48 hr update: Teams are starting to stretch out a bit. 29/33 teams have made it to the first major checkpoint of Tanana (Tan-a-nah) just over 200 miles into the race, 16 teams have left. It appears a few are going to get their 8 hr rest checked off. They are now on the Yukon River, the third longest river in NA. Next checkpoint is Ruby at mile 319. The largest nugget ever found in Alaska was found in Ruby, weighing 294 ozt Leader is currently Michelle Phillips at mile 272 but is resting. Second place is Jessie Holmes 4 miles behind and on the move. Former champs Ryan Redington and Mitch Seavey are in 5th and 13th place respectively, at miles 261 and 241. Redington down to 13 dogs, Seavey down to 14. No one has scratched.
16, then eventually start dropping as dogs get fatigued, pick up injuries, etc. The longer you can keep more dogs the better. Required to have at least 6 at the finish.
No dog subs. You generally don’t get to single digits til the last couple hundred miles. At that point you’re carrying fewer supplies so the load is lighter. Also on the last day they switch to a “sprint sled” super lightweight and very little gear. I don’t have the numbers but I feel like most finish with 8-10 dogs. Also the dogs that make it til the end without getting dropped are obviously the best of the bunch.
What happens to the dogs that are dropped out? Do they get carried along? I should know this as a guy that watched Balto but I don’t
They’ll get cared for by volunteer vets and transported either to the the finish or the start, depending on what’s closer, by snowmachine or plane
60 hr update just because I’m up and watching a movie: Paige Drobny (from Cantwell, AK, in the shadow of Denali) first into Ruby, was 5th last year and has two other top 10 finishes. An hour plus ahead of Alabaman Jessie Holmes who’s a mile out. Michelle Phillips and Matt Hall should be arriving within the hour as well. Previous winners Redington and Mitch Seavey in 5th and 12th. Remember there are two mandatory layovers at checkpoints, one 8 hr and one 24 hr. Can be done at musher’s discretion. Looks like a couple competitive mushers are taking their 24 hr break earlier than usual in Tanana, Fairbanksan Jeff Deeter and #Ohio State Buckeyes Matt Failor. Thought process is rest early while it’s still unseasonably warm (bad for the dogs) and race more when it’s cooler in the next week while the others take their 24 hr break. First scratch of the race, rookie Brenda Mackey, at mile 202 in Tanana.
What dogs are the best underdog dogs to route for? Is Discovery there filming for any new Alaska survival type show? Also, what’s life really like in Noorvik watching the generations of hunters you and Agnes have raised come of age? That Discovery money pretty good?
Most dog friendly team, imo is Matt Failor. Currently doing his 24 hr rest. Was top 10 two years ago. Has twice won the humanitarian award for best taking care of his dogs. Last year was in the top 10 and came across a rookie musher who had a dog die on the trail. Rookie musher was emotionally a wreck. Matt stayed with him for 7 hours until the rookie was composed enough to push forward. Cost himself a top 10 finish and thousands of dollars. Discovery is always in the state filming, sometimes without knowing what the show is gonna be. Don’t know of any specific new shows currently filming. Discovery money is v good if you make it past the first season and are a name on a show.
Surprised dumpy isn’t all up itt raising a stink. Was surprised to see that three dogs died last year. Seems absurd that a dog dying on you isn’t some sort of mandatory withdrawal.
First time in 5 years that there was a dog death, IIRC. Mushers can be ostracized if they are known within the community to not care for their dogs to peer expectations. Math says that it’s safer for a dog to run the Iditarod, than it is a human to cross country ski, per hour of activity. Spoiler The occurrence of sudden death in sled dogs during racing, while rare, has considerable impact on public perceptions of the sport. It is important to relate this occurrence to that of human athletes performing similar exercise activities. During cross country skiing, the sudden death rate for human athletes is 1/13,000 man hours. Let’s relate this to an Iditarod type race. Assuming an average team of 11 dogs for the duration of the race, a race completion time of 11 days and an average run time of 10 hours a day (all of these figures are ball park estimates), each team in the Iditarod has 1,210 dog hours of exercise activity. Assuming 60 teams are running in the race, this means that we have approximately 72,000 dog hours of exercise activity per race. Using the sudden death rate estimate from humans during cross country skiing, an estimate of 5.6 deaths per race is obtained. During jogging, a much less strenuous and sustained activity for human athletes than is cross country skiing, the sudden death rate is 1/396,000 activity hours. This would translate to 0.2 deaths per Iditarod race. The fact that the actual number of sudden and unexpected deaths in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is much closer to 0.2 than 5.6 indicates that these sled dogs are much better conditioned for endurance exercise than humans are for cross country skiing. The dogs get more stringent independent health inspections than D1 football players.
