Iditarod Race Updates and Coverage--Ultimate Iditarod

Ultimate Iditarod's Mitch Seavey went through the Rohn Roadhouse Checkpoint around 11:30 p.m. last night. Since he rested his team well in the Rainy Pass Checkpoint he stopped only long enough to pick up food and supplies so he could camp out here in the Burn. Our other musher, Jim Gallea, pulled in a few hours later and bedded his dogs down for a six-hour rest. Both mushers chose to drop a dog at the Rohn checkpoint leaving them each with fifteen remaining. Mitch dropped Iceman because he had gotten tired climbing through the pass and wasn't able to keep up with the team's awesome pace. Jim dropped Mac who is an older male who was getting sore running down the Dalzell Gorge. Both dogs got flown out first-class aboard a volunteer airplane around 10 o'clock this morning.

Bill and I left Rohn at 10:30 a.m. and headed north through the Buffalo Tunnels. The Buffalo Tunnels are named after the transplanted buffalo who live in the area and are note-worthy because the trees are so close together in this so-called "tunnel" the often times my skis were hitting trees on both sides of the trail simultaneously. This sort of terrain really tests the mushers' ability to handle their sleds.

Ten miles out of Rohn I realized that Bill wasn't keeping up with me so I turned my machine around and went back to investigate. I found Bill standing by the trail holding various parts of his rear suspension. "Not good," he said. We turned the machine over and found that one of the main springs had come loose and was now entangled in the track. We contemplated our options while I looked around a bit more. Going back to Rohn would take a long time not to mention possibly endangering the racers if we were traveling the wrong way up the trail. We decided to attempt the 60 miles to Nikolai. The problem with this was that I would have to patch the machine up well enough to make it through this horrendous section of trail, and I don't claim to be a mechanic. I decided the broken parts weren't really necessary anyway so I pulled them out, stuffed them in his bag and told him to hit the trail. He looked a little surprised when I dropped the twenty pounds of "spare" parts in his sled and suggested we should leave. He asked if it would still go. "Probably," I said. Luckily it went. Slowly but surely we have gone twenty miles from the site of the breakdown. As I type Bill is riding on down the trail and the plan is that I will catch up to him before Nikolai. We made a few phone calls and we are planning to meet a plane with a mechanic and new parts tomorrow in Nikolai.

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© 2002 Ultimate Iditarod, Snowcrest Racing Sled Dogs, Seavey's Iditarod Racing Team
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