ID: Tuesday Night Update - Meet the Black Team

It's nearly 2am Alaska time.

Watching a recent Iditarod Insider video of the Red Team coming in to Takotna we were pleased to see the team still looking fantastic! They were alert and happy (except when the siren went off to announce their arrival - I don't think Biscuit had ever heard such a thing!) When asked how everyone was doing she replied that she could do with some Ibuprofen herself but the dogs are good. The nearby vet, there to check out the canine team members, jokingly suggested Rimadyl!

Aliy has "declared" her mandatory 24 hour stop. Her stop will actually be 26 hours taking in to account the time differential from the re-start in Willow. How that works is the musher that left the staring chute last has to stop for 24 hours and for each bib number before that, two minutes is added to the time of the musher. Sonny Lindner (wearing bib 70) will have to stop for 24 hours; Aliy wearing bib 10 will stop for 120 extra minutes.

If she stays her full time (mushers can declare their stop but change their mind and stay 24 hours elsewhere) we can expect her to leave Takotna at 9.06pm tomorrow evening, Alaska time, and mush into the night.

In the meantime, Allen and his team left Nikolai and are almost to McGrath. I've been waiting for a number of hours for the current standings to update so we know how many team mates Allen has with him but that hasn't happened so I'm assuming some sort of comms failure out there. I guess we will catch up with that information when the team arrives in McGrath.

As we haven't seen any pictures or video of the Black Team out on the trail I thought you might like to meet all the sweet faces of the team in this video taken on Sunday.


Music: Acoustic Sunrise by Apple Inc.