March 19, 2001

Karen has left Safety, the final checkpoint before Nome at 5:57AM AST (9:57 EST).

It is 22 miles from Safety to Nome.  Karen has been traveling at about 4-5mph...

If you are lucky, you may be able to catch her arrival on the Live Nome Webcam. If anyone happens to be lucky & techie enough to catch her arrival, please take several screen captures and send them on to me!!

For those having trouble with the auto refresh thing, you could just point to the image file http://www.iditarod.com/nomecam.jpg. Hit refresh (F5 for Internet Explorer Users) or reload (Netscape) when it is convenient or as needed. (I hope we don't crash the server!!!)

Today the Last Great Team carrying the bright red lantern in the Last Great Race is being driven by Karen Ramstead and her 15 Siberian huskies. There are thousands of her friends, fans, and fellows on the Sibernet chat lines right now, flipping back and forth watching the Nomecam. If there are hit counts on that cam, I am sure it will verify my statement. They are from Canada, US, Australia, South Africa, UK, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Isreal, India, China and too many more to list.

We do hope the media will give Karen and her team of Siberian husky show dogs the attention and adulation they deserve. She has left Safety. That's 15 beautiful registered dogs in that team. Remember, as in Leonard Seppala's team...

March 18, 2001 (part 2)

Well, Karen left White Mountain at 12:40 pm (4:40 pm EST), and is traveling to her last checkpoint (Safety) before the final leg to Nome.

"Mushers follow the shore of Norton Sound to Safety, where the checkpoint building provides the only light for miles. ' To me, it just looks like an old shack, but in winter, it's like a lighthouse,' remembers DeeDee Jonrowe. ' It always looks like a lantern in the distance. You can probably see it four or five miles away.' " A trail 1,100 miles long from Anchorage to Nome, and Karen has only 77 miles remaining.

GO Karen GO!!! : ^)

Those so inclined, please keep her in your prayers. She is now traveling along the Bering Sea. There is only one other musher left, and he is a checkpoint ahead of her. This is a very difficult part of her journey, and she is probably extremely tired. The landscape is barren with no trees in sight, and the area is plagued with high winds and ground blizzards, creating total white-out conditions. If she somehow becomes disoriented, she could wander out onto the Bering Sea and lose her way.

This is where one discovers the true value of our beloved Siberians. Karen will probably give her leaders their heads, and allow them to lead the way. They can find the trail much better than she, and as we all know, Siberians come into this world naturally independent and with high intelligence, for this very purpose.

She needs to fully trust in her "best friends" (as she affectionately calls them).

Godspeed Karen... : )

(Update provided by another fellow Sibernet member).
Ann

March 18, 2001

Hi

Karen should be leaving White Mountain momentarily after her mandatory 8 hour rest stop. Weather at the moment is -7 F and forecast is for pretty decent weather. Wind is NW at 9 mph, skies are fair humidity 65% and visibility unlimited.

If Karen continues her practice she won't be pushing the dogs very hard even with such a short distance to go. It's hard to estimate her time into Nome but there is a live camera at the finish line.

http://www.iditarod.com/nomecam.html

(Update provided by a fellow Sibernet member).

Ann

March 17, 2001

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

At last check, Karen & crew are still going :)

No more word from Karen or Mark, however, a fellow Sibernet member had sent the following images.
Click on the images to view much larger versions.  I have purposely left the originals very large, generally 1024x768 so that details will be more easily visible. 

I would suggest right clicking on each image, select "Open in New Window" (Internet Explorer users...) for each of the larger images you care to view, then give the images a few minutes to load.  You can then switch between windows quickly to see the pre-loaded images.

I'm sure Karen will provide us with more details to what the images actually are in good time :)

Enjoy!
Ann

March 16, 2001

I couldn’t sleep:

I told you not to pay any attention to Karen’s schedule.  It looks like Karen pulled a fast one on those old Shaktoolik Gremlins.  Judging by her run time from Unalakleet to Shaktoolik she decided to camp on the trail then blow through Shaktoolik stopping only long enough to restock her sled with supplies.  Maybe she’ll continue the schedule once she hits Koyuk? Maybe she’ll just keep running until she hits Nome? 

