Iditarod 41 Has Begun!!

All the teams have left the Willow restart chute on their way to Nome!! I did lots of race research today and all I can say is there are a lot of great Teams out there!! Dallas is running a younger team than I would have expected, and Mackey admits he is running his B Team.....but wow, he has a nifty new sled.....all tricked out with enhanced steering capabilities and you can even cook and heat water while trotting down the trail!! King has something similar but Mackeys sled is by far the mosted enhanced and sophisticated sled out there on the trail!! Too bad he is running his B Team.....if this sled does what he says it will there is a lot of time savings to be had heating water or melting snow while on the move!! The Dalzell Gorge is always a real technical test of a mushers ability to navigate down a steep canyon on the backside of the Alaskan Range, but this year it might be a sled eater to boot! There are sections of the gorge that literally are built on ice bridges.....miss one of these bridges and you might find yourself in the drink.....or worse yet, have one of these ice bridges collaps when your Team is on it and you can literally drop 5 feet down into a hole where the creek is running. The snow machines dropped through when breaking trail and built up some of the ice bridges in hopes to assist the mushers, but I would be worried if I were them!! It will be interesting to hear what the lead pack says about the gorge. Warm temps are also a problem this year...the general rule of thumb is not to travel in the heat of the day....that would be between 1 and 4. So we may see more camping out on the trail and not so much at the checkpoints.....Teams will be forced to pull over and rest dependent upon daytime temps. We shall just have to watch to see how this all unfolds. I'll be blogging more as time ticks on....please check back often!!