2011 Iditarod Standings - March 11, 9 a.m.
2011 Iditarod Standings, March 11, 9am - Sorry for the late post this morning. If you saw my previous post, you know I saw my first Alaskan Northern Lights show last night, and I was out a little late last night. (Wow, can you imagine being an Iditarod musher, out in the middle of nowhere, freezing cold, having a team of dogs pulling you through the wilderness, and having Northern Lights dancing over your head? Double wow.)
Getting to the 2011 Iditarod race standings ... I still haven't figured out how to read the leaderboard on the Iditarod.com website, so although the leaderboard shows that Sebastian Schnuelle and Hans Gatt are in the lead, local newspapers are tweeting that Hugh Neff has taken the lead in the 2011 Iditarod. These standings on those tweets were posted almost simultaneously, so I'm pretty confused at the moment.
Shageluk to Anvik
One thing I do know is that all of the race leaders have pulled into an Iditarod checkpoint known as Anvik, and their last checkpoint was Shageluk. According to the Iditarod race checkpoints and distances table I put together, we have these facts:
- It was 25 miles from Shageluk to Anvik.
- It's 18 miles to the next checkpoint, named Grayling.
- Anvik is 624 miles from the start of the race.
- This leaves 507 miles until the end of the race in Nome, Alaska.
Iditarod mushers and number of dogs
One thing that strikes me this morning is the number of dogs remaining on the sledding teams. Lance Mackey has only nine sled dogs, but is somehow still very much in the race, while other teams have anywhere between eleven and sixteen dogs remaining.
From what I've read, when a sled dog is injured, or the musher feels like they're unable to keep running, the musher takes the dog out of the race and carries the dog in the sled, and drops the dog off at the next checkpoint, where medical professionals take care of the dog.
Iditarod facts and history
Now it's time for me to get back to work. Last night I started putting together this page of Iditarod facts and history, and I need to finish it, though I have to say, I can still see the northern lights from last night. :)