February 23, 2009

• What has happened to Iris and Becca?

  
  (originally posted February 22, 2009 8:52 PM)
  updated 12 hours later–
  Xanga lost the update in posting–
  I’ll be back later with a new one.
  Both women are okay.
  

  I could be concerned over nothing of substance, if it is just another data entry snafu at the Yukon Quest website.  If that is not the case, two women running at the back of the pack are way behind schedule and missing between Dawson City, YT and the 40 Mile River Hospitality Stop on this side of the border.

  A news release from the Quest administration earlier today, Four Races within the Race, drew an analogy between the four “packs” scattered along the trail and the conventional roles of different groups of dogs within a team.  First are the Leaders, behind them come the Swing dogs, then the Team dogs.

  The Fourth Group (staying with the dog team analogy, the Wheel Group) is made up of the final four teams in the race; Yuka Honda, Iris Wood Sutton, Didier Moggia and Becca Moore. These teams were only 5 hours apart leaving Dawson City and will likely only be separated by 8 hours in their arrivals at Eagle Checkpoint. They are approximately 8 to 10 hours behind the Team Group mushers. These mushers will likely try to keep an eye on each other, not so much for competitive reasons, but also to remain aware of each other’s progress along the trail in case there might be a fellow musher in need of assistance.

  Coming in to Dawson City, Becca Moore offered some of her team’s food to Didier Moggia, a move that likely allowed Didier to make it in to Dawson City under his own power and remain in the race. These two teams were seen from the air to be traveling together in the first part of the Dawson City to Eagle leg, and it is likely that they will run close to each other throughout the remaining days of the race. Back-of-the-pack teams know there is no one behind them who could help out if they needed it without violating the ‘No Outside Assistance Rule’, and that knowledge usually brings increased cooperation within this group, should it be needed.

  The problem with that “looking out for each other” idea is that Didier Moggia turned back to Dawson City and scratched this afternoon, leaving Becca Moore alone more than five and a half hours behind Iris Wood Sutton.

  Yuka Honda left Dawson 42 minutes before Sutton left.  She was 20 hours on the trail (a distance she had been expected to cover in less than 14 hours) and arrived at Forty Mile River at 3:30 AM today.

  Both Iris Wood Sutton and Becca Moore had made better time in the first half of the race than was predicted for back-of-the-pack mushers.  If they had kept up that pace coming out of Dawson, Sutton would have gotten into 40 Mile around 10 PM yesterday, and Moore would have arrived around 4 AM today.

  Forty Mile River is not a checkpoint.  Teams are not required to stop there, but it is resonable to suppose that tired back-of-the-pack mushers would stop to rest themselves and their dogs.  The next checkpoint is Eagle.  The official Race Schedule Approximation estimated that the last musher would arrive in Eagle about 3 PM tomorrow.

  If officials at Dawson, 40 Mile and Eagle, at the start in Whitehorse and at the finish in Fairbanks, are as much in the dark about where Iris and Becca are as I am, someone is probably out on the trail searching for them now and more surely will be if they don’t turn up by daylight tomorrow.

  I have been refreshing the standings frequently this evening, looking for news.  It is almost time for me to get off the computer and go to bed.  First thing tomorrow, I’ll be back here, looking for news of the two teams at the tail end of the pack.
  

  • 12:53 pm
  • 3 Comments