The dog teams resting in Nikolai are getting some very quality rest. CALM and SUNNY. And the checkpoint is relatively quite. Very few snow machines and other traffic disturbing the dogs. No airplanes. It is always fun. Where most dogs are resting in pairs, a few mushers have them sleep single file. I have seen Mitch Seavey doing that for a few years and now noticed Peter Kaiser also switching to that system. Talking to Robert Sorlie, he was happy with his run. He described the Gorge as scary, but not as bad as 2 years ago. 

In an earlier post I had mistaken Paul Gebardt with Lance Mackey. Of course ” on by ” is a Mackey sign…. and it was Lance Mackey who passed Hugh Neff before dropping onto the Kuskokwim River. Sleep deprivation is catching up with me. Lance seems to be having a great race, proudly announcing ” 16 dogs strong ” upon checking in. He sure could use a nice run!!! 

Now Brent Sass has pulled a twist and has gone through Nikolai. That’s happened rarely before. Only in the Martin Buser days, when he used to camp at Salmon River, about 13 miles out. Brent had stopped much further back than that. Is he going to just camp out…. run a bit longer to then avoid the heat of the day? 

Here are some more pictures: