Iditarod 2012: "Aliy Cam" Ramblings of a Musher

From the start in Willow, there was always a lot of fresh snow on the 2012 Iditarod trail. The gamble that a team in first place makes, is that it must break trail through all of this fresh snow and use a lot of "dog energy" doing so. Then, the rest of the teams have somewhat of a "beaten path" to follow and perhaps use less "dog energy". But, if you are not in the lead.... well, quite simply.... you are not in the lead. So, when Aliy left Nikolai following her race schedule, it also happened to be in lead.


In this video, the dogs in lead (Quito and Beemer) are often stepping into snow drifts that were 6 inches deep. The wheel dogs (Viper and Bonita) had 14 dogs in front of them packing down a trail and you can still see how deep their paws sink in the snow.


Labels: