the 2019 Iditarod has a winner

[kate_nepveu]

And it's Pete Kaiser, who's only 31 but has run 10 Iditarods; this is his first win. (Look at these good dogs!) Per the Iditapod, he's the first Native musher to win in some years (I didn't hear the year precisely). The host of that podcast had a story a few years ago about the decline of mushing in Native communities which is worth reading.

Nic Petit had been really thoroughly in the lead and then his team hit a section of sea ice at which, as the link says, every year dogs say "nuh-uh this is weird" and refuse to go; this is also around about the area where last year he lost the trail and the lead, eventually coming in second. So the team was already on edge, and then two dogs got in a scuffle, and he yelled at them to break it up; and the dogs just lost all confidence because "omg he never yells at us!" and flat-out refused to move. They stalled on the ice for hours, then he managed to get them sloooooowly to a nearby shelter cabin, where they rested for about half a day; but despite other teams coming through, which often gets stalled teams going—because ooh! other dogs to chase!—they just still would not go. So he scratched (dropped out of the race) for the good of their mental health. I was absolutely glued to this story Monday night my time, and I still feel weirdly awful about it. Two years in a row! Poor dogs, poor Petit!

Anyway. Standings: Blair Braverman is still in it; three women are poised to finish in the top ten, proportional to the overall number of women in the race; and proportionally more mushers than usual have scratched, which I think is in part because of the lack of snow on significant portions of the trail. I saw one musher report, and I can't remember who now, that they were running a very young team so the dogs could get experience, and the tussocks were No Fun At All, so they scratched so that the dogs wouldn't get discouraged for future races.

And that's the news from Alaska.