Banks - I went to the qualifier race in northern Michigan a few weeks back (UP200). I was surprised at how scrawny the dogs looked. I had pictured beautiful husky/wolf looking dogs like a Disney movie but many looked like scrawny pound type dogs. Have the dogs used in the race evolved over the years or are they still the same? At the half way mark (where I saw them), some dogs were limping and shitting themselves with blood all over their backside. :felt bad:
To start from the end and work back, dogs poop on the run so “shitting themselves” can be murky language and I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to shit while running on all fours but it looks like your back legs are limp while those butt muscles are shitting out your last meal. And on that note, blood on their backside, dogs are mammals, female mammals have periods, female dogs on their periods can be useful motivation for the males behind them. Would need more specifics on both of these before passing judgement, on the surface all can be explained. To the size of the dogs, yes they can be pretty variable. Remember this is an endurance race, these “athletes” resemble more Kenyan/Ethiopian runners than American/Jamaican sprinters. Though since this is a team there is room for a couple big males that are placed in the wheel position (right in front of the sled) who are tasked with pulling a bit more of the weight. The lead dogs have to be more specialized. They need to be the best athletes, the best pace setters, the best listeners (to the musher), the most intuitive (sense of danger a musher might not recognize), the most consistent, etc. To their evolution, yes the Alaskan sled dog is a relatively new breed. For thousands of years dogs owned by the indigenous peoples of NA were bred to haul heavy loads over long distances, but at speeds that humans would travel as well. In the early 20th century, dog sledding became an economic endeavor and then bred competition. It was at this time that Norwegian Leonhard Seppala introduced Siberian Huskies to the breeds in Alaska which later became the Alaskan Husky. Initially brought over for Roald Amundsen’s attempt at the North Pole. These dogs were bred solely for speed and endurance, with no consideration for appearance, unusual for dogs. Leonhard Seppala may not be a name you’re familiar with, but at least one of his dogs should be…Balto. When a diphtheria epidemic struck Nome, Alaska in 1925 it was deemed too dangerous to try to fly the serum in to the village/gold mining town on the Bering Sea so a series of dog mushers was put together to move the serum over the ~1000 mile distance. Seppala was the preeminent musher of his time and was tasked with the longest and most dangerous part of the relay. He chose to bring his lead dog, many consider the greatest sled dog of all time, Togo, for this task. He left the rest of the dogs he owned behind with one of his employees. This employee was later asked to complete the second to last leg of the relay and brought the dogs Seppala left behind for that run. Balto was his lead dog. Instead of stopping at the last check point and turning the serum over to the last leg who had been resting up, he bypassed the cabin and took longer than expected to get the serum to Nome and got the headlines and the glory. Obviously you can’t expect the media 100 years ago to sus out the nuance of what happened so Balto was the lead dog to bring the serum over the “finish line” and saved the kids and thus was deemed a hero to the American public, as was the musher, Gunnar Klassen, despite it being one of the easier portions of the relay.
The Banks who owns the dogs? The musher? Or is there like a team owner who hires the musher like a jockey? Are there breeding programs that are breeding genetically optimized dogs to race?
Dogs are owned by the mushers themselves by and large. Def no corporate/Saudi ownership at this time. Other circumstances can be the musher’s protege taking the junior team with them to gain experience for both. Or say with the Seavey’s, the dad is taking a combo of his dogs and his son’s dogs. Breeding is definitely an integral part of the sport. This is a relatively new breed of dog, only 100 years old or so so ~20 dog generations. If a prospective musher wants to get into the game they typically will need to buy 4-6 dogs off of an established musher to begin their own line. Obviously they will need to interbreed with other musher’s lines so there’s a human aspect to it too. Responsible mushers have dog yards set up where accidental breedings can’t happen so all litters are planned with the optimized males and females.
