Kickoff Party

Greetings dot watchers, we hope you’re as excited as we are for another year of edge of your seat dot watching, racer adventures, and a healthy dose of FOMO. The Wild Winter Women (WWW) are back this year to write daily updates primarily on the women’s field. Who are we? WWW supports and celebrates women in the winter ultra-endurance space and provides a community for these athletes to share knowledge, skills, and ideas to help others succeed. That’s who we are collectively but during the ITI, specifically, we’re a crew of eight dedicated ITI nerds. Together we’ve finished either the 350 or 1,000 mile race 15 times and look forward to even more. Enough about us though, let’s get to the action.

At 2pm on Sunday, February 23, 104 athletes embarked on their Iditarod Trail adventure. Most are bound for McGrath, others Nome, and just a few will end at Puntilla Lake with a 150-mile adventure. These include two women in the 1,000 mile bike race and two in the foot race, one is our very own WWW Kari Ann Gibbons. This year a total of 28 women started, most chose to bike (probably a wise choice as you’ll see below), some are on foot, and even fewer chose to ski (also a reason for that…see below).

This winter has been unusually warm with very little snow. There was so little snow in fact that the Iditarod sled dog race made the difficult decision to move the official start to Fairbanks “due to the absence of snowfall” and bare ground in portions of the route. They cited safety concerns to the mushers and the dogs. In Anchorage, the National Weather Service recently reported that the 4.3 inches of snowfall this year is the lowest amount recorded between Dec. 1 and mid-February since at least 1953 when the agency started keeping records (Anchorage Daily News).

As you may know, the ITI has no set route, athletes make their way through a series of checkpoints and generally follow the historic Iditarod trail. Thus, you’ll see them taking a number of different routes. The area between the start and the Susitna River is very popular for snow machines, and generally is a maze of different trails. Navigation skills will be tested, and some athletes may get turned around or lost.

From the start, we’re seeing several misdirected athletes on Cow Lake, resulting in a fair bit of backtracking. Where Fish Creek was initially an ice skating rink on the way to Big Lake, Fish Creek must be impassable further on. Athletes are turning around at the crossing and heading back south, towards a better traveled snow machine trail that will lead them to the Susitna River. Once they reach the Susitna River, there’s a well traveled and nicely marked trail all the way to Skwentna.

Kate Coward is leading the ladies pack with Kara Oney following close behind. I didn’t see Kate at the start, but with the warm weather, Kara was traveling very light (though wisely wearing a helmet due to the icy conditions) and both have been making excellent time. The foot and ski women are in a relatively tight pack just past Flat Lake, cruising along on what I’m guessing are trails of ice and hard pack mixed snow and ice. They should be making their way into Butterfly Lake, the first checkpoint, within a few hours.

There are so many amazing women out there on this first night that we can’t write about each of them individually, we’ll leave you with a teaser of photos from the start. Most athletes will push through this first night, and by tomorrow racers will likely be strung out along 150 miles of trail. The forecast tonight for the Butterfly Lake area includes light winds and a low of 17 degrees; it may be closer to 5 degrees further up the Yentna River. Compared to last year when temperatures dipped to -25, these ladies are in for a treat.

We’ll be back tomorrow with another update and more stories from the trail. Happy dot-watching!

Author: Amber Crawford

Photo credit: Amber Crawford