ID: Friday Morning Through Ruby and Cripple

RED TEAM UPDATE

At 4.24am this morning the Red Team arrived into the Ruby checkpoint and spent just eight minutes there while Aliy went through drop bags and the vet team had a chance to look at the dogs. They have multiple experienced vets available so can get through a dog team, looking for specific issues, very quickly.

Check out the Insider video here! Dutch and Mismo were in lead, Kodiak and Izzy in swing, Scout and Willie, Chipper and Waylon, Chemo and Scruggs, Schmoe, Commando and Felix then Clyde and Sandy in wheel.

The team had camped between Cripple and Ruby for about 3-3.25 hours at 9.30pm last night. A zoomed in view of the analytics shows us she stopped almost exactly two hours later for a quick snack for the dogs at about 2.30am then pulled into Ruby another couple of hours after that.



They are now running on the Yukon River and will take an eight hour mandatory rest at one of the next three checkpoints (they can choose from Ruby, Galena, Nulato or Kaltag).

The GPS tracker currently has them in first position, although the teams are all on different stop/start schedules and expect teams to leap frog each other all the way down the river!



Sebastian Schnuelle saw the team into Ruby - to read his report and see his pictures click here. And, there are a couple of great pics of the team from yesterday in Cripple by Jeff Schultz on the Iditarod website (click here for link)

BLACK TEAM UPDATE

We see that Allen has left one team mate in the Cripple checkpoint with the vet and volunteer team. We do not know who it is at this stage and will get that info to you as soon as we can so we appreciate your patience.

Allen had his Black Team rest in Cripple for just over 4.5 hours having arrived at 15 past midnight last night. They are now on the trail again and as I write are about 50 miles from Ruby checkpoint. We had expected them to go through Cripple but Allen must have felt the team needed a little more rest and took advantage of a quiet night-time checkpoint. Time after time Allen shows himself to be a great dog man; running the Iditarod with the bunch of youngsters takes a specific skill set to keep in tune with the team and alter original plans accordingly. He will have several contingency plans up his sleeve and we send his drop bags out with that in mind so we are not concerned at a slight deviation from plan A.