All I know is that in a few hours I’ll be in Nome and for the first time this winter Karen will finally be running towards me instead of away from me.

Bye for good this time.

The next clicking you hear will be from Karen...

Mark
(Karen's husband)

March 15, 2001

This is it:

This will be the last diary entry from me. Tomorrow morning I leave for Nome. Once I’m in Nome, I’ll take the short $5.00 taxi ride to the ITC headquarters (Iditarod Trail Committee), then check in so I can get partnered up with my host family. Then all there is to do is kill time until Karen shows up. I’ve figured out her ETA under the arch to be around 3:00 AST Sunday afternoon.
Here is the remainder of Karen’s schedule:

• Rest 8 hours in Unalakleet
• Run 8 hours to Shaktoolik and rest for 6 hours
• Run 8 hours to Koyuk and rest for 6 hour
• Run 7 hours to Elim and rest for 6 hours
• Run 8 hours to White Mt. Rest for 8 hours
• Run 12 hours to Nome rest for 1 year

Please don’t email or phone me when these times aren’t right, I won’t be here, see above paragraph. All these times do is cause headaches, they were actually dreamt up back in September so there is a certain percentage of error. The times are used mostly in the planning of the food drop bags.

Once Karen is in Nome and the dogs are taken care of, the first order of business is to get the team and ourselves out of Nome, we will be at the complete mercy of the airline. As soon as we are back in Knik its time to load the truck and beeline it for home.

Each musher has a mail slot in Nome, I’m sure that there is ways that you can get messages there in time, but your on your own for this one.

Later
Mark
(Karen's husband)

March 14, 2001

Good day:

The Athabasca River is a nice size, the North Saskatchewan River isn’t that small and the Bow River can hold its own.  But you could put them side by side multiply them by two and you still wouldn’t have the Yukon River.  This river is HUGE, at some points it is over a mile wide, it is always cold and it is always winding.  So you can imagine that Karen is very happy to have her and her dog’s feet on dry land again, she’d be even happier if there was snow on that dry ground. So now Karen has finished the Southern route and is back on familiar trail, at least until she gets to Shaktoolik.

I’ve had a lot of questions sent to me during the night, so I’ll spend this diary answering them.  First of all Karen is feeling fine now she was sick for awhile but just ignored it until it went away. 

Karen usually runs her dogs on an equal run rest schedule, this can of course change due to weather or if she is trying to make it to a checkpoint.  On the longer stretches of the race Karen camps on the trail, she has a cooker with her and can melt snow to make meals for herself and her dogs.  I have a copy of her schedule with me so I can watch her progression and see if everything is going according to plan.  I haven’t shared it with anyone yet, you never know when someone from Swingley’s team is watching.  I’ll post the remainder of her schedule before I head up to Nome on Friday.

Karen has been rotating her leaders to keep them fresh.  She hasn’t really said who’s been up front the most, but I’ll bet you any money that Grover will be up front as Karen leaves Shaktoolik.

I get asked a lot of questions about mushers carrying navigation equipment and emergency locators.  Rules #36 & #37 of the Iditarod go something like this:

Rule #36: A musher may carry an Emergency Tracking Device, activation of this device will make a musher ineligible to continue. 

I know for a fact that this rule has been enforced in the past.  

Rule #37: Musher may only use traditional forms of navigation, no night vision goggles, or GPS devices.

In other words follow the trail markers.

When I mentioned yesterday that I was going to watch the grass grow I wasn’t kidding, the snow is quickly disappearing, its getting hot enough during the days that I had to bring my beer in off the porch and put it in the fridge.  Yesterday when I was in town getting some groceries there where people wearing shorts...

Later

Mark
(Karen's husband)