UNK Iditarod Checkpoint Dogs: March 12th late afternoon visit

The days seem to dash by just like these teams heading north!  We now have daylight well into the evenings and spring has arrived here on the coast.  Our mornings are back being dark with the time change but our evenings have daylight until 9 or so.  It is a dramatic change as with everything here that Mother Nature controls.

I was down at the checkpoint late in the afternoon as I wanted to see Ketil's son arrive.  The youngest rookie musher.  First, the dog above is from Kiejka's team he was up as the rest of the team was soaking up the sun and snoozing away.

Local musher headed out to go up the river for some ice fishing.  His dogs are good size fur balls and always eager to get out of the village for a bit.

Martin Apayauq Reitan came down the slough. The overflow was rising and this area the overflow has just been an issue all race.  Martin stop his team ran across over his knees overflow and the team came right with him!  He was dressed for water and said there was a lot of water crossings!

 The dogs were snacked and they chowed down on meat!  The straw was spread, vets checked the dogs, and Martin visited with his parents.

A word on booties these are really getting picked up right away and none are laying around so today the goal is to get some booties!

One of the articles I read said that Martin had hit a tree or did something to his sled and here you can see the repair work. I asked his mother if he had another sled, "Oh no we have just one sled!"

This family has a huge mushing background and also run a tour company up north.  His dad Ketil who raced in our ski race said, "After Martin gets to Nome.  We will snowmachine and mush up to run the Kobuk440 dog sled race and then work our way home to Kaktovik. Google where they live!

Next musher in was Ryan Santiago with a team of 13 dogs as well.

 Look at these two buddies "Lean on Me!" they were resting and soaking up a nice break in the afternoon sunshine!

I took this photo of Blair Braverman drop bag.  Blair appeared to be coming down the river and got to mile 689 and stopped.  Later I checked and she had turned around and headed back up the river to a cabin at mile 681.  My thoughts for all they are worth are as follows: she didn't want to run the river in the dark, possible she didn't want to be on the river in the wet conditions solo, could have been having dog issues and thought better to turn back to a good safe resting place. She is still at the cabin going on almost 12 hours . . . will she scratch? Now that teams are finishing there always seems to be pressure on these teams this far back to scratch.  Truly I hope all is well that her team and dogs are safe.  I am hoping for some kind of update.  I should go over tot he checkpoint and see if they have any current status on her run.