Teams arrived in Pelly throughout the day on Tuesday. Gerry Willomitzer was the first musher to arrive, just before 10:00. Seven more teams arrived by noon, with another nine teams arriving during the afternoon. Teams began to leave just before 17:00. By midnight twelve teams had pulled out. See the table below for details.

Frank arrived at 16:37. He hit a bit of a rough patch in McCabe and Pelly, partly due to lack of sleep at the first two checkpoints (and partly due to the aches and pains of his age!). He feels like the "weak link" in the team, as most of the dogs are doing really well. According to Saul and Fabienne, Paul Geoffrion gave Frank a firm pep talk, and he managed to get into gear again (thanks Paul!!) and left at 00:47 Wednesday morning. Frank decided to drop Sakura and Shilo, as they both have minor strains and the next run is very long.

Saul reports that the other dogs are all looking good and eating really well. The Iams food we use is so good that it has also helped out another team. One of the other mushers was having trouble getting his dogs to eat – a common challenge during the race – so Frank gave him some of our kibble, and they ate it right up. If you are wondering what this problem is like, just think how you feel about food when you are really, really, really tired. Mushers will try lots of different snacks, and feeding techniques (including gymnastics if necessary) to get fussy or tired dogs to eat.

Some teams are experiencing stress diarrhea, and at least one team seems to have a cough. So a number of other mushers are also facing their own challenges early in this race. Most teams have dropped one to three dogs, with a few teams down to 9 or 10 dogs, and one musher down to 8 dogs. Mushers are required to have 6 dogs in order to finish the race, so dropping down to 8 dogs at this point in the race could make that very difficult.