Gee, Bjornar, Gee
7:10 p.m.
March 06, 2006

by Tyrell Seavey

Ultimate Iditarod's coverage of the 2006 Iditarod sponsored by:

            Every year there seem to be two Iditarod races… one to win, and one for everyone in the consolation bracket for the best excuse why they didn’t.  But, in Bjornar’s case I am buying it.  He could have easily detoured 7 or 8 miles as the reports claim.  Assuming the Iditarod.com stats are accurate he took 6:30 hours to go from Skwentna to Finger Lake and this run can typically be done in 4 to 5 hours.  This fact alone is no big deal because everybody and their cousin is camping everywhere imaginable right now just to keep our lives exciting… but considering the fact that he rested over 5 hours in Skwentna I would be willing to bet that he was planning on going to Puntilla Lake if not all the way through the checkpoint and up into Rainy Pass itself. 

            So where did he go?  I am guessing he went for a scenic ride up towards Tallavana Lodge.  Someone should have told him the fishing is much better in the summer.  The markers leaving Willow have a big blue ribbon tied to them and we are told since there are so many markers intersecting with the trail (including last year’s identical Iditarod markers minus the ribbon) that the blue ribbon markers will lead us to the mountains and away from the confusion.  Unfortunately, the don’t tell us exactly where they are going to stop so my guess is that when Bjornar left the blue ribbon markers he assumed that he was still on the correct path.

            How will it effect the race? Probably not much.   There is enough trail left he can make back any lost time but if he doesn’t win he will always wonder.  One interesting outcome of this twist of fate is that last year’s 2nd, 3rd and 4th place racers all arrived in Rainy Pass within 15 minutes of each other.  I would say that is a pack to watch.

            Meanwhile towards the front… Swingley is always fast but there are limits.  Right?  After his performance last year with young dogs I put him 3rd in my Top Ten Picks for this race.  I do believe he is going to have to pull a long way ahead of the pack if he is going to win because I feel there is going to be a big push at the end this year by powerful teams.  In their attempt to copy the superhuman racers from Norway a lot of mushers over-trained their teams this year.  That means that they will start slow, but stay fast longer, and if they are patient enough they can reel in a lot of teams in the end.

            One more thing, check out www.earthslot.org/iditarod.  It is a pretty neat 3-D fly-by of the Iditarod put together by some college kids.  I don’t mean to be undercutting the Iditarod Insider deal but we don’t all have high-speed internet, or in my case $19.95.  Arrg... Back to studying for the Geology midterm… who really cares what a poorly-sorted meta-conglomerate is when the IDITAROD is in full swing?