Cats, dogs and tarantulas, oh my!

The ITI will soon have its first female finisher in the race to Nome, Kinsey Loan is currently about 71 miles from the finish. Kinsey’s racing career began early, competing in nordic skiing and bike races since elementary school. As a youth she trained with Alaska Nordic Racing, medaling in Junior Nationals and racing at Junior Worlds, winning the coveted Skimeister award in 2009 and sharing the podium with Jessie Diggins at the Junior Olympic Sprint Competition in 2011. Later she skied with Alaska Pacific University for 5 years. 

She participated in a local Anchorage youth mountain biking program called Mighty Bikes, local bike races, a few national bike competitions, and Sea Otter Classic in California. She hasn’t started to knock off her mother’s Arctic Bicycle Club bike records just yet, but she’s got plenty of time! More recently she has competed in longer local races like the Soggy Bottom 100, Kenai 250 and the Frosty Bottom, holding the course record in the Soggy Bottom 100 for several years. In 2022 she won both the Gold Nugget Triathlon and Bike for Women.

Fun fact about Kinsey, she likes her furred and feathered friends. Kinsey has four dogs, three cats, nine parakeets, and two tarantulas. Adding her own canines and felines to the mix, Kinsey’s mother Sheryl Loan is currently watching seven dogs and six cats, along with the parakeets and tarantulas. 

Kinsey’s first ITI was fraught with a few more hiccups than this year. Perhaps you’ll remember last year when she walked for 10 hours to reach Yentna Station with two flat tires. In a year where 44/96 starters scratched, Kinsey came back from the flat tire fiasco to finish the race as the first woman and 12th overall, all with a broken metacarpal bone in her hand from a fall in the Farewell burn.

This morning found Kinsey and Mark at McKinley Creek cabin. They put in an enormous day yesterday, leaving Koyuk at 5:30am, taking a 3 hour stop in Elim and pushing on all the way to the cabin for a total mileage of 69 miles over 18 hours. They started  today at 9:45am and are currently on their way across Golovin Bay, followed by Tiziano and Ben. Thomas is traveling solo today, after leaving Koyuk at 7am, he is now between the Moses Point cabin and Elim.

Gavan left Shaktoolik at 4:30am this morning, and arrived at the Little Mountain cabin just after 10am. He’s been there for about 3 hours now, perhaps contemplating strong winds and certainly hoping for a good weather window to make the Norton Sound crossing. Gavan will soon be joined by Leah and Ryan.

Leah arrived in Shaktoolik last night at 11pm and stayed there until 9:30 this morning. She has steadily made her way across the peninsula between Shaktoolik and Little Mountain Cabin. Ryan Wanless is in the same area and both of them are traveling at a walking pace of 1.5 to 2.5 miles per hour, which doesn’t suggest good trail conditions. They’ll soon need to decide whether to cross Norton Sound today or wait for morning. Asbjoern appears to be taking a rest day in Unalakleet. 

Christof and Beat took a rest at Foothills cabin, after making the trek from Unalakleet starting just after 4am this morning. They left the cabin recently and are now headed towards Shaktoolik. Jan is approaching Foothills after leaving Unalakleet at 7:30am. Typical of foot athletes, Jeff and Faye have been traveling quite a bit at night and odd hours, likely in an effort to rest in cabins or communities as much as possible. They left the Old Woman cabin yesterday at 11am, took few breaks and pushed steadily throughout the day. They arrived in Unalakleet just after midnight. 

Thanks to Allison Carolan in WWW for noticing that Faye’s pace is as steady as a metronome. If you look at her speed plot in TrackLeaders you’ll see that she’s been averaging about 2.5 - 3.5 mph the whole race, and since about mile 150 her speed has been incredibly consistent 2.5 - 3 mph. They departed Unalakleet at noon today and may be planning to spend tonight at the Foothills cabin, but it will depend on whether there’s any wood to be found, a cold cabin doesn’t sound very enjoyable.

Brandon arrived in Unalakleet this morning at 5am. He’s reportedly been struggling, hopefully he’ll take a good long rest before heading north. It doesn’t look like he’ll be joined by other racers anytime soon, next racers Hendra, Joshua and Mark are on the Kaltag portage approaching Tripod Flats cabin, still 55 miles from pizza. Petr rested in Kaltag from 6am today till 2:30, and is now headed onto the portage trail.

Sunny made a 19 hour push to arrive in Nulato at 8:30pm Saturday night. She is trying not to bivy to protect her hands, it can be quite difficult to keep hands warm when setting up for a bivy and packing it up again. Her next push will be 34 miles to Kaltag, a more reasonable distance after several 50 mile days. She left Nulato at 7:15 am this morning and is now 13 miles from Kaltag. Several racers have had favorable winds in this section and the wind layer in Track Leaders predicts a tailwind of around 10 mph.

Snow and significantly warmer weather are in the forecast starting Monday night, with highs up to 30 degrees predicted for Kaltag. There’s a special weather statement in effect for the lower Yukon and coastal areas which predicts cold wind chills through this weekend followed by a significant warm up and storminess next week. Northeast winds of 15-30 mph are expected to continue into Sunday with wind chills of 30-50 below zero. Stay warm out there everyone. 

Author: Amber Crawford

Photo credit: Mark or Kinsey of Mark or Kinsey!