Iditarod 2014 Willow to Rohn - Our Best Guess - Bet

Howdy Ho Everybodies!

We're just watching the last of the brave Iditarod mushers and dogs finish up the course.  There are four rookies still out there and the race isn't over until everyone finishes, so don't forgot to cheer them on and watch them come over the line!

As far as we here at North Wapiti North go... the Musher's hand is healing, but I'm sure the spirit is still very bruised, so we're taking one day at a time.

The Musher was able to take a team out on her sled the other day, so little steps.

See, Crackle, Skecher, and Missy were raring to go too, so everybodies in good spirits.

I've continued my training routine, we simply can't have everybodies lounging around and getting lazy.

Molly is telling the entire world that she's going to be a mom and that Todd is the father, so I'll have to brush up on my nanny skills again in a few weeks.

Since the Musher isn't ready to talk yet, the Pretty Curly Tails, Minions and I have been confabbing to try to piece together what happened on the trail and this is what we've come up so far.  I'm sure the Musher will be able to stitch together the bits and pieces we may have missed, but we're pretty confident in this sequence of events.

Ok, so the Musher and team had a FABulous and very pretty start out of Willow on Sunday afternoon.

The Minions and support crew all bailed and went back to North Wapiti North to breathe a sigh of relief and then Jamie hooked up her dogs and a sled for a little bit of fun.

Heather Minion and Jamie

Kristin Minion and Jamie

The Cartoonist and Jamie

Meanwhile, the Musher and Pretty Curly Tails were enjoying a nice day out in the snow

The team breezed through Yentna Station and had a nice run over to Skwentna.

Meanwhile, the Minions slowly drove back to Anchorage in the conga line of cars returning to Anchorage and transferred pictures from cameras to pads to upload once they got back to the land of the interwebs.

Richard and I took care of the remaining Pretty Curly Tails and watched the little blip on the computer to make sure the team was moving fine.

That night at the hotel after updating the Facebooks and stuffs with the re-start pictures, the Minions were roughing it in the room.

Meanwhile, the team pulled into Skwentna just after midnight and took a 4 hour break before pulling out at 5am.

While some minions left the night of the re-start, other Minions took redeyes back to their homes, so when the team made it to Finger Lake just before noon, they were suffering through piles of tasty food at Gwennies.

The team took another 4 hour break, no doubt to avoid the heat of the day and took off around 3pm for Rainy Pass with only 14 Pretty Curly Tails.  Missy and Crackle had sore wrists and weren't having fun, so they stayed behind.

As the minions were getting on their redeye flights back to their homes, the team had made it to Rainy Pass, the Musher was interviewed and was heard saying that the trail was surprisingly fast and nice and they'd be taking an 8 hour break, so the Minions got on their planes thinking everything was fine and dandy.

Next day the Minions arrive at home all bleary eyed and start unpacking and getting caught up on all of the happenings and stuffs, but there really isn't that much news going on except the constant blip of the Wayward GPS after some minor glitches with the Musher tracker reporting the Musher in places she would need light speed to achieve.  It all seemed rather normal and expected, so everybodies pretty much took a break to get some sleep.

What we didn't realize was that the trail to Rohn had become... well... a humungous nightmare.

And late that night Richard got the following from the ITC Comms Center:

"Broke hand, been withdrawn from race.  Hopefully will get out of Rohn tomorrow.  Be in touch when I know more details."

So, that's pretty much what we think happened.  I'm sure the Musher will be able to add a few more details to the story, but I'm pretty confident we have it right.

- Bet