Hello Boys and Girls,
Well the holidays were fun, but they are over and race plans have shifted into high gear. This puts everyone here into high speed mode. Banquet tickets are selling like crazy and it looks like all 1800 seats will be filled again this year. I personally don’t go to the banquet because they just will not serve pizza. I think that pizza is the ideal banquet food, but the humans here at Iditarod don’t think that is a good idea. So I just stay at the Millennium during the banquet and have pizza!
The Knik 200, a qualifier for the Iditarod race, started last Saturday morning with the first musher leaving the starting line at 11:00 a.m. The mushers and their bib numbers are listed below: The bolded musher names are those who are rookies to the Iditarod for 2007.
- Jeff Deeter
- Greg Fritz
- Alan Peck
- Sven Haltmann
- Laird Crew
- Ray Redington Jr.
- Ryan Redington
- Sabastian Schenulle
- Sylvia Willis
- Melanie Gould
- Gerry Willowmitzer
- Eric Rogers
- Matt Calore
- Kathleen Frederick
- Ellen Halverson
- Jeff Holt
- Gary Paulsen
- Kim Franklin
- Jon Little
- Debbie Hoover
- Hannah Moderow
- Dee Dee Jonrowe
- Tony Schundt
- Ben Pysto
- Micah Dangerlund
- Dean Osmar
- Dan Huttunen
- Paul Gebhardt
- Jeremy Keller
- Hernan Maquieira
- Heather Siirtola
- Jeff King
- Rudy Niggermeier
- Katrina Deloach
- Lynn P. Follett
- Joe Gans
Jeff King won the Knik 200 on Sunday closely followed by Jon Little, then Melanie Gould and Sebastian Schenulle. There is a story circulating among the dogs that says that the second place musher lost the lead when his team turned into GB Jones’ dog lot at Knik.
Gary Paulsen and DeeDee Jonrowe scratched from the race on the first day. The trail was good and it snowed off and on as the teams made their way to and from Knik.
The Knik 200 is a good race when there is a lot of snow. The field of mushers was smaller this year than last year’s 51 teams but the race was still exciting.
Here are some pictures from the start of the Knik 200 on the lake Saturday morning:
The dogs were all excited by the amount of snow on the trails this year. It has been several years since there has been really good snow for the Knik race. Training has been excellent and and all the dogs were eager to test themselves against the teams from other kennels. Jeff King’s dogs looked really strong and they proved that the training they have been doing has paid off. During the summer, they went swimming in the lake next to Jeff’s house with Jeff. They told me that they were in the best shape of their life. It will be interesting to see how they do in the Iditarod.
It has become extremely cold here in Alaska since the last big snow storm. It has been below zero for the last several days with temperatures in some places 40-50 below zero. I had to drag out my winter jacket. This cold is expected to continue until the end of the week. I am keeping our paws crossed that we don’t get a “Chinook” and warm up too much as has happened many times before in January and February.
Lots of Tail Wags,
Zuma