Rain, Snow and Snowmachines impact the Trail

Nic Petit ran into Grayling breaking trail and it took him 40 minutes longer to get there than Joar....in fact all of the chase pack ran the run faster than Nic by at least 20 minutes.  Apparently it has rained on the Mighty Yukon, and then turned into a wet granular snow, that once packs down is hard and slick....that certainly helped Joar when a few snow machines went past him and hard packed the trail to Grayling, whereas Nic didn't have the luck of a recreational snow machine to pack down the trail ahead of him.  Nic pulled over in Graying to serve out his 8 hour rest. Joar went through after 5 hours of rest as he already did his back in Shageluk....so we can now start comparing apples to apples since many Teams (except for Aliy and Pete Kaiser) have taken their 8 hour rest.  Here is the run down from the GPS Tracker:

Joar at mile 585
Pete Kaiser at mile 582 (still has to take 8 hour rest....probably in Kaltag where he can dry gear)
Nic Petit at mile 581
Jessie Royer at mile 561
Mitch Seavey at mile 552
Richie Diehl at mile 547
Aliy Zirkle at mile 546 (Like Pete, will probably take 8 hour rest in Kaltag to dry out....she HATES rain and was wearing a garbage bag to stay as dry as possible)
Redington at mile 538

All other front running Teams at this time are in Grayling serving out their 8 hour rest.

One more thing, the weather shut down bush plane traffic, so the drop bags can not get to the next checkpoint of Eagle Island for some of the front runners.  They will still try to get the drop bags up there as the Checkpoint is built and ready, but it could not be guaranteed to be there in time for the front pack....meaning they would have to carry their needed food there as they had to last year.  At this time I am not sure if they got the supplies in, but they were still hoping the snow would stop so they could get the drop bags up there.