the gorge, Rohn can expect to park perhaps 20 teams in a span of three to four hours. They’ll be busy but if Rainy Pass Checkpoint is serene, Rohn is peace and tranquility. 

From the air, a dog team looks like a caterpillar moving along the ground.  It would be quite a sight to see twenty teams in succession ascending Rainy Pass and descending through the Gorge during the trek to Rohn. It’s a media paradise to have so many teams in such close proximity.  You can bet Jeff Schultz, Julian Schroeder and the Insider Crew are going to be all over this!