For the latest updates, Scroll to the bottom of page
On March 6 Matt, Marlene, Shane, Mike and Gina leave to run the Iditarod trail route. This page will be updated as they progress by Cole Raber. Thanks Cole! Click here to see Cole’s YouTube channel.
To be clear: We are not running as competitors in the Iditarod dog sled race, only recording the route and race with video and photos and running it on snowmachines. And yes, we will stay out of the musher’s way. More on the Iditarod race at this link.
Log:
March 4: Matt sits at his desk doing paperwork. Boring. He shouldn’t have eaten so much pizza for lunch.
March 5th: We are staying in wasilla for the night, planning to hit the iditarod trail tomorrow around 8 am
Hi everyone! So sorry for my lack of updates. We arrived in McGrath around 5 PM, Monday March 8. Our trip got off to a bad start, Saturday March 6 when we discovered only Deshka Landing allowed parking for landing members and Iditarod. An hour later we were members of. Deshka Landing. Then, a mile down the trail the snowcoach hitch broke. So, I drove an hour away to purchase another toboggan. Finally at 5 PM, 8 hours later than planned, we hit the Iditarod trail. Naturally, we got lost and at 1:30 AM we found ourselves in a mining camp, where we spent the night. But, we are now in McGrath! More updates to come.
March 9: We are still in McGrath. There is three feet of overflow on the river, which caused the Iditarod trail breakers to get stuck. Yesterday we almost hit overflow but met three folks, two of which were quite intoxicated, that gave us a short cut around it to McGrath. Unfortunatly there are no shortcuts on up the trail around the overflow area. This is a serious problem for the mushers and the Iditarod trail team is working in it. Due to this we will not be able to continue up the trail as planned. Shane’s Polaris RMK snowmachine keeps overheating and giving strange check engine lights. We need to figure out what the problem is before continuing on. It looks like our next step is to head back to Willow, but first we have to wait for all the mushers to come through. The weather is 50 degrees warmer than last year, yesterday it was above 32 degrees here. Last night for supper we had caribou and fish ice cream (agutuck). Yes, it looks like ice cream but is made with berries and ground up fish.
Saturday, March 13: Home Again! We left McGrath on Thursday morning. It was bitter cold, -18 F at McGrath, and even colder down the trail. We made the 160 miles to Rainy Pass in great time, arriving around 6 PM, just in time for supper. The next day we headed for Willow, and arrived around 5:30 PM. We are now at home, getting ready to load up all the video footage and edit it. Stay tuned for a video update coming soon! We put on over 600 miles in the past week on snowmachines.