The 2015 Iditarod doesn't start for another two weeks, but there has already been some excitement. After evaluating the trail, the Board of Directors of the Iditarod Trail Committee has made the decision to move the official starting point of the Iditarod from Willow to Fairbanks and to delay the start by one day.
The Board of Directors of the Iditarod Trail Committee held a special meeting on February 10 to hear a final report from a four person trail committee which spent the day with race staff flying over various portions of the trail via helicopter. The Board was unanimous in making the decision to move the Race Restart to Fairbanks as it was determined that the conditions were worse in critical areas than in 2014 and therefore not safe enough for the upcoming Race. Read the rest of the news release here.
Those of you that followed the race last year might remember the large number of injuries, broken sleds and scratched mushers that resulted from the poor conditions. I can't imagine what the trail would be like this year if it is worse!
This is going to make for an interesting race. This is only the second time in the race's history that the restart has had to be moved. This trail is going to be completely new to all the mushers. They won't have prior knowledge of the new section. This means that those special places that have been earmarked by hundreds of prior mushers on the "regular" trail as good camping spots, or known rough areas or even the best parts of the trail to make up some time won't be known to any of them.
I imagine right now there are seventy-some mushers frantically changing their race plan to accommodate the new route. Here is a video that interviews a couple of those long-time mushers about their feeligns on the move.
http://iditarod.com/2015-restart-fairbanks-press-release-and-information-about-checkpoints/
No comments:
Post a Comment