Boy, was that a doozy of a run! It’s going to be interesting to hear Travis’ stories from this stretch of the race: getting spun about, ground storms, and just a long, long, long run.
The Iditarod lists the run from Shaktoolik to Koyuk as a 48-mile run. Due to the sea ice that the mushers usually run on getting blown out to sea two weeks ago when the trail crews were going through, the trail was routed closer to the coast and partially overland. This added about 7 miles to the trail when all was said and done so the route was closer to 55 miles.
Travis left Shaktoolik at 12:26pm this morning and arrived at 10:19. His run time was 9 hours and 52 minutes. Ramey Smyth is starting to creep up and did the run approximately an hour faster. If you watch the tracker though, Travis and Wade got lost during the run and ended up running back towards Shaktoolik for approximately 15 minutes. While theoretically, this was only a 30-minute error, it may have affected the overall speed of the team if their confidence was at all shaken.
I expect that Travis and Wade will take a long rest here, 5 or 6-hours, to recover the team. Richie and Linwood will be arriving at the checkpoint at some point and it will be important to look at their run times before getting a better idea of where Travis really sits.
