Spirits in Takotna were high Thursday morning, with a cluster of well-fed and rested mushers getting set to end their 24s.
The front-runners had already roared back onto the trail. The mushers camped out now, like Ryne Olson, are on a different pace.
“It’s interesting, because we’re trying to do about an equal run, equal rest schedule, which I always thought was a middle-of-the-pack schedule. But I’m coming to find that it’s actually a back-of-the-pack schedule.”
Olson’s not trying to win, just get the bulk of her team familiar with the trail to Nome for Iditarods yet to come. And with that, the burden of competing is off a bit.
“There’s a certain camaraderie with back of the pack that you don’t get at the front of the pack. Everyone relaxed, and having a good time. So, by no means do I say that it’s a bad thing, I’ve had a really good time traveling with everybody.”
That leeway made it easier for Olson to not get discouraged when an unplanned accident surprised her en route to Nikolai.
“Yeah, we were running through the Burn, and we actually saw the bison, and there’s no snow, so there’s no way to stop. So my 15 dog team was just flying after it, and I was trying to slow them down, and I’m assuming it happened then. But one of my dogs left, he got a stick to his privates, poor guy. But it was just a flesh wound, so they were able to suture it up at Nikolai, and he’s good to go.”
Olson is parked next to Nome’s Tom Jamgochian. A few days in, Jamgochian says the trail has been a mix of high-highs, and some very low-lows.
“Coming to Nikolai, I hadn’t slept at all in the race. It was day 2 or 3, and I was wildly hallucinating heading in. And I felt like my dogs were crap, and this was race was crap, and everything was terrible. And I got in, and my wife’s uncle is the checker, and the first thing he asked was ‘What took you so long?’, which didn’t improve things.”
He laughs.
Jamgochian says he felt better after getting a quick nap. But a pile of mushers was roused from their spot about two hours after he closed his eyes.
“We were sleeping in a shop room in the school, and they told us they had to build a coffin for a pending funeral, so they said ‘you have to leave,’ so that’s why they woke us up.”
Race Marshal Mark Nordman confirmed that a ceremony is being planned in Nikolai for a young woman who recently passed.
The Berington twins, Anna and Kristy, were prepped for some camping along the trail as they got ready to depart Takotna.
“Because we’re not at the front of the pack or in it to win a bunch of money, it does kinda feel like we’re just going on a trip.”
“Yeah, it does.”
Mushers in Takotna were feeling positive — with a mere two-thirds of the trail yet to come.