96 hr update: Paige Drobny was first into Galena (Ga-lean-uh) at mile 369. Arrived at 6:30 AM local time. And stayed to rest. Jessie Holmes was there 3 hrs later but continued on to mile 391 and is now resting. Three others have reached Galena, Matt Hall 2.5 hrs after Drobny, Michelle Phillips 3 hrs after Drobny, and Ryan Redington 4 hrs after. Top rookie is Emily Ford in 13th place at mile 320. Should be seeing more mushers start taking their mandatory 8/24 hr layovers. Still just one scratch.
Depends on where they are running. On a river with a nice packed trail (current situation) 8-10 miles an hour. Up and down hills or breaking trail after a snowstorm could make that 4-6.
Neither, only two mushers have completed a layover, those were their 24 hr ones so those guys are back at mile 261 and 255.
Here’s Matt Hall’s analytics: Ignore elevation, they are on rivers heading to the ocean. On the normal route from Willow they have to go over the Alaska range. You can see his average moving speed, you can see when he takes actual breaks. You can see when he stops for various reasons (give the dogs water, untangle lines, grab something out of the sled) for a minute or two.
First into Nulato (New-lotto), mile 420 two hours ago. Just 5 mins ahead of Michelle Phillips. But while she is resting, Holmes is already halfway to the next checkpoint of Kaltag (Cal(like the school)-tag) at mile 456. I’d imagine he’ll take one of his layovers there. 3-time winner Mitch Seavey has pushed into 3rd place (mile 402) while it appears a number of mushers are taking either their 8 or 24 hr layover in Galena at mile 369. Second scratch of the race for another rookie musher in Tanana, just 200 miles in.
Yeah, get off the trail from packed snow to powder (if you can) which is more insulating and below the wind, throw some straw down, coupled with being tired from running for hours and the dogs can rest pretty quick.
Friday Night Update: Jessie Holmes was first into Kaltag, just after midnight, and appears to be taking his 24hr break (has been there for 18 hrs now). Second into Kaltag was Nicholas Petit 8 hrs behind him. ROOKIE musher Emily Ford is about to arrive as well. None of these three have completed a 8/24 hr break yet. In 4th place, 26 miles outside of Kaltag is Paige Drobny who has taken her 24hr break. She will probably rest in Kaltag for a bit so pretty even with Holmes. 5th place is Matt Hall who just went through Nulato. He took his 24 hr in Galena. He’s 10 miles behind Drobny. 6 mushers are resting in Nulato, including former winners Mitch Seavey and Ryan Redington, assumedly taking one of their mandatory rests. A third rookie musher has scratched.
Saturday Evening Update: Jessie Holmes remains in first place. Currently mushing at mile 551 after resting for a few hours. Hot on his tail is Paige Drobny just 6 miles behind. Jessie rested til he could hear Paige coming then took off. Matt Hall is running as well, at mile 533. Four mushers are resting at the nearest checkpoint at mile 526. In order of arrival: Phillips, Redington, Seavey, and Porsild. Dallas Seavey caught up to his dad via snowmachine and is hanging out with him. All competitive mushers have completed their 24hr rest. None have done their 8 hr. Of the three leaders, Jessie Holmes has 14 dogs, Paige Drobny has 13, and Matt Hall has 11, having dropped 4 dogs at the last check point. Matt Failor’s lead dogs watch him ready the sled before they depart Kaltag. Failor is in 13th place.
Also where Jessie Holmes was last resting a few miles outside of the last checkpoint, he came across fresh grizzly tracks. Normally they’d still be hibernating but this unseasonably warm weather may have woken some. With little food available this time of year they may be a little more ornery than usual.
Need to sponsor a team next year. can you sponsor just a single dog? Get the little guy some Jordan boots. Ray-Ban rec specs. A collar with a diamond T-MB pendant.