I missed Nicolas Petit arriving in Rainy Pass  as I finally got a few hours of sleep. Last night did not go as planned. Leaving Finger Lake about 1.30 in the morning, I had hoped for a quick ride to Rainy Pass. The trail started out excellent, deep snow. Till about 7 miles out I ran into a moose. And the moose wanted to use the trail as much as I did, we just had a disagreement about the direction. It kept on chasing me back towards Finger Lake… in reverse, as turning around in that deep snow did not work easily. Eventually the moose won, I got turned around and camped out for a couple of hours. On the upside, the northern lights were still out.

The Happy River Steps are about 10 miles out from Finger Lake and I have seen them rarely in this good of a shape.Lots of snow to work with. For the first teams the trail will be great, later on, it sure will get trenched out by all the sled brakes. There is no open water of any kind, neither any glaciers.

With Ketil Reitan running some of my dogs, we had also done a bit of joint race planning. In our pre-race plan, I had told Ketil that Finnbear Lake ( Helicopter Lake ) is a good place to stop, as usually there is a cabin open there. Not so this time. No tracks on the lake, no smoke coming front the chimney. Ketil will have to camp out.  I got to Rainy only at 6.30 and crashed out in the Mushers Cabin as no musher was there yet and only woke up when the commotion of Nicolas Petit arriving woke me up.

Nicolas was busy taking care of his team. Most dogs were not to be seen, buried deep under some hay. Hay is only used here, so they can use it for horse feed later in the season. Every other checkpoint they use straw. Looking a bit at his run till here. Nicolas covered 130 miles in a bit more than 18 hours. He did 5 short stops, some of them lasting 30 minutes, the longest one about 45 minutes. Snack breaks for the dogs and bootie change time. Specially at the beginning of the race, changing the booties was important. The trail conditions were pretty hard on the booties. From Finger Lake on, the snow looks like real snow again, not ice crystals anymore. Aliy Zirkle has done one ” longer ” 4 hr rest, after about 8 hrs of running. Dallas is employing essentially the same strategy. Both will run a bit longer than 8 hrs to get here. They also will both get here for a perfect time of the day, before it really starts to warm up. 

Looking forward to Aliy Zirkle, Dallas Seavey, Kelly Maixner arriving here soon.

Enjoy the shots! Sebastian