Tuesday, February 7, 2012

The (Sub) Arctic Fox Sneaks in First


7 February 2012
6:51 PM

Sunrise at9:18 AMin direction126°SoutheastSoutheast
Sunset at4:53 PMin direction234°SouthwestSouthwest
Duration of day: 7 hours, 35 minutes (6 minutes, 47 seconds longer than yesterday)


The Yukon Quest Official Facebook page is a very active site where fans chat virtually non-stop about how the race is progressing.  Additionally, there is a Live Tracking page which represents GPS spot signals from trackers the mushers carry on their sleds.  Today an annoying, yet intriguing event occurred - the spot trackers went silent for three of the race leaders for most of their progress along the Yukon River from Slaven's Cabin to Eagle .. a distance of 105 miles by the spot tracker mileage indicators.  Two remained in focus, Brent Sass and Hugh Neff.  Those were the two that had been dueling for first yesterday into Slaven's.  Normally, the spots update every 15 - 30 minutes and fans can see them progress down the trail.  To the disinterested, it might seem like not much is happening, but avid fans gauge a lot by the 15 - 30 minute glimpses, even, in essence watching one musher pass another.

All we had to estimate musher progress for these leaders was to look at the Current Standings page to see when they departed Slaven's Cabin and the location/time and their speed at their last spot check.  As of this morning, we saw Hugh, then Brent leaving Slaven's Cabin close together on both the Live Tracker and the Current Standings.  Roughly 30 minutes later Allen Moore left followed by Abbie West, Jake Berkowitz and super hero, Lance Mackey.  Berkowitz had not been tracking since Circle, and then both Mackey and Moore stopped sending updates.  Mackey is known for doing the impossible, so even though he left a little over two hours after Hugh, speculation was rampant about his whereabouts as was the occasional question about Jake Berkowitz and Allen Moore.  I have extracted a small (very small) excerpt of the running comments from last night through this afternoon when the leaders arrived in Eagle:

Joel
Where is Lance Mackey, How much time and distance has he made up on the front runners.

Bruce
It looks like Hugh has gained a decent lead on Brent--not running together now. Hugh makin' a move! And meanwhile, Lance is steadily creeping up from behind. This is becoming a fun race to watch.

Joel
Hugh Neff is pulling away from Brent Sass it seems. Being now about 5 miles apart. He must have put the hammer down a bit harder. Seeing Lance in his rear view mirror...

Barbara
I'm not suggesting that Lance has done this, but in years past in the Iditarod, it has been known that sometimes a musher would put something metal over the tracker so he could not be seen for awhile or give the tracker to a pilot that was flying back to a check point. I think we all remember who that was. I'm sorry, but that was funny. haha

Joel
Hugh And Brent should be arriving in Eagle between 2 and 2.30pm Alaska time. Unless Lance has pulled the rabbit out and swung it in front of his team... that will get em moving faster...lol


Annie
Coffee ready at Eagles? Hugh'll be in soon!

Eyes are glued to the Spot Tracker and Current Standings page.  Then suddenly, the suspense is over and ... Lance is in first just ahead of Hugh Neff!

Robin
omg, it is Lance!



Mike
Lance is in!



    • Serge  His tracker is off!?? last known was a lil' less than 11:00 ago....

    • Marlene  Jeff King could have said " I told you so!!! Never count lance out or down, NEVER

    • Jan  Lance have done som fantatic mushing up Yukon River. I wonder how long he rested his dogs while mushing to Eagle. To bad the tracker is down

    • Grace  Haha my daughter and I were just in the car talking about how she would hide her tracker if she were in Lance's boots!

David
What an amazing run by Lance!!! The Magic is still there...didn't expect this much this early though.....especially with "young dogs"!!



Annie
Sir Lancelot and Hugh leading together!!! Sooo fantastic!


Allie
All of you Mackey followers were right about him making a move! WOW, them dogs were hauling hindquarters!!

I took a look at the stats and Mackey ran his team for 13.5 hours, apparently with no breaks for an average speed of 8.1 mph/13 kph.  That is remarkable and we were all in awe (and still are).  And then as quickly .. the topic moved to the next game set - how long until Brent arrives based on what we see on his spot updates and ..

David
The next mystery will be...where is Allen and Berkowitz???

Soon to be answered by the second upset of the day:

Bethany
Allen in
 
Dawn
Way to go Allen!
 
Kim
Allen's In 18.40!!



    • Latricia  Way to go Allen!!!!


    • Alexandra  He was in at 2.40. 4 hours mandatory layover makes him free to go at 18.40

    • Kim  Sorry left that out, getting keyboard happy.


    • Alexandra  We are all getting highly excited ;-)


    • Anne  Yay Allen! Yay black team!
 
 
Linda
Allen is in Allen is in Allen is in ... what an upset .. The crowd goes even wilder


    • Jennifer  Woohoo....go dad go:)
 


    • Steve  This is gonna get good in the hills..Gittyup Allen!!
 

Then Brent makes it in with a dog catching a ride in the bag (which slowed him down, of course).




John
Kick Sass Into Eagle!!! Wild And Free Baby!!! Gotta Love This Team!

Bethany
Now Brent. All in 40minutes!

Be aware, this sampling is probably less than 20% of all the comments on this race.  Folks - The Super Bowl fans ain't got nothing over us!

 

 



Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for taking time to comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)