Snowmachines roared as Mike Morgan and Chris Olds took off at exactly 8am Thursday for the Iron Dog halfway restart in Nome.
Morgan and Olds are currently in position 1 and were the first team allowed to restart. From here, racers will follow the trail along the Norton Sound coast to White Mountain, then Ruby, and then cut in to the Interior to finish in Fairbanks.
Weather conditions leaving Nome this morning included lots of blowing snow, with visibility reduced to around 1.5 miles. Racers can expect similar conditions later this morning as they enter White Mountain, where they may even encounter snow showers closer to noon.
Off at 8:07:56 Thursday morning were Bryan Leslie and Casey Boylan, followed at 8:10 by Adam Drinkhouse and Brad George. Nome’s Jarvis Miller and his teammate Amos Cruise are in position seven right now; they left Nome at 9:04. The last team to leave Nome will be Kyle Krause and Michael Lilley at 11:27 this morning.
Restart positions for teams are determined by their actual time spent on the trail and what the race calls “wrench time” in the garage: the time spent fixing machines. The time a team spends working on a machine gets added to their total race time.
Tune into KNOM update news (780AM, 96.1FM) at 8 am, 9am, noon and 5pm for more on the Iron Dog snowmachine race.
Image at top: Iron Dog 2019 competitor Chris Olds, team #10, arrives at the Nome halfway point on Tuesday, Feb. 19. Photo: Davis Hovey, KNOM